well here goes. It started when my firewall (Zone alarm) reported that windows media player 10 was trying to phone home for an update. I let it proceed and before i knew what it was trying to download WMP11. I didn't want WMP11 so I clicked on cancel. It proceeded to say it needed me to reboot. So I let it reboot. The reboot was not successful. It passed the "Starting Windows" screen then went to a black screen and hung. The hard disk activity light flashed for a while then stopped. I booted into safe mode and did a syste restore. It still hing on the black screen. In safe mode I uninstalled the WMP10 update. Still no go. So I decided to try restoring from some Ghost 9 Restore DVDs that I made a few months ago. I booted to the Ghost 9 CD and started the restore. I chose restore without verifying the DVDs. I figured it would either work right or not. It went for about 20 minutes copying onto my hard drive and suddenly displayed a "CRC error" message. It could not recover. That was it my windows installation was screwed. I rebooted and chose the "F10" Compaq recovery selection. I ran the recovery for non-destructive mode and got to the point that the new windows install was to start up. It said "could not write to registry. fatal error". There were a bunch of chkdsk errors. So I ran the F10 recovery again. This time windows started up fresh. So I got my windows working again from the Compaq recovery. During the first boot it came up with a message "New Hardware found". It was my USB printer. So I ran the New Hardware wizard and it got to the point of asking for my printer driver CD. I put in the CD but nothing happened. So basically windows works but the DVD writer drive is shot. It appears that the CDs and DVDs when I put them in they do nit turn. I opened windows explorer and tried to read the CDs. No go. I am thinking I have to replace the DVD drive. It must have failed during the ghost restore. I noticed that the media got real hot with this drive. Its a Liteon DVDRW SHW-160H65. I am wondering what the implications will be if i slip in a new DVD writer. In the future if I restore windows like I did will it expect this liteon drive? I will try to replace the drive. Thanks for reading this. Compaq Presario SR1720NX Desktop Computer AT&T SBC Yahoo DSL Home Linksys Router/2 computers

I am wondering what the implications will be if i slip in a new DVD writer. Your warranty, if it exists, will be voided. In the future if I restore windows like I did will it expect this liteon drive? I seriously doubt it'll care.

well I got a 90 day warranty with this computer and it has been about 1 year. Its running good with the fresh install of Windows XP Home. Before I attempted the ghost restore I went in safe mode with networking and and copied most of my important data to my other computer via network. The one thing I forgot was my favorites list in IE. But I had made a backup of that previously so I didn't lose it all. Compaq Presario SR1720NX Desktop Computer AT&T SBC Yahoo DSL Home Linksys Router/2 computers

well I have decided to buy a sony dvd-writer and a hard disk. Total cost is $109. I will have to figure out how to get them into this Compaq case. It appears that i have to take the front panel off to get access to the drives. The hard disk is going to be a backup for the main hard disk. I wanted to get a second e-ide drive while they are still available. Compaq Presario SR1720NX Desktop Computer AT&T SBC Yahoo DSL Home Linksys Router/2 computers