about 10 years ago before getting the internet I had a computer with windows 98 and one day while going through the files on my hard drive I came across what I thought at the time was a junk file and decided to delete it after doing so it was then that my entire windows system had stopped working and it was a that point that I discovered that the file I deleted was in fact a driver for my windows system and because I did not have a backup disk at the time I was not able to reinstall it but luckily a relative of mine who happens to have a backup disk was able to come over to my house and reinstall it,when I look back at what happened I hate to think what it would have costed me if I had to have my computer fixed by a repair man instead my relative was able to fix it for free,from that day on I am always careful not to delete anything unless I know for sure it should be deleted. has there ever been a time when you had accidentally deleted anything from your hard drive?

I don't have any experience with anything prior to XP and I've forgotten most of that so I don't know if it was easier to can something important like that back then. I make a point not fiddle around in the system files and even if I did, I would have to take ownership of them before altering anything, so I can't say I've ever had anything like that happen to me.

no 8120 : To be honest if that happened I would have just installed Linux, Linux can work surprisingly well on very old computers, and all you need is a disc drive and the ability to boot from a disc with a burned disc and boom, you got a new OS that looks good and works good on a Win98 designed machine.

And of course you would need enough hard drive space to hold the OS.

no 8120 : You wrote all those words and only had four punctuation marks...

Lazlo Falconi : He has no ill intentions and his spelling isn't terrible. I'd say that's better than half of what we usually come across online on a daily basis, ne? =P

About whether there has ever been a time when I accidentally deleted anything from my hard drive...? Nope. I was taught early on not to randomly touch stuff that did not belong to me, and the corollary to that is not to delete stuff that I knew nothing about. That rule has worked surprisingly well for people as well as computers. Unlike humans however, computers can be shut down/powered off, so that nothing can run on them anymore. I had to do that a few times when the people around me got viruses onto our computers and to this day, there is still a virus that's "frozen" on one of the drives, and if ever you put that drive into a computer and boot it up, the virus will continue to eat away at the files inside. XD (I can only laugh now about it because I managed to save and transfer the important files elsewhere before the virus started shutting down most every function.)

I still have a computer somewhere that runs Windows XP though and it's incredibly slow by today's standards. rofl I'm also afraid to let it connect to the internet. Even if I could add something to the system, I probably wouldn't by this point because it would just slow everything down.

Actually, now that I think more on it, It really is a good thing that Microsoft made it impossible to mess around with critical drivers. I recall a time very recently that I was bored and decided I wanted to see what happened when I disabled my CPU driver lol. Windows 7 wouldn't let me.