I'm a self-taught computer fixer-builder who has, unfortunately, lost touch with her programmer roots thanks to a rather unhealthy reliance on Windows. It's like smoking--once you start, it's hard to quit. It can be done, but the withdrawals are a bitch.
Mister's old laptop was taken over by the children, since I've been a lazy cow and not replaced the power supply to one of our desktops. The Boy is a dabbler who's afraid of nothing thanks to the fact that his mom is the household's I-T Guy. He's also known as Mister Impatient around here, because of his massively annoying super-clicks when our systems slow down.
Not too long ago, he decided that Ye Olde Laptop was running very slowly because of all the games installed and the "extra files" Mister left on it. Obviously, he should start deleting stuff because he's so smart with computers for a 13-year-old, and then it would just go-go-go. The end result was no-no-no.
In fact, the problem wasn't with the stuff his parents had installed, it was with the stuff he was installing without our permission. Even with pop-up blockers and anti-virus software, he managed to download a trojan which infected the system--thankfully it didn't escape across our network--and annoy the hell out of anyone who used that laptop.
And so I spent a lovely Saturday saving individual files to CDRs (no, it's old enough it's not a dvd writer) so that I could wipe the hard drive and start fresh. My adventures began just after breakfast and carried me well into the night before I paused the operation in favor of a little sleep.
Morning found me installing the second recovery disc, the one full of drivers and additional software. The rest of Sunday was devoted to installing security patches, technical updates and a new anti-virus program.
Unfortunately, this is only System One of the Great I-T Confabulation of 2009. I have two other systems to repair before our network is running tip-top.
And people wonder why I don't do this for a living.
Mister's old laptop was taken over by the children, since I've been a lazy cow and not replaced the power supply to one of our desktops. The Boy is a dabbler who's afraid of nothing thanks to the fact that his mom is the household's I-T Guy. He's also known as Mister Impatient around here, because of his massively annoying super-clicks when our systems slow down.
Not too long ago, he decided that Ye Olde Laptop was running very slowly because of all the games installed and the "extra files" Mister left on it. Obviously, he should start deleting stuff because he's so smart with computers for a 13-year-old, and then it would just go-go-go. The end result was no-no-no.
In fact, the problem wasn't with the stuff his parents had installed, it was with the stuff he was installing without our permission. Even with pop-up blockers and anti-virus software, he managed to download a trojan which infected the system--thankfully it didn't escape across our network--and annoy the hell out of anyone who used that laptop.
And so I spent a lovely Saturday saving individual files to CDRs (no, it's old enough it's not a dvd writer) so that I could wipe the hard drive and start fresh. My adventures began just after breakfast and carried me well into the night before I paused the operation in favor of a little sleep.
Morning found me installing the second recovery disc, the one full of drivers and additional software. The rest of Sunday was devoted to installing security patches, technical updates and a new anti-virus program.
Unfortunately, this is only System One of the Great I-T Confabulation of 2009. I have two other systems to repair before our network is running tip-top.
And people wonder why I don't do this for a living.
2 comments:
I dunno...you can make quite a chunk of change doing that for a living. And 90% of the time, you don't have to go any further than a hard reboot.
Although, I don't think anyone will trust that you know what you're doing until you brush up your Indian accent. "How is it I may be helping you today?"
I may need to get a tan as well.
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