Well, I can pretty safely say that this wasn't caused by me opening any kind of bad attachment in an email. I am quite alert to these kinds of things, though I DO use Microsoft Outlook Express (but will no longer once I get back up and running, when I move to Thunderbird). I have had spyware issues in the past but had completely rid myself of anything residing on my computer that shouldn't have been there. Norton Antivirus was up to date as well, and I have never run into any virus/trojan issues in the past, but you never know these days. Though, this was a pretty new computer, so I felt it was pretty clean....

The laptop should have only one hard drive, but 2 partitions...a C and a D.....total of 80Gb hard drive....

How do I tell if the disks are spinning? When I startup, it sounds like a normal startup, and I get my VAIO screen, and it usually sits there for a bit before coming up with the OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND screen....so it sounds like the disks are spinning. How can I tell if they are identifying themselves to the BIOS?

What partition software should I use to see what it the partition table looks like....though I must admit, I have no clue what a partition table is SUPPOSED to look like....what would happen if I just tried to run gpart right now?

*edit*

Helix is now finished downloading.....should I burn and attempt to work with it rather than Knoppix?