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A few Sundays ago, my family and I were catching up on some summer TV shows at abc.com, on our computer.

Near the end of the show, we heard a high-pitched squeal, followed by a random click-click-click. My first thought was to cut down the volume of the computer to see if the noise was from outside. Surely my computer would not be making such a horrid sound.

The sound continued. I had heard enough stories from people describing the events leading up to their hard drive dying to recognize what was likely happening. Somehow, though, in denial, I wanted to try to reboot my computer to see if I could magically make the noise go away.

Rebooting did nothing.

They always say that hindsight is 20/20. I should have quickly inserted a disk to start backing up as much as I could from my computer's failing hard drive.

I should have, but did not. Instead, I did the only other reasonable thing I could think of at the time. I cut off my computer for a few minutes, hoping once again that the sound would go away.

When I tried to reboot, I got a cold, impersonal statement from my computer that essentially said, "Too bad, you lose, your hard drive is toast." I almost think I heard deep laughter, too, from within my tower.

I tried to insert the reformatting disk to see if perhaps it would pick up on my desperation and have pity on me.

Once again, my computer just laughed and spat me back out onto the ground.

I was probably better off than many when this sort of problem comes around. I had within a month or so backed up the information on my computer.

The main things I did not back up were a few e-mails I would have liked to keep from Outlook Express, some of the e-mail addresses there and a few other minor things.

Though I'd love to have these things back, we did not lose anything that could not be replaced or recovered or redone.

A short call to my brother confirmed what I knew: My hard drive would need to be replaced.

My brother gave me a reference to a company in Greensboro that does computer work and I knew of two guys in Burlington who should be able to help me if I needed it.

I hung up the phone and went on our older computer to do a bit of research.

I questioned, just how hard would it be to replace this myself? The thought of opening up my computer tower brings back memories of sweaty palms, tears and cuts all over my hands from the time eight years ago when I had to replace my floppy disk drive in our older computer.

Talk to me in computerese, and my eyes glaze over and I feel faint.

A friend at that time told me, "It's just a machine, you can do this."

With that thought going through my head, I considered my options.

I could take the easy way out and take our computer tower to an expert, or I could try, with the assistance of my 16-year-old son and some helpful how-to Web pages, to replace the bad hard drive.

I decided to go to Wal-Mart to price a hard drive and think. Returning home, I went through the same how-to pages and became more determined to try to do this repair myself.

My son stood by as I opened the tower. We figured out how to remove the hard drive from the computer tower by pictures found online and a lot of guessing.

With the old hard drive in hand once again, I returned to Wal-Mart.

This time, I meant business.

I bought a new hard drive and returned home. I used some pressure air to clean the inside of my tower out well. I then slipped the new hard drive into place.

It was time to see if my computer was ready to get back to the business of, well, computing stuff for me.

I started the computer and weakly, it threw out one last haughty reply, "Your hard drive is dead, wimp."

I was not backing down.

Armed with my reformatting disks, I inserted them into the CD ROM-DVD drive. The computer was no match for me this time.

I heard a sputter and a cough from within the computer tower and suddenly the computer sprang to life and started doing what it was supposed to do. It loaded all of the original software as it should.

Furthermore, it finally rebooted and was humming along as it should.

My whole household rejoiced, danced and joined hands as we celebrated victory of Woman vs. Machine.

OK, seriously? There was no dancing and joining of hands, but I was quite pleased that for once a computer problem was repaired by me with ease and without tears.

I had conquered the machine and made it do what I wanted to - this time.

Linda Vestal is a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend living in Gibsonville. Contact her with comments or story ideas at lindavestal@triad.rr.com.