have you run chkdsk on your machine? To do so open my computer. highlight local disk c. Press the alt key and enter together. This will land you in the general tab. Shift tab once and arrow right to the tools tab. Tab once to get to error correction and press enter on it. tab around until you come to a check box. Press the space bar to check it. Tab once more to another checkbox. Press the space bar to check it. Press the tab key until you come to the ok button and press enter on it. A dialog box will open telling you that the utility needs exclusive access to some windows files and will run upon next pc re-boot. Answer yes to this and it will be scheduled for the next time the computer is re-booted or turned on from a shutdown. Depending on the amount of files on your computer it could take a bit of time to run. When it is finished windows will startup automatically. Maybe this could correct some of your issues. Robert To find me you can do the following. Skype id: rawest24 Aim id: rawest24 EMail: rawest@xxxxxxxxxxxxx _____ From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Patricia Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2008 1:57 PM To: JAWS users list Subject: an annoying odd problem Hi: I'm sure that this is one of the problems that is probably specific to my model of laptop but it's still annoying as heck so I thought I'd float it out there anyway, in case someone else has experienced it. It seems that whenever a dialogue box comes up (usually one saying that word has encountered a problem or internet explorer is not responding, or even JAWS has encountered a problem and needs to close) see a pattern here? anyway, JAWS just quits whenever thos errors come up. Has anyone else had that? it kind of leaves you stranded, though I know to fix it is a simple mouse click/tab away, but often my keyboard freezes too... and in any case I still don't know where I am. a frazzeled Patricia