In which the Scrivener succumbs to the technojinx

Extemporanea appears to have lent me her technojinx. While I can certainly appreciate the desire to have the problem go bother somebody else for once, I did not volunteer for jinxsitting duties, and rather wish someone stronger and braver had come along to do the job.

To solve a relatively minor, but annoying problem,* I was told I had to reinstall Windows. (And who am I to argue with the support desk?) So. I was bold and brave. I copied my essential files and folders** to an external hard disk. I reinstalled Windows. I copied the damn folders back. I'm still in the process of excavating and seeing what is and isn't working, but the tally so far:

Points won
All my emails in place, OH DEAR LORD THANK YOU, I still haven't recovered from the trauma of last time.***
Documents apparently present and correct.

Points lost
For reasons far too embarrassing**** to elucidate, I have lost my totally legal and paid for and much needed copy of Photoshop Elements. Now, am I facing a £60+VAT idiot tax, or is there a way of convincing the good folk at Adobe to give me another one, I'll look after it for sure this time, I promise?

Even more distressingly - but totally mysteriously - it looks very much like my Quickbooks file has passed over to the vale of shadow. I can't for the life of me figure out how and why (considering almost everything else came through fine), but so far, no accounts. BUGGER BUGGER BUGGER. And also: SHIT.

Even this would be a little more manageable were it not for the minor - and even more mysterious - point that good ole MSN Money is unaccountably***** unable to open my perfectly good, perfectly present, perfectly up-to-date back-up file. Yes. I actually maintain two separate accounting packages. (One is better for t'business, one for personal stuff. Sometimes it's useful to have them to compare against, also. And plus, yes, I'm just that anal.) And now - very weirdly - they've both flunked out on me. BASTARDS.

*sigh*

Okay. So my accountant only actually asks for all my documents (bank statements, invoices) and those I can cough up. Bank statements are roughly enough for me to get an idea of how sales and expenses have been stacking up, so, whatever. I've got some spreadsheets that may or may not help. Okay. It's not the end of the world. And it's close enough to the beginning of the tax year that I can reconstruct the past three weeks and have a good record for this year. But, you know.

BASTARDS.

Update: OH THANK FUCK. Mysteries remain unsolved, but I have successfully located backups, so most of my Vital Financial Data is recovered. Which makes the above post mostly pointless, as well as ranty, foul-mouthed and boring. Um. Let's focus on the real issue here. Photoshop? Thoughts?

_____
* Roughly 50% of the time, on boot-up, my laptop failed to find its voice. 'Sokay, I don't need sound for my job or anything... except that trying to do some of my more brain-numbing tasks without benefit of iTunes was pretty painful. Anyway, the most recent telephone support person had managed to upgrade the problem from 50% of the time to all the time.
** I know that some of you are going to be squeaking things like "you only need to copy one folder! Why did you do it bit by bit!" etc. Trust me, I had to do what I had to do. Let's not go into it, it is Boring.
*** Remember I run a business from this machine. An online business. Pause for a second to appreciate the email implications.
**** Viz: I'm an idiot.
***** As it were.