What Happened?

[Dollie]

Forgive my lack of knowledge please, but was on computer this morning and it crashed and went to black screen. It then told me to press F10 which I did and it took me through a Compaq process that looked to me as though it was setting me up from new (as if I'd just bought the machine that day) I completed th process and found that all my saved documents and files were still on there in My Documents, but were in wordpad - it wouldn;'t even bring up M. Word, or Publisher. I've never saved anything in Wordpad. When I went onto AOL - I found that all my personal settings were still there and all my old emails stored etc. but my address book was inaccessible and even now, I can't save any new addresses. Can you advise please as to what happened this morning and whether I made a mistake pressing F10. Thank you in anticipation.

[fo3nix]

I don't know what happened, nor what F10 does (it varies from computer manufacturer to manufacturer). However, it sounds like it's done a fresh install of Windows, keeping your personal files intact.

If so, can you verify that Word and Publisher are installed? If not, install them again from your CD, and your files should open with those programs again.

[Dollie]

Will try that Fo3nix - thanks for your suggestion

[Mac70]

F10 puts you in the Recovery Menu. It sounds like it has done repair from the Recovery Partition for some reason.