Hi folks - quick update.  found a really nice computer shop who would have a look at it for free for me.  they found a problem with the hard drive and when they repaired it it was blank, however they managed to recover all my data for me  which was super duper fantastic and everybody is now ecstatic, and all for £35.00.  how happy am I.  hwever, I have learned lots from just breaking the dratted thing and having you folks help, so maybe I will just now get a bigger hard drive and back up more often.  Thanks again for your help.

Congrats.  I have found through experience (the painful way) that a drive image taken weekly is the way to go.  I use Acronis true Image purely because it was free on a magazine cover disc.  But it has saved my bacon a few times.

I prefer an image over backup as the entire drive is replaced giving you a nice clean start to mess it up again. 

Well detected Squeezie, I was missing my grandchildren