Nothing Stops Progress

I have (had) a lovely laptop running Windows XP that I used for coding windows programs and writing my novels, and everything else related to computing.

That is, until last Wednesday.

The laptop stopped working. No need to panic. All I had to do was reinstall the operating system and everything would be Ok again. The computer did not recognise the USB ports, or the CD drive. The hard drive would not boot the operating system. I could not install XP again.

Panic set in!