Ctrl-Alt-Del\PANIC

Today’s post is a bit of a departure; let me know what you think…

By now regular readers know that my old PC suffered a catastrophic meltdown about a week or so ago. There I was one evening, aimlessly surfing the web carefully researching several posts, when a pop-up exhorting me to run my anti-virus software appeared.  The pop-up thoughtfully provided two options – click “Yes” to run my anti-virus program, or “No” to not bother and perhaps risk some horrifying malady infecting my computer.

So I did exactly what any rational person would do in that situation – I clicked the little “x” in the upper right hand corner of the pop-up to close it, thinking that opting for “Yes” OR “No” was probably a bad idea. That problem solved, I immediately returned to my mindless surfing research.

And in fact, all was well with the world…  for at least 15 minutes. I assumed the pop-up was some sort of scam by someone hoping to infect my computer and then sell me software, and congratulated myself for closing it in the manner I did.  When I was done with my session I closed my browser, and that’s when the entertaining stuff started.

My desktop wallpaper had been replaced with a blue screen with a warning message in its middle. I can’t recall the exact wording, but it said something to the effect that I was totally screwed my computer was infected and I should run my anti-virus software. (Do you see a pattern here?) Again, I did the only logical thing I could do at that point: I went to the kitchen and poured myself a very, very large glass of red wine.

Properly equipped, I returned to the PC and ran Spybot Search and Destroy. It found a few things – none of which I wrote down, of course – but I’m fairly certain two of them were identified as “PUPs” which I have since learned is not a reference to a small, cute dog but rather a “Potentially Unwanted Program.” I deleted them and then started a full disk scan with McAfee. It was around 10:30 at night so I went to bed, leaving it to run overnight.

When I got up the next morning I discovered that in ~8 hours McAfee had managed to scan 2% of the hard disk. I’m no computer genius or anything, but that seemed, to use highly technical jargon, a teensy weensy bit slow. I quickly calculated that the software would complete the scan by April, 2010 (I have never been good with math, however.)

Crouching down next to box, I jiggled a few cables.  Nothing.  I got a can of compressed air out and started spraying it indiscriminately into every available orifice. (The computer’s, perv!) What ensued was highly entertaining – about a quart of dust flying out of every other opening in the case, but alas it had no effect whatsoever other than provoking a sneezing fit on my part. At a loss, I got real close to the box and summoned ALL of my computer skills, hissing “Come on, you bastard!” and gave it a good backhanded whack with my right fist.  This made me feel much better but had no positive effect on the computer or McAfee’s speed.

I gave up and left it to run all day while I was at work.

Upon arriving home about 10 hours later we were up to 5%. Marvelous. It was then that I decided to do something which seemed innocent enough but which would turn out to be a fatal error.  I rebooted it. When it came back up, this is what my desktop looked like:

You may be thinking to yourself, “That certainly is a lovely picture,” and it is, but if you look closely you’ll notice that there are a few things missing….  like desktop icons, the taskbar, the Start button…..    All I had was my wallpaper staring back at me.  “Hmmm,” I thought, “This does not appear to be a good sign.” I have always been very quick.

So I rebooted it again. And again. And again…  perhaps a dozen times. And each time, I was treated to my wallpaper and nothing else. And so, ignoring Einstein’s definition of insanity, I rebooted it again. Shockingly enough, the result was the same. I considered jiggling wires again in a more forceful manner, but discarded that idea as perhaps a bit flawed.

Instead I began randomly hitting keys – the Escape button, the Enter button, the Backspace button, and all of those friggin F buttons – whatever the hell they’re supposed to do. Eventually I hit Control-Alt-Delete, thinking maybe that would be helpful  …and the Task Manager was launched.

Coming Soon: Part II…

What happened with Task Manager? Was I able to stump Randy, my IT guy?  Will the Oceanic Six’s cover story be exposed?  Stay tuned….