Computer help?

From what you've said, it sounds like wiping and reformatting the hard drive and then reinstalling the OS is the next solution. When yo do get it up and running again I suggest buying the Norton System tools suite or something similar.I am not an IT professional so this may not be 100% correct.edit: as the above post suggested, try reinstalling the OS without wiping the hard drive first.Edited by DrJones*, : No reason given.

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

I now agree with the others that this is probably a hardware problem. I would not go ahead with the reformat, but a reinstalling of the OS wouldn't hurt. Back up everything vital Now! while your computer is running good.

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

Is your Zip drive internal or external? cause you're not going to find a new computer with an internal Zip drive, cheap CD/DVD burners and the various thumb drives have rendered them obsolete.

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

So there's 2 options
1. Transplant your Zip drive into any new computer, which is about as hard as putting in a new hard drive.2. If your computer has USB ports (any computer built in the last 7-8 years should have them, little rectangular ports about 1/2 inch tall) then you can get a USB thumb drive and transfer the data from the Zip disks. Any thumb drive out there will have more storage capacity than a Zip disk and the cheapest should be around $20-30.Edited by DrJones*, : No reason given.

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

Like I said you could transplant your current Zip drive into a new computer. The downside of this, putting aside your actual ability to do this, is that Zip drives are a dead technology. You'll have a hard time finding any new Zip disks or any replacement drives if your current one dies.
Thumb drives are similar to the replaceble memory chips inside digital cameras, they plug into your USB port and WinXP will automatically detect it and treat it like another hard drive, you can copy and paste files from your Zip disks onto the thumb drive and then take that thumb drive to any computer with a USB port (which will any computer built with the past 7 years or so) and access your files. Thumb drives range from ~256MB - 1GB or more, they're cheap (depending on the capacity, like I said before the smaller the cheaper), and can be used on any modern computer, their only downside is that they're small and easily lost, my dad has gone through about 5 of them.In short, no matter what solution you go to for the computer problem, I reccomend getting a thumb drive to transfer your files from your computer/Zip to a system with a CD/DVD burner.

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

Look for 2 USB ports side by side underneath where your keyboard plugs in. I would be extremely surprised if your system did not have them. Edited by DrJones*, : edited out the second picture cause kuresu had it already

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

The short part first. I don't have any solid information but theoretically they should last quite a long time. There are no moving parts to break down, they have no surface to scratch, just make sure you don't bake them, freeze them or submerge them or clog the port with something and they should be fine. edited: yeah keep them away from magents too. Due to the way Windows handles them there is a danger of losing data if you just yank them out of the port. edited: it's like ejecting a floppy while the computer is still accessing/writing to it.There is a software step that you have to do before removing them that essentialy closes the drive and makes it ready to be removed. When the thumb drive is installed a little icon will be present on your taskbar, when you want to remove the drive right click this icon and select "safely remove hardware" a confirmation box will appear and after that is checked you will get a message saying it is safe to remove the drive. Skipping the process isn't advised but it isn't automatically fatal either, I've forgotten about it multiple times and haven't lost any data.Edited by DrJones*, : No reason given.Edited by DrJones*, : some clarification added

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

Magnets can't harm CDs, well not through their magnetic field at least.

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

Start menu -> run -> enter: cmd

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor