A week ago on Wednesday, my hard drive crashed.
First the operating system (Windows XP) didn't manage to load all the drivers, then the BIOS displayed a S.M.A.R.T. error, then Windows complained it couldn't boot because there was no disk to boot from. The purchase of a replacement hard drive triggered a chain of events which culminated in me installing Windows 7 and migrating my applications to the new disk. It is an ongoing process.
Luckily I was able to salvage most, if not all, of my data by cloning the failing drive before it died altogether. Now that I have the main apps working again, the strip can continue. Many apologies to my three readers.