Okay, it went to the repair shop for a second time, they kept it over the weekend, no luck finding the problem except to decide that it was something buried deep within the Windows OS. And, apparently as part of the original update failure, there was no restore point set.

So... nuke and repave.

It took him a couple of hours to format the system drive and reinstall the OS with all the latest updates (including the "Anniversary" update that killed my computer) and do as much configuration and preference setting as he could without my being there to hold his hand.

I only have two minor complaints about what he did, both of which I fixed myself: He installed FireFox but didn't carry over my bookmarks; and he failed to set up indexing on the Windows search.

Now I get to spend probably 100+ hours reinstalling all my applications and configuring them to my taste. Two or three times a day I start to do something, and, Oh, yeah, I haven't installed that program yet. It's the configuration that takes the time. I spent a year tweaking MS-Office, a little bit at a time as I thought of things, and other applications are nearly as time consuming.

As part of the Windows reinstallation, they upgraded my Office from 2010 to 2016, and while a few of the changes have been helpful, most of them I don't like. And one of the changes has me right on the verge of reverting back to Office 2010.

Is there anyone here who can tell me how to remove that "Styles" block from the Office 2016 ribbon? There is nothing in it that I will ever use, either in Excel or Word, and it takes up a good 40% of the ribbon interface. The "Add" and "Remove" buttons are greyed out in the "Customize Your Ribbon" page. I've managed to tweak enough things in Office that it is at least usable to me, and over the coming months I'll get it better and better. Probably anyone else who uses it on my computer will hate what I've done, but I've always marched to the beat of a different drummer.

But that useless block of "Styles" buttons has got to go!

Also, even though I now have the Windows Search system indexed and parameters set to search file contents on all filetypes, it ONLY searches file contents on .TXT, MS-Word, and some PDF documents. Specifically, it does NOT search contents in .MOBI files.

The computer has been up and running quite well for the past week, not a single glitch or hiccup, and I spend hours every day just trying to get it back the way it was. Total cost for two lengthy stays at the repair shop: about $40 USD. I guess I can live with that.

tanstaafl.