adamsplatt

OK, we probably have to let this drop. I got frustrated with the situation and @moved@ My Pictures and My Music over to a partition on the external drive - really to make space on the C - source drive as I could not defrag the almost totally full drive. This corrupted my C Drive and it went unstable - crashing repeatably! So I decided to fit the big external drive into the laptop and start again by installing XP and all my other software. Then I put the smaller (ex C drive ) into the external caddie so have all my docs and other data files accessible. Perhaps not a bad solution really as now have got rid of a lot of slowing up stuff and have a nice new XP set up which I will try not to abuse so heavily as I used to....Now struggling to get Office 2007 on as I have a common problem (apparently) of install stopping halfway and requesing a .cab file which does not appear to be avaialable or accessible. Any clues - I see on the web that this is not an uncommon problem but no one seems to have definitive solution on offer....Thanks for all the late night assistance and sorry it did not work. I could not persuade my partner to let me clone her hard drive as a test for understandable reasons as she has witnessed the tribulations over the past week or two....and not want her system messed up too! adam