Netscape 7.1 Bookmarks file suddenly inaccessible.

[Cameronian]

I updates to NS 7.1 several months ago and it has been working perfectly - until this morning.
I started it up and went to Bookmarks to click on PPRuNe to find that only the first four lines, down to "Manage Bookmarks" showed up on screen. Closed it down and restarted NS but it remained the same. Went to My Documents and the NS Bookmarks file was there ok, all 30KB of it so it seemed that something had disabled the link. First thought was to re-download and re-install NS 7.1 to re-establish the link. Went to NS Browser Central but could only find NS 7.0 so installed that. No success, just the same.
Can any of you stars suggest a way to get my Bookmarks back. I've been gathering them for at least seven years and many of them are very important for my business - as well as the aviation ones established through PPRuNe.

[Capt. J]

Is there any security update you're missing? If it still doesn't work, I'd recommend you try out Mozilla Firefox. It's very similar to Netscape and you can import all your bookmarks and settings to it. If you download it, PM and I will teach you how to import the settings from Netscape. Check whether you're up to date with all the Netscape updates first.

Cheers

[Cameronian]

Capt J - thanks for your reply. I imagine that I have the latest updates, except for returning to NS 7.1 which didn't appear to be available, because I downloaded this morning from Browser Central. In case I am not understanding you fully, I will go and consult!
It won't be for a little while though because Mrs. Cameronian has been calling me to Sunday lunch for some time! Please forgive me for valuing my neck!

[Cameronian]

Lunch was good, thanks!
I cannot find anything, apart from the possibility of downloading NS 7.1 as I did several months ago (where, and why, has it gone?), that would suggest I am not completely up-to-date.
I am very open to changing to another browser (apart from IE, which I don't like - even though Mrs. C uses it) but I think that the first step should be to reinstate the effectiveness of the link to my Bookmarks file. I think that it should be wise to try to do that from NS before changing to another. Why is NS 7.1 most obvious by its disappearance, if that is not an oxymoron?

Oops, Capt. J,
While sitting idly by I thought to download Firefox to take a look. It seemed to go well, using the official Moziilla page and starting from Netscape. It downloaded and started to "extract" - it got to 88%, paused, and then jumped to an error message for the downloading of NS 7.0! Told me that the NS files had not been fully downloaded and so I shouldn\'t expect it to work!! Thinks me, "close down Netcape and go to the Firefox page using IE". Exactly the same thing happened - even reverting to a NS error message from IE! Is this a conspiracy against Firefox?

Going back to the start of this post, I firmly believe I should fix the problem within NS and regain access to my Bookmarks before taking your advice and trying Firefox. What do I do next, please?

[Cameronian]

Fixed it! Or, rather, I got a pro to fix it. Found more than 1500 bits of advertising and other similar stuff, much of it "malicious" and dangerous on my computer and also several viruses that had got past Norton in spite of it being fully subscribed to and fully up to date in terms of its virus definitions. I now run AVG and Ad-Aware every morning - thank you to those who have published the relevant advice here on PPruNe! Fingers crossed!