Wow. That is daunting either way. I have lot of data on there. I suppose I could back stuff up to an external hard drive, if that is really the easiest way to go. It seemed yesterday that my computer won't recognize the external hard drive in Safe Mode. Is it safe to plug it in and make the data transfer in regular mode? I DO NOT want to risk infecting what's already on the external hard drive. All I'd need to save really is a bunch of docs, photos, vids and music. Is there a chance that any of that stuff could be infected. Am I running any risk by rescuing it? Thanks for walking me through this process.