Random prattle
I did something stupid early Friday morning... I don't even quite remember what it was anymore. I think it was getting adware that norton missed, trying to install a new piece of anti-spyware to clean it up, only to find that the software I chose was *actually* adware in hiding. The end result was a terribly messy (I'm rather impressed with the design, even though it's becoming typical) situation in which a dll piggy-backed onto winlogon to prevent itself from ever being able to be deleted. Part of the dll's process was to poll the registry and make sure that it maintained its registry entry that piggy-backed it onto winlogon. It also mutated its file name every reboot. All this, just to give me pop-ups.
Unfortunuately, this strain was new enough that all of my ad-killing software was missing it, so I had to go about things manually. 36 hours later (with several breaks in the middle, I promise), I now have a computer without popups again, and a fairly good ideas how to take care of the problem quickly should it ever hit again.
Also unfortunuate, however, is the fact that my computer software surgery seems to have had a mistake in there somewhere that led to me accidentally nicking an artery, as my computer is now displaying abberant dehavior of a form that leads me to beleive I must've killed a dll I wasn't supposed to in the process. (I'm running slow as molasses graphically, but my RAM seems fine, and my video card is acting up... but there are no unknown processes or dll running around anymore, so it seems likely I killed too much rather than too little.) So, sometime Sunday, I expect I'll jog over to work and grab a copy of Windows 2000 to refresh my system with, and cross my fingers that I don't need to take it a step further and do a reformat of my machine. (Which, honestly, wouldn't be all bad. I've got plenty of storage space for backup at work, and it'd behove me to split what I'd left as my OS/application partition into several chunks... OS/swap and application, or OS, Swap, and application... and redistribute some of its space over to my game and media partitions.)
So, that's been my New Year's life. Decided I didn't really feel like partying this year.
Also related to my computer weirdness, my Chronicles of Riddick game got FUBARed rather close to the end, and due to the (stupid) way it works, it doesn't appear that reverting to a previous save is possible (They stick all the saves in a single lump, it seems). So, I'll have to start over entirely at some point. Bleh. Combined with not being able to get the TV app to work with my current system issues and the fact that when they repaired our cable modem issues Monday, they decided it'd be a good time to put in a trap and remove our ability to watch free cable, my electronic entertainment for the day has been Donkey Kong Country, Bomberman, and Madden '97. But tomorrow... tomorrow is another day. (except for how it's already tomorrow.)
Unfortunuately, this strain was new enough that all of my ad-killing software was missing it, so I had to go about things manually. 36 hours later (with several breaks in the middle, I promise), I now have a computer without popups again, and a fairly good ideas how to take care of the problem quickly should it ever hit again.
Also unfortunuate, however, is the fact that my computer software surgery seems to have had a mistake in there somewhere that led to me accidentally nicking an artery, as my computer is now displaying abberant dehavior of a form that leads me to beleive I must've killed a dll I wasn't supposed to in the process. (I'm running slow as molasses graphically, but my RAM seems fine, and my video card is acting up... but there are no unknown processes or dll running around anymore, so it seems likely I killed too much rather than too little.) So, sometime Sunday, I expect I'll jog over to work and grab a copy of Windows 2000 to refresh my system with, and cross my fingers that I don't need to take it a step further and do a reformat of my machine. (Which, honestly, wouldn't be all bad. I've got plenty of storage space for backup at work, and it'd behove me to split what I'd left as my OS/application partition into several chunks... OS/swap and application, or OS, Swap, and application... and redistribute some of its space over to my game and media partitions.)
So, that's been my New Year's life. Decided I didn't really feel like partying this year.
Also related to my computer weirdness, my Chronicles of Riddick game got FUBARed rather close to the end, and due to the (stupid) way it works, it doesn't appear that reverting to a previous save is possible (They stick all the saves in a single lump, it seems). So, I'll have to start over entirely at some point. Bleh. Combined with not being able to get the TV app to work with my current system issues and the fact that when they repaired our cable modem issues Monday, they decided it'd be a good time to put in a trap and remove our ability to watch free cable, my electronic entertainment for the day has been Donkey Kong Country, Bomberman, and Madden '97. But tomorrow... tomorrow is another day. (except for how it's already tomorrow.)