Thank you for your cognitive answer which makes me feel someone does know something I don't know. I have quite a few programs on my laptop because I use it for many different tasks. I started with computers back in the dark ages in a nuclear plant in the early Sixties and with NASA back when Kennedy announced we were going to the moon in this decade. I had to learn when CPM, VisiCalc, word star and D-Base III ran on a Trash 80 with a three hole extension bay with 8 inch floppies. I have graduated from those early antiques to Vista and Office 2007 neither of which I'm satisfied with at this time.

I thought I had auto updates turned off on both computers and googled each thing Microsoft said I needed to install. Many times I found reasons that showed the update was valuable. However things like Windows Genuine Advantage didn't strike me as something I wanted on my computer. Dell had installed XP Home on both of our computers and both still have the sticker underneath which shows the programs to be genuine. The fact MS GA couldn't be uninstalled bothered me no end.

But then I was told, by MS, if I didn't allow MS to check that there was a purported advantage to me I couldn't run what I had paid for. Calling them to avoid installing wasn't a solution so they forced me to accept something which wasn't any advantage to me. In fact waiting while it checked before each update frustrated me totally. As I said auto update was turned off and I suspect MS installed something which changed that setting. Enough is enough from them.

I can't find anything in MS knowledge base (What a contradiction in words almost like MS Genuine Advantage) about SDS 3.0 which makes me wonder what it does. Your suggestion that it could do something useful makes me wonder why it isn't listed in Programs? Do they want to hide something? Maybe what I use my computer for so they can sell my private info?????

I was using an I/O Magic 6 GB USB Drive to move my digital pictures from my XP laptop computer to a new 320 GB Vista HP Pavilion computer. I went to My Pictures and did a select all and after opening the 6 GB USB Drive I moved the entire Group of files by dragging the selected files across. I didn't know the I/O Magic somehow had a recycle bin on it and apparently the pictures all went there. None were left on the 60 GB HD. When I discovered there were no pictures left on the laptop I was advised to use restore to a point before I made the above mentioned move. This is when I found no restore point remained from before the MS SDS 3.0 had been installed on the laptop.

I successfully found all the pictures on the 6GB USB drive and got them on the 320 GB HD HP computer. The problem was none of the many dated files were present. The digital pictures are from 6 trips to Alaska and years of research in my local National Park. They all have dates in the properties and I can put them back but the hours of time makes me furious. The program I used didn't work on the laptop because I had used the computer for a week before I discovered the loss. I was lucky they were still on the USB drive. The pictures are all on the 320 GB HD and still on another 6 GB USB drive. I intend to sort through the pictures and then replace the ones I need on the laptop. Many of the pictures are already on CDs from the past four years because I've done some amount of work with them. But the time to recover from this event has been traumatic.

My question is why did MS use a bandit program to do something I wasn't told about when it had the potential to cause me harm? If I don't trust MS to get it right and have experience to prove they seldom seem to get it right what reason do I have to trust MS? I had few problems back in the days before wee billie sold IBM a bill of goods using something he didn't invent and now no matter how hard I try to keep my computers clean they mess things up in unimaginable ways.

I hope to see some answers to this newest problem I seem to be plagued with because billie's crew doesn't seem to get the message "If it ain't broke don't fix it". Anyway my rant ends here for now.

Richelles

Several times now I've found a blurb that seems to say this updates any software I have installed on my computer automatically but is this actually a malevolent or is it a benevolent piece of software? It would be my impression, having been forced to deal with the likes of Microsoft for about thirty years now, that there isn't a decent motive in anything they have ever done to us. And if it is purported to be something we desire and need to have why is there such a deafening silence from MS? Knowing wee billie's business method's over the years since he sold IBM something he didn't own it seems he must be the world's greatest example of a con artist and if you doubt that check out the fact he sold Omaha's Buffet a bill of goods sufficient to get him to part with his billions.

I then turn to something that Howard Hughes did namely build the Glomar Explorer and sally forth to purloin a submarine that was a gravesite. And we all know body snatching is frowned on it this world by most decent people. So has wee billie thrown his lot in with the nefarious government we or some other nations have and added a secret means of watching you and I to the equation? Secrecy does strange things to the thoughts of rationale people and for governments it does worse things. I don't trust the current administration and wee biliie has also failed my smell test after picking my pocket for his tinker toy software over my lifetime and even if he did something good I'd look to see how it benefited him. What is Software Distribution Service and why isn't such an important discovery being announced with as much fanfare as Mission Accomplished?

Richelles