My system froze leaving me with my icons and the hourglass never going away. I tried to do a system recovery using the recovery disks, however the CPU is not recognizing the CD. What can I do? I have not tried anything else for fear of total destruction. PLEASE HELP!!!!

Lilred058, BTDT, all of us have, at one time or another been confronted by an unresposive machine. Can't say I recommend it (do as I say, not as I do?), but here's what I've done in the past when faced with the same thing. I used the power switch to shut the machine off (gasp!). When restarted, scandisk ran automaticaly and hopefully repaired any damage done. Maybe I was lucky? Seemed to do the trick. Maybe someone knows a better way and will enlighten us. HTH. Ed in Texas.

Dear friends, Check any program eating memory, if so uninstall it. Check the startup programs with windows, disable undwanted programs. Search for temporary and unwanted files and delete it. Do a disk defragment. maintain computer regularly. Use any third party softwares for this purpose. Bz it can done easily all these things. I agree with Ed in Texas, but do it as a last option. 1. Start> Shutdown, or restart 2. Start> Logoff 3. Press key combination Ctrl+Alt+Del 4. If all fails, turn of the power or press restart button. thank you sree