thanks for all your advice. much appreciated! this occured to me just reading this.....the backup of EXE files is the easiest for me....all i have to do is borrow my brother's CD-RW and install it on my machine.....do a back up of EXE then delete the ones on my HD..... but see....heres another thing i forgot about....I GOT TONS OF POSER STUFF from Renderosity market place and DAZ3D.....what if this tech guy makes a copy of my stuff? then hed go home and PRESTO! hes got V3 and the WHOLE ENCHILADA! well....i guess there really aint any secure way around my problem EXCEPT to just uninstall my stuff and reinstall again....the programs will be easy....but the Poser content would take some time.....since many would have to be manualy moved to runtime dirs. i would go with the CD-RW.....but then i dont want to give this guy the benefit of just copying my Poser stuff......so the main solution is just to delete all. argh!!! oh....and thanks for the tip about killing the splash....ill try that.....it should save some bootup time. thanks again all!