> I don't use XP myself but am told the backup/restore
 > 'goback'
 > functions work well. :-)

    I've already had evidence of that this morning. Windows update put a
modem update out for me to download - presumably because of the external
modem on Com1: Did that, and then the system went haywire. Kept rebooting
and dying in quick succession. Took me a couple of minutes to remember that
there was a "safe mode", and to use that. Did that and restored
to the point immediately before the update. Now it's back to normal and it
can live without that particular modem update. Reported it manually to
Microsoft, and after that the system itself did an error report, reporting
an unsafe driver.

    I suspect that this computer is now fairly stable, and I'm off for an
early night. Just had some chicken with fries and garlic mushrooms washed
down with Liebfraumilch, so I'll sleep tonight. :-)

    I was configuring Argus ( which also works happiy on XM) before the
driver download. I'll have to do that all over again, but that's a small
price to pay for recovering from a near fatal error.

    I now have C, C++, Basic, Fortran, Pascal, COBOL and Java loaded, and
I've tried them out just to check that they work. I'll think about an
assembler later.

All the best,
Bill.

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