Computer weekend

I was supposed to go to Tyson's Corner with my sister yesterday. We were going to go to the mall--a real mall, not ghetto Fashion Square--and generally have sister bonding time/retail therapy.

That didn't happen.

Granted, we had a nice dinner at Ten (even if you don't like sushi, the crabmeat and rice is very good) and saw the new version of A Christmas Carol, but I was still cheated out of a relaxing weekend by my computer--which, incidentally, I have now dubbed "the Precious," as I find myself getting overly jittery when it's either absent or malfunctioning. Anyway...

I have a PC, the VAIO notebook that went to Scotland with me three years ago. It's been a good machine up until now, and I try to be careful with it--I keep antivirus/anti-malware software, I run security updates, and I don't download files from sketchy sites. I've even been able to remove my own malware in the past, but this has generally been by what I term the "monkeys with typewriters" school of computer repair. (Translation: If I download enough malware removers, find the right items in the registry, and pray a lot, the bad files usually go away.)

Last Tuesday, Microsoft sent down their newest updates, and my computer installed them on Wednesday. On Thursday, I began to notice that my machine was running more slowly than usual--particularly that IE was taking up to 15 seconds to load--and I opened the Task Manager to see what was going on.

Duplicate iexplore.exe entries. That's new...

I went online and started looking up the symptom, which none of my programs had caught as malware, and started seeing warnings of a particularly nasty trojan that could turn your machine into a zombie and was nearly impossible to remove.

Panicking a bit by now, I downloaded a few new malware removers, but they caught virtually nothing. By Thursday night, I had spent nine hours trying to find the problem, and I decided to give up and take the computer to ITC.

Law ITC has a staff of roughly 1.5, but they're nice folks and tried for four hours with my computer, even on a Friday afternoon, for which they deserve major kudos. When I came down to pick it up, they told me that they hadn't been able to find anything, but that the best option might be an upgrade to Windows 7.

Bear in mind that, until then, I'd been an XP girl. I tend not to perform gratuitous OS upgrades, so despite Windows' shiny new campaign, I hadn't seriously been considering making the switch. But then again, my notes were on that computer, and given that I couldn't go online with the system potentially compromised, and finals are coming up... Let's say that "Aggghhh" summed up my mental state, but ITC said that the main campus bookstore (which is huge, by the way) had copies of 7 available for $10, and that it was an easy installation. "Just back up your data and format the hard drive," they told me, and I ran off to buy a disc.

Putting aside my fears of royally screwing up my machine, I spent all Friday evening backing up my data, then making backups of the important backups. I researched 7 installation, wondering what was going to happen to all my drivers. Microsoft basically gave me the go-ahead--apparently, I may have some graphics issues with the Aero option--but I held off until Saturday morning, when, after reassurance from both Robert and the Geek Squad, I crossed my fingers and began the installation.

The first time through, I opted for something milder than a full formatting, and the IE duplication was still there when I got 7 running. Kicking myself, I ran the installation a second time and formatted, and the duplication was still there. Moreover, my computer was missing drivers for silly little things like, oh, the sound card.

Back to Best Buy and the Geek Squad, where the guy behind the counter checked my wired connection, told me where to get drivers, and ran another malware check, after which he told me that the newest Microsoft update may have been to make IE split its processes, thus helping the browser to recover in case something happens.

In other words, there was probably no trojan to begin with.

Somewhat relieved, I headed back to school to borrow a cable and spent all Saturday afternoon in the computer lab, downloading drivers and cursing Sony for not supporting my model past Vista. (Also, Sony doesn't support its keyboards, so now I'm trying to find a way to make my function buttons work again.) I finally got Office up and running before dinner last night, then came home and worked with iTunes, which, after three installations, still froze on launch.

As of now, the main programs are working, iTunes likes me again, and FriendlyWare, which I rescued from my parents' 386 ten years ago, has been reinstalled. I'm turning this thing off now.

One weekend down the drain, but it's not all for naught--Windows 7 is just so shiny. Or something like that.