About a year ago, my computer had this malfunction.  Everytime we turned it on, it would turn on, but nothing would appear.  Sometimes, just randomly, the computer would work just fine.  It just took about 50 manual reboots.  Then one week, my luck or whatsoever it was vanished, and it wouldn't start anymore.

We had it fixed and both Operating Systems (Windows 2000 and Windows ME) worked ok.  Everything was just reformatted I guess.  All the files and other things were there, just as it had been before.  There was only one problem -  the screen area could only stay at 640 by 480 pixels and there was only 16 bit color.  Windows 200 worked fine however with 1024 by 768 pixels and a lot of colors i guess.  I saw this and said, "oh, they must have lost the driver for the graphics card while reformatting.  So on Windows 2000, I installed the nVidia Driver and then I rebooted, went on Windows ME, found the file from Windows 2000 and downloaded onto Windows ME.  That's where things went bad from what I recollect.  The driver somehow didn't work - but we got all the specs right and downloaded the right driver too.  Windows Me didn't work the same since.  

To make matters even worse, I guess, there was this update or some software that popped up on Windows ME - It was a Windows software update or pop-up or something because we have no internet on Windows ME.  (By the way, I'm on my iBook right now writing all of this.)  Anyways, so I just installed it and it really didn't do anything to what I can see.  So I did my work and stuff and I shut down.  The next day I tried going on ME and now it just completely didnt work.  I got to the screen where it is loading and has the big Windows Millenium Logo.  But that's where everything stops.  So I reboot, try going back on ME and it takes me to the load-up screen where i can choose:

Normal Start
TXT or some kind of start like that
Safe Mode
or STep-by-step SETUP

normal start doesnt work, the TXT startup or whatever i dont know what it does.  And I don't know how to configure the step by step setup.  So I am forced to go through Safe Mode.  

The only real reason I go on ME is because thats where we have all our games and primarily the Sims for me.  I have all my 8 neighborhoods with all the explansion packs and have been building houses since 2000.  I don't really like playing the role-playing part of the game.

Anyway, Safe Mode really won't let me do anything and when I try to go for SYSTEM Recovery it just won't work.  I tried a System Recovery from a date 3 years ago in Sept. 30, 2003.  That didn't even work.

So as you can, the OS is messed up PRETTY badly somehow, but I dont know how...

Any Help IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!

so I guess maybe another eeformatting? or a different type of system recovery?  I don't know.  Everyone here has definitely more KNOWLEDGE about computers than me.Sounds to me like you need to choose which operating system you want to USE, either ME or 2000 8-) simply because your system is really jacked-up and nothing short of a reformat and install would work.

I can see that your games mean a lot to you.  Can you run them on 2000?  If so, I'd save all your games stuff to cd or external hard drive, wipe and reinstall.  Personally I'd pick Windows 2000 over ME.  I think ME was a child of somebody at M$ and they foisted it on the world just to get it out of the house  

Alan <><  

What Microsoft CD's do you have to work with?i have the Win ME Installation disk...  I guess I would just have to save all my game data and stuff onto a cd and reinstall?  or cd's i guess because there is a lot of stuff there.  

would it work if i put all the data on a cd then installed all the sims stuff and upload all the game info stuff i have?  onto my mac?  or would the different computer formatting and stuff totally screw up my creations as a 10 year old?You can save your data files but ALL programs would have to be reinstalled. They just will not function otherwise.

If the machine is functional enough to do the backup you should start now. I don't believe you can fix this short of a reinstall.ok thanks