It must be the impending equinox. My Laptop at work croaked also, taking with it 2 or 3 big ticket projects I was assigned to and had not moved to the server yet. A tendril of smoke started coming out of it and despite the strong urge to turn it off right away, I started trying to drag files to the server it was still connected to. At lunch hour. When half of my coworkers are surfing the internet. As in excruciatingly slow.
The IT guys say chances are good that despite the motherboard going south, the data on the hard drive should be intact and some time next week
I'll have another and be able to see what is left on the old hard drive. In the mean time,
"Have a good day." Sorry to hear of your misfortune and hope you did an incremental backup at the end of every day....
Hoot