I am soaking up all the helpful hints I can. I have been turning off the computer each night and starting it up in the morning. I have a rapid access keyboard with a standby button. The computer is only used for pleasure, not business. From my experience, I have found that a lot of problems start just after you hit the power button.
Power supplies die, head crash on the hard drive or there's even software problems.
I'm not saying this will happen to all computers if you shut them off every night. If you leave yours on all the time I would recommend you open the case and get rid of the dust about every six months. This way you won't touch any of the circuitry with any foreign objects. When I try it prompts for a password, which I assume was set two years ago when I purchased the machine. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.