Computer failure.
The system I bought and built in '08 has gone to that ol' bit-bucket in the sky. I'm not excessively surprised - I've been expecting the hardware to fail for the last couple of years. Oh, I've had a few drives fail, but those are easy to take care of. This was a "No beep, no boot" scenario - so it was system board, ram, processor, or video card. Or maybe power supply, but I'd replaced that about a year back.
Anyhow, I'd been thinking about replacing the system. So I picked up something cheap, it'll do the job. Now I get to fiddle with getting all the important files over... and finding them again. It's remarkable all the garbage you save, regarding photos and video.
And I've FINALLY switched off of XP. Guess it's about time, and this new system is Win7 Pro 64bit. It'll do, and if need be I can upgrade it to Win8. IF, that is, Win8 doesn't succumb to the 'Every Other OS" problem that Microsoft has. Windows ME? Windows Vista? Maybe Win8 will break the curse.
J.