So I tried to burn a CD on my laptop yesterday. The lens has been erratic for more than a year. I was very tired. In a foul mood. The disc didn't burn. I spat on the lens and punched the laptop.

The dreaded blue screen. It refuses to go beyond startup now; I can't start it in safe mode, I can't do anything. I can't even boot from the CD because it says there's no recovery file. Just keeps shutting itself off and restarting.

I've got my music and photos on my external hard drive, but everything else, I fear, may be lost. Writing, documents, my beloved if ill-kept film database Excel file.

In the brief period I had to note what messages were popping up (none now do), it said something about a DLL file being missing, and thus no log-in screen could show.