Quote Originally Posted by icklekitty View Post
Yes, the power button. There's a separate button (with a little house on it) for Media Direct. So I load that, unplug it, let it crash, load Media Direct again, press F8 and select "boot windows normally" and I'm in (from the screen that says "Microsoft Corporation" + the green bar going along). Which makes me think it's a problem of the power button itself. It's awkward, but it works for now. But I'd rather do it normally.
Ok, well then that is a hardware issue and in order to fix it you would have to take apart the laptop, figure out which part of the system is failing, and then proceed accordingly. Not something a casual user is likely to be comfortable with.

To prepare for when it fully dies, I'm also looking into turning the old internal hard drive into an external one. I know how to physically do it, but would that work? Part of this is just not wanting to throw away a perfectly good hard drive.
Ok, turning it into an external drive would probably work. I've not done it with a laptop hard drive, but I've done it with a full size.

Quote Originally Posted by Dra508 View Post
I've used Craiglist to rent a whole apartment so I can't comment on just a room, but it seems that it is the go-to website because it's so local, quick, and easy.
Good to know; I'm going to ask some of my friends to see what they think but there's some decently priced listings on there. I figure I'd meet the person and speak in person before making a final decision, but the more knowledge I can get people to share with me, the better equipped I am to make a good decision.