I appreciate your advice, really I do, but I've done my share of geeking, and then some.

As for remaming the file, that's easily changed back to orginal, which I've done.

I don't panic easily, I went about my recovery in a methodical and rational manner within the amount of time I had before I had to leave home for work. Isn't the first time I've had a hosed file or folder, most of the time I have been able to recover them without a lot of effort.

Read my post again, box hung on "Windows it shutting down."

Spare me the Linux/ETC comments, I've not had the time or real opportunity to explore alternate O/S.

As for back-ups, I have Word Perfect set to backup automatically each time it is closed, or prompt to backup when the system is given shut-down command if WP is open.

For that matter, I've been using Wp for a number of years now, and have not encountered any serious problems with it. Currently using WP10, and yes I know they're up to 12 now.

On the other hand, M$Word has trashed a lot of my work, more than once. To each their own.

The problem isn't in my AV program, nor my firewall. (I use AVG free and Zonealarm Pro)

It is only those two files, and only those two. As best I can tell the error occured while the back/main files were being updated, whatever happened was during that odd HDD bleep. The system would have been writing from RAM to both files. It may be that what was suspended to RAM is scrambled so badly there's no chance in hades of recovery.

If that's true I'll have to go at it another way. Most of what was on each can be retrieved from elsewhere as both were being reviewed/critted/shared. Awkward, and I'll lose quite a bit of work done (about 14 pages average) since last time I updated those sources. But it beats the heck out of rewriting several tens of thousands of words from scratch.

As for taking it to a shop?

Heh, riiiight, out here in the boonies there ain't no sech critter worth discussing. And I cannot spend the time, or frankly the cash driving over 200 miles roundtrip to find a decent computer service facility.