ME madness? Or larger problem?

[SNL]

I've just signed on to this site for the first time. Not only am I a newbie on this site, I'm also a novice with computers.

I have an older NEC home PC. Yesterday, I thought I was doing the right thing by going into some folders inside "my computer" and right clicking and deleting some old files (ie, old AOL versions, old downloads, etc.). Then, to purge my computer of these old, nasty files, I right clicked on my "trash bin." After that, I have no idea what happened.

First, my trash can disappeared. Then, when I tried to reboot, my entire desktop is missing (including my toolbars and the start icon at the lower left). So, basically, the screen is clear sans the gray NEC logo in the middle, even in safe mode.

Now I have no idea as to what I did or as to how to fix it. I've tried putting my Windows ME CD in, but that's not booting up. And now, when I start up my PC, it goes to the computer side before the ME screen saver comes on (before the blank desktop), and it sez I have a A drive startup problem.

Any ideas how to fix without spending a lot of money or throwing it out the window :raphael:

Frustrated to the point of tears,

SNL:( :( :(

[Strider]

Hi SNL,
Can you do anything in Safe Mode? At least, if you can, back up your documents, pictures, etc. that are stored in default locations (see below).
Do you have an emergency boot disk (floppy) that ME wants you to make when it's installed? If not, you can download a file that will create one from bootdisk.com. When you have one, try booting with it. If that works, try the command scanreg /restore to see if you can restore the registry to a date before your cleanup activity.
If that doesn't work, boot from the floppy and select 'with CD-ROM support' from the startup menu. Watch closely to see what drive letter is assigned to your CD-ROM; it will probably be one higher than you're used to. When it finishes booting, put your ME CD in the drive and change to the drive letter assigned to your CD-ROM. For example, if your CD-ROM is now E, type E: at the command prompt. The CD-ROM drive light should flash and after a second or two you should see E:> on the screen. Type 'setup' (without the quotes) to launch the Windows install routine. This will do a repair reinstall of ME without making you reinstall all your apps. HOWEVER, documents, pictures, etc. you stored in the default My Documents, My Pictures, etc. locations may get deleted.
If you decide to try any of this, but don't understand what I've tried to explain, post back with questions.
HTH,