@#!%$

Very not good. The partition on my laptop where I store my data was almost full, so I ran my partitioning software to transfer some of the free space on my other three partitions (like virtual hard drives) to the full one.

Should have been a simple procedure.

Alas, something went awry, and my laptop is now fubar. The boot prompt comes up every time I reboot, and no matter whether I choose a normal launch of Windows, the "last known good configuration," or a launch into safe mode (which should always work), I always end right back up at the prompt.

Which means that something's toasted on my system partition, the "virtual disk" that has Windows and all my programs loaded on it.

Since my data's on its own partition, restoring the system partition shouldn't affect that. But there are always things that are on the system partiton, because Windows and other applications are too stupid or arrogant to let you tell them "put ALL of my documents here - I don't care if you'd rather store them in some obscure folder somewhere else... They're MY files!"

So, the question will be, once I manage to restore my laptop to working order, what will I have lost, and what will be intact? And how long will it take to get things back to normal.

Grrrrrr.

Which leaves me computing on my cell phone for the time. It works pretty well, but there's some weirdness that has kept some people from getting e-mail sent from my phone. So, if you are expecting a reply from me and don't get one, the odds are very good it's disappeared into the unhappy black hole of my technological life at the moment. Sorry.

So, I'm going to watch something on TV and go to bed. At least both of those two items are still functional.