Well, I managed to persuade my crochety old PC to spark back to life sufficiently to back up recent data, but it's still a very sick machine.

So I treated myself to a spanking new one, only for it to die on me within a day of purchase. The initial response of technical support was to invite me to spend 2 hours completely reloading the system and drivers. No thanks, I don't expect to have to do that to a new machine. Getting them to agree to immediately replacing it seems to be a bit of a struggle. As you can imagine, I find this aggravating.

You know what, I really don't enjoy being a dissatisfied customer.

Maybe the comments to my earlier post are right. Is the universe telling me to get an Apple?