I believe that you might be able to recover this data but for me to do it I would have to learn what you already know and acquire the tools (and the skill set!) that you suggest. I don't think the data involved is that valuable. I will spend a little more time today and confer with my grand daughter about the circumstance. My assessment of the problem is: The virus was self inflicted by downloading what appeared to be a legitimate copy of a game (Cake Mania) that was offered as a time limited trial edition. The virus (Zlob.Trojan) was included in the package. Zlob then Highjacked Outlook Express, replicated itself in many locations and blocked all outputs from the system. System functions that may have allowed recovery were blocked. The offender did a complete job kidnapping the machine.It is well isolated from the outside world. If this were a machine owned by me I would likely pull the hard drive and install it in one of my machines as a data drive and copy what I wanted. However in this case that would likely invalidate the warranty. The scary part of this to me is that it could have happened to me. I do download a lot of shareware/freeware/trial ware relating to computers/electronics and Amateur Radio. I probably would have balked at the install process, but may be not. I will next attempt to restore the machine to it original out-of-the-box condition. I will add that I am in favor of removing the perpetrator from the gene pool. John Ferrell W8CCW "Life is easier if you learn to plow around the stumps" http://DixieNC.US ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dennis Crawley" To: "Microcontroller discussion list - Public." Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2007 11:44 AM Subject: Re: [OT]Security threat > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist