Thank you all for your replies - and hopefully the problem can be fixed.

Martin, I didn't make a recovery disk - if you told me how to do that, somehow
I totally missed it, to my regret now. Is this a different thing than the "XP setup boot discs' that b1caez01 was talking about? Is it six discs or one? I truly don't mean to be thick-headed here, but the different terminology is throwing me off. I don't even think I have 6 floppie discs - will have to go and buy some.
How does one go about creating a 'recovery disc'? I certainly will create one, and keep re-doing that as it will help with this mess I am currently going through.

So....til I find out about that, I'm holding off doing the disc check - though I did run it on my smaller hard drive - oddly enough it ran right away without having to reboot the machine to have it do its thing. No idea on why that was so.
As soon as I get that info on the recovery/boot discs, I"ll run the disc check on
my main hard drive.

I really appreciate all the help and the patience with my shortcomings in knowing my machine and how it works - y'all have been life-savers, and
I am grateful for the help!

First thing tomorrow I'll get some floppies and then be back here to go to step two.

Trish