Thanks once again to all you folks who had offered solutions and tips and encouragement during the past two days' nightmare, but finally, after meeting squido just now, and fiddling over the deviant laptop for more than 2 hours, we managed to solve the boot-up problems!!! It was, I think, a case of replacing that offending "msvcrt.dll" file with a working one. And kicking off a Trojan or two after starting up... THAT'S ALL?!?!! (-_- )" Anyway... hurray! We're back in business!!! Now... read more