Hi! Thank you for this encouraging message! And for explaining your motives. I understand, and I'm still really grateful, but if I were you, and had the skills, I would do the same. It's wonderful that there are people like you involved in this technology, so that people like me can use it at all! I am so sorry I couldn't do what you suggested yet. I have been overwhelmed with work, especially computer work, and not getting enough sleep at all. I've been up all night again, and must get to sleep now, but I realized days were passing, and I didn't want you to think I didn't appreciate and intend to follow these instructions. I'm just nervous, and I know that if I'm too tired, I might make mistakes. Also, I will have to go slowly, because I've never done anything like this before, getting my files from the computer to the thumb drive, and it often takes me awhile if I run into something that I'm not confident of doing. It's something I very much wanted to do anyway, though, because the files are so important to me, and that's why I was trying to find an external drive that would work for me, so that I could back up everything I have on the computer. So I am especially motivated to learn how to do this, and am even more grateful that you're helping me learn how. One concern I have, when I do this, which hopefully I can fit in this coming week, after the deadline for the articles I'm trying to prepare for a two page spread, is that if I put everything into the thumb drive, will it be all jumbled up in there? I have an awful lot of stuff, and right now I know where they are, pretty much, but if I need to recover them afterward, what will that look like? Will they be in any sort of order, or all of the files randomly? I know this may sound just really stupid, but I haven't got a clue. I'm a gardener! I knit! I can cook really well, too. I'm getting ready to write a book, though, so I really need to learn this technology. Without it, I can see that the book is just not going to happen in this lifetime. And technologically, I am definitely feeling "challenged." Especially after blindly going ahead with the Upgrade, when I had no idea what that meant, or the possible "adverse reactions." I think that's everything, for now, and if you can give me any of the information bits I obviously don't have yet, I will try to do what you suggested, as soon as I can, if you still think that is the path to take. I will gather my courage and dive in. It would just be good to know the water is deep enough and I won't crash into rocks at the bottom! Thank you! Doris You see, I have to be able to find and attach documents all the time, to send to people, and I'm worried that if they're not where I'm used to them being, I might not know how to find them. If I had to completely reorganize them and put them in their proper place again, I'd get way behind on my daily work, I'm afraid, especially if urgent things came along that needed to be done right away. It's just that the situation is completely unknown, so I'm worried about changing anything right now, it's such a hectic couple of weeks for me coming up. But if I knew it was manageable, I could probably proceed more quickly. It's like diving off a cliff into water, and I'm just not sure how deep the water is. The other thing holding me back is that I actually did think of the idea about those specific items in the list, and I went through the list, after it told me I needed to upgrade them, and I took the check marks off of all of the items listed except the ones mentioned, and then I clicked on "Install Updates" again, to see if that would make any difference, but I got the same message that I had gotten before. So I thought I'd better tell you this, in case it means anything. That's when I began to be concerned that the message was distinguishing between "Update" and "Upgrade" and the message was trying to tell me to "Upgrade" those bits, before I could run the "Updates" on them. I am confused? > Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:47:34 +0000 > From: