Dear Rev. Sitala, Nina, Hugo, Edward, Nicki, Tomoyuki

Thanks a lot for your kind advice and offers to help. But it is too late. I
should have asked the group members sooner but I had no access to the
Internet at the time of accident. Even now, I can only have a very limited
access to the Internet; so I hope you would forgive me making a single reply
to the group.

I have already re-formatted my computer and got back to the old, dusted
Windows. Since my machine is a rather old laptop, I dare not mess with it
again in the foreseeable future. And I am now very busy preparing papers to
be read at two conferences to be held in coming November. (One is to
commemorate the 30th anniversary of our Institute while another is to be
held by the Sri Lankan Association of Buddhist Studies) But I intend to try
Linux again when I get a new machine.

Hugo, on second thoughts, it was not a simple MBR problem. For, when both
Windows and Linux failed to come up ( only a black screen reading "no
operating system found) I used the Puppy Linux LiveCD to boot it up. My
intention was to try to salvage my research data to my flash drive. It did
boot up but failed to mount the Windows partition (FAT32) where my data was
placed. So I gave up all hope.

Nicki, thanks for the link, but it is too late now, thanks to my
fool-hardiness.

Edward, thanks a lot for the Computing Mantra. I would take care to recite
it everyday before touching my computer! My problem was as I have said
before --- even Linux failing to mount!

Tomoyuki, thanks for the suggestion. I did know the Crossover Office but it
is not available in Sri Lanka (or I failed to find it) and we monks are not
supposed to have credit cards for buying via the Web.

Ko Sitala, Thanks for the suggestion but the problem went much deeper; both
partitions failing to work!

Last but not least, Thank you very much, Nina, for forwarding all relevant
information to me.

with metta

Ven. Pandita


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]