Feeling Decidedly Un-Geeky

Well, following an otherwise fairly relaxing and enjoyable weekend filled with:

• an afternoon of shopping (buying presents for my wunnerful SWMBO amongst other things),
• visiting with friends at a Solstice gathering,
• cooking for said gathering (I'm not frequently found in a kitchen as a cook; it's not that I don't know how, it's more that with a weak sense of smell, it's mostly preparation of solid fuel to me), and
• actually straightening out the other structure to serve as a photo studio again

I've spent an annoying couple of hours trying to get SWMBO's new PC back into functional shape again. We suspect she picked up a computer virus; some particularly odd behavior including a slew of messages telling her the User Profile is corrupt, followed by an endless re-boot loop until she finally unplugged the computer. This did not recur exactly when I plugged the box back into the flow of electrons and started it up. Also, since she'd started surfing the web before anti-virus software was installed (needed to be purchased, which needed to wait for a payday), the box truly was open and vulnerable.

And not being able to install the anti-virus software after purchase (ran into an unrecoverable installation error) pretty well supported the supposition that this is what transpired.

No problem with data or other programs; she hadn't changed any files since the CD burn the day before the problem started, and all the programs are on their original CD-ROMS. Excepting, of course, the lack of anti-virus software.

You may be wondering why I didn't use my anti-virus software. Or you may be not wondering. It's fairly simple, actually: being someone who copyrights both written and visual works, I feel rather obligated to honor the copyright restrictions on software.

So, I re-formatted her hard drive. Now, I'm getting stuck in a loop trying to re-install Win2K, which politely informs me the hard drive is either new or damaged (neither, but re-formatting makes it look new), and I'll need to set up a W2K partition.... only it should be a correct partition per the hard-drive format utility, and the W2K disk won't set one up of its own.

(sigh)

It's almost time for dinner. I think I shall wait until after I've eaten. Maybe 24 hours after I've eaten.