I've only skim-read this topic, so sorry if I'm repeating anybody. First things first, you should look for a Vista repair CD, if you don't have one then download one. If you can't download one, ask somebody if you can borrow theirs. If you can't do that, contact your vendor and request one, at most they'll charge you $5. Now as I know you're a tight-fisted fucker, check on the HDD in Knop for a recovery partition, or some recovery files. If that's not an option, for whatever reason then boot up in Knop, and use an array of DVDs and a backup utility to save all of your important information (as you appear to be limited to HDD space). ... Back to the tight-fisted-ness, if that's also not an option try and find a redundant computer, take apart your external HDD and load the HDD from the redundant computer into the external HDD. The worst case scenario is that you'll have an incompatible HDD to External HDD jack (SATA vs IDE) and your external HDD won't be as fresh as it once were. Hopefully that will provide you with a little more disk space for your files. Once you've done that, get Linux, and get used to it. Shit like this doesn't happen. If you want an even better option, buy a Mac and never need to worry about this kind of shit happening... Ever. Then, try to grab any drivers or anything as such from the HDD (I think I read you were doing this from a Laptop) - this will save you some time. Usually there is a partition on the HDD with a backup/restore/drivers etc. Grab that, if you're lucky enough t have it. I saw some comments outlining chkdisk etc, read them, they're useful. If you're lucky enough, that *could* fix the issue, but with the experience I've had of HDDs failing (yes it's happened to me a few times), it probably won't go down well. Looking on the positive side, it's just a corruption, not a complete hard drive failure. -L