Computer Guru -- NOT ME

I don't have to repeat it because you all know it already - give me 5 minutes alone with a computer and I can ruin it. It isn't like that with other things in my life. I never ruin a sewing machine, or the car, or the appliances. Heck, I think I've had the same curling iron for 10 years or more! The laptop is waiting to be picked up to be sent back for repairs. The tests show a hard drive failure and as best I can tell, that was not my fault. Some things just happen. The desktop . . that's another story. I'll take responsibility for the problems it has. I bought this E-machines computer in July, 05. I think they come with a 3 day warranty but . . they're cheap! And the salesman assured us E-machines was bought out by Gateway and they're not anything like the old E-machines. (Not only did I have one of the old E-machines once but I also bought stock in the company! That's another thing . . never take stock advice from me either!) OK . . so I bring the E-machines home and Vince sets it up. He knows that the less contact I have with a computer, the better the chances of him not having to replace it. I used it for at least three days but at some point, I figured out that when I put in a memory card from the camera, the machine was great . . read it with no problem. But, when I took out the memory card, the computer would not read it again unless I re-booted the computer. Not a problem because I had the laptop and it worked great (back then!). But Vince was out of town and I decided to fix the E-machine. I made the mistake of calling tech support . . about a dozen times. They log each call so they knew I was getting nowhere with fixing this problem. They finally had me do something and I knew I shouldn't have done it but it pretty much wiped out my whole computer. Vince came home and he wasn't happy that I'd tried to fix it but I had printed everything the E-machines guys told me to do so he didn't blame me for the screw up. We decided to just leave it alone because I had the laptop (HAD is the key word!). Without the laptop, I need the card reader to work in the desktop so yesterday was his day to fix that. He contacted E-machines and they suggested a couple of things which he tried. One of the things was taking the whole case apart (which involved Vince seeing the amount of dust and grime behind my computer!) and re-setting the memory card reader. He did it. I tried it and it worked fine the first time but would not recognize the memory card when I put it back in. Now . . before I knew better, when I needed to remove the memory card, I yanked it out. But Vince told me never to do that! I now click on the little "remove card" icon and it tells me it's ok to remove the card. So, when all else failed, I got online and read the E-machines manual and here is what it says: Amazing! Judy