"Lady Jane" Just Killed My Old Computer

I bought a new computer with some of the proceeds from the house buy-out, and have been struggling to transfer files all weekend. I purchased PCMover with my new laptop, but my old machine would not recognize the special USB cable, even after I worked my way to the very bottom of the online help.

So this morning I started doing it the old fashioned way, with a 6G USB memory stick. (I would have burned the data to a disk, but the CD-ROM is broken.)

All my documents have been transferred, and I've been working on my music. I had room to move my 1.5G video of Lady Jane and everything seemed fine. I left the table to give the stick time to process everything so I could "remove device safely."

Except that when I got back, the screen was stuck on a screensaver, and my computer was making an ugly, harsh clicking noise.

Ctr-Alt-Delete did nothing, so I did hard shut down and removed the data stick.

Now it's still making the ugly clicking sound, and it won't boot, saying it can't find the hard drive.

I still have (almost) all my emails on that machine (including many from Lohain), several G's of pictures, including family photos, and the other half of my music.

I am about to rouse the daughter, get dressed, and head for the PC Doctor with all possible speed.