Exhausted

What a day. Two computers to fix, and I did little else.

I picked up Lorraine's computer early this morning, thinking I'd finish with it by 11 when Jay brought her laptop around, but Jay got there early, so I had the both going together. The first one was still running Windows 95, and had a problem with the gdi file. Gave it a format and installed 98, a few essentials, and a few cool games.

Jay's computer was a bit more troublesome. She had spyware. What a pain in the proverbial it is getting rid of the little critters. Nothing seemed to be working. I uninstalled Norton, what a useless program that is when it comes to detecting the nasties. I installed a free antivirus, AVG, which detects most spyware as malicious software. It's got the be the best antivirus yet. Plus I installed, Spyware Doctor, and Spybot Search & Destroy. You need a whole arsenal of software running to feel protected these days. On my own computer I have all those, plus Trojan Guard and Zone Alarm.

Would have been good if all went to plan. Seems that's never the case when it comes to computers. I decided to install the latest XP SP2 upgrade, but the installation stuffed up halfway through and tried to undo the half installation and couldn't. I got error messages saying that nearly every program wouldn't work properly once I restarted. Panic stations then. So I did a quick restore but still had problems. We had no "command" and I kept getting error messages when I tried to install the antivirus software. The setup program kept closing. Couldn't reinstall the Home edition of XP because Jay didn't have the registration serial. So I used my own XP Pro disk to upgrade her installation, and then all the drivers and programs that were already installed had to be reinstalled. What a shit. Took me from 10 this morning till 6 o'clock tonight. Sometimes I wish I didn't know how to do all these things that everyone else seems not to want to know how to do. But I love being able to do it.

So tonight, I sit here, shoulders aching, eyes hanging out, exhausted.