grrrrrrrr! Ever have an internet/computer problem, call for help, wait on hold forever, you're on your 2nd technician and you hear the dreaded "I'm sorry there's nothing more I can do for you, you'll have to call Microsoft or Gateway," then the 15-year-old girl at Gateway informs you that you'll need your System Restoration CD so you can reinstall Wndows 98, but you'll lose everything on your computer?

Somehow I managed to find a phone number for a guy I knew a couple of years ago who helped me thru a similar crisis. He answered on the 2nd ring, and is such a tech-geek that he immediately was asking all the right questions with only a couple of seconds on the "how've you beens" But, alas, after 6 hours with no internet connection, and 2 hours of him toiling away at my P.C. yesterday afternoon, and what seemed like a big fix without the dreaded hours and hours of saving files - this morning I'm starting to see similar intermittant connectivity with my Road Runner internet connection. Rats! Something about my tcp IP stack being corrupt - and then I coudn't find this file - "secur32.dll" - this is the part that doesn't make sense. Ok, a file is corrupt, another one isn't found - why can't I just lift/copy the two from my Windows disc, and not have to erase my whole hard drive and start all over from scratch?