many thanks he may have meant the chip I have no technical knowledge, but at the time of crashes the tandem link up meant it was in a thirdparties hands, but for along time the dell has not performed well,I just kept hoping as one does. Odd to think a 5 year old laptop held up through everything it goes via the wireless router of course dell being a substantial desk top is wired in and should with all the power it is supposed to have move along smoothly sorry about typing shoulder hurts and next door house is having building works that make hearing Jaws hard dorothy ----- Original Message ----- From: Yadiel Sotomayor To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2010 11:38 PM Subject: Re: jfws and bit levels continued A crystal?... On the CD ROM?... Well... either you miss understood ( and I really doubt it) or the person you talked to didn't knew nothing about what he was talking about. The OS is stored on the hardrive. The ROM (read only memory) is stored on a chip on the moderboard. That chip is called a bios (basic imput and output system) and it is used to launch the OS from the hardrive. Now, the actual CD rom has a lence on it. It is used to read the content of a disc. It is sort of like a camera. But... how, can a falty CD drive prevent an OS from loading or make it crash?... I can understand a falty hardrive. Those are very sensitive things. The mere drop can damage a hardrive and make it crash, lose information or both. yadiel From: Dorothy Ingram-Gorban Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2010 7:00 PM To: org, jfw@freelists. Subject: jfws and bit levels continued dear list reading my earlier Post I forgot to mention I was not just using Skype to make the contact but the tandem feature of Jaws was being used and when the computer crashed it was not under my control, that is different to my old XP failing last October when downloading Jaws 11, the machine was under my control and it was a 5 year old desktop the engineer I called in last said to contact dell,he said something I did not understand, his English is not always clear. he said the CD-ROM is faulty and I questioned him, he said the C.D. ROM has a lens in it,I asked "what does it do is it like a camera? he said "lens has a crystal in it and the crystal is needed to run the operating system properly, I have not heard of crystals in CD roms I thought they just stored material hope it is a bit clearer Dorothy