i don't think i will go the route of doing it myself. I tend to break more than i fix when working with small electrical things (other than welding). as far as using a recovery disk i have to say i don't have one. The laptop used to be my parents and it was passed down to me when they replaced theirs about 3 years ago. So I don't have most of the disks that came with it. The laptop is basically junk anyway my two year old has been found pulling the keys off the keyboard a few times and i have to use an external keyboard on it now. I was planning on junking it when i had the pictures and other data that i wanted off it but now i have to see if it is even retrievable. but thanks for the information.

the only boot disk i had said it would reboot and erase all information that was on the hard drive so i decided that was not a wise decision.

kirby