It's been a long time since someone besides me handled my click wheel.

Hi everyone - I was working with my mother's PC tonight, doing some regular maintenance stuff... disk defragmenting, disk cleanup, you know, normal, basic stuff, and I just got this:

"Files that are required for Windows to run properly have been replaced by unrecognized versions. To maintain system stability, Windows must restore the original version of these files. Insert your Windows 2000 Professional CD now."

(Yes, Windows 2000. We don't want to move too quickly into the future here in PA.) I swear that I only told it to erase the temporary internet files and things like that -- nothing like system files or setup files. And now I've just broken out into a cold sweat, because this is my mother's PC, and she apparently doesn't have the CD for it, and other than never turning this thing off again, I'm not entirely sure what to do. Do any of you technologically gifted people have any ideas? Is there any way to un-delete files that were deleted by the disk cleanup process, as long as I don't turn off the PC?

Can you do a system restore? Would that work?

I tried to look up directions for "system restore" in the index, and the closest I could find was "system resources." Maybe that's not an option with Windows 2000? I seem to remember an option with Windows ME that let users reset everything back to a point when things were working well, but I can't find that option with 2000. (Is that what you meant by system restore?)

That is what I meant, but remember where to find it.

Uh, this question is going to come out *really* braindead, but here goes: does a cable exist that has an ethernet jack on one end, and a phone jack on the other? Or is there some sort of adapter that would allow one end of an ethernet cable to plug into an older laptop that has a phone jack but not an ethernet port?

(It's this whole thing with my old laptop and The Boy's DSL modem and cables, etc. My old laptop only has a port/jack/whatever it's called [hey, it's late and I'm having trouble with words] for a phone line, but the cable that comes out of the DSL modem is an ethernet cable.)

Am I wishing for something that isn't real?

And if it IS real, can you please link to an example of such a product, because my google search terms are yielding weird shit.

Do you have serial ports on the old laptop? I've seen ethernet/serial adaptors.

Do you have serial ports on the old laptop?

Uh. Kind of?

There's a port that looks like a serial port, except it has 3 rows of holes instead of 2.

I'm suddenly feeling very, VERY much like a help desk nightmare.

Steph, make and model of the elderly laptop?

Compaq Presario.