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thanks BigMonkey and pranav81.
it's comforting to know that these programs won't write anything to the HD, only read. so i can safely try.

your help is much appreciated.

when i actually get around to doing it, i'll let you know how it worked out.

Well it is always a ghastly moment when it is someone else's computer with someone else's lifetime memoirs on it and your finger hovers over that enter button........
Don't forget to ask exactly just what happened just before the computer crashed. Sometimes some ghastly new piece of software has just been installed which may have overwritten or corrupted a system file. Once again if you could get into safe mode you could uninstall such an item ?
good luck with the other analysis software.

no it wasn't anything like that.
i described exactly what happened in the 1st post.

i was there myself and saw it.

the person in question has difficulties in the most elementary tasks (creating a word document, navigating folders etc). he isn't installing any software
since the comp was protected by antivirus, firewall, i doubt it's something that installed itself on the comp.