Originally Posted By: AndrewT
The last time I encountered this problem the computer's hard drive was on its way out (bad sectors). Check the Event Log (System section) for disk errors.

That disk that I had to restore did die about three weeks later. Wonder if that was a symptom that it was going out. I still need to figure out how to get the data off that disk, but on post it is giving the ID as a ton of random characters, not all of them English smile