And they run Windows ME, which was a giant step backwards in OS development.
//begin long-winded explanation of my activities
Anyways, I start off by finding a couple of programs; I google them, find and follow instructions on how to kill them. Open up ProcessKiller and Internet Explorer; immediately a freakin' little dog pops up in the systray; kill it. Another process by the same company pops up; kill it. I go to windowsupdate.com; same processes come up; kill them. This happens every time I open up windows explorer or internet explorer, or navigate to a new page on internet explorer. Sometimes multiple times per page. Persistent if nothing else.
Finally make it onto WindowsUpdate.com; begin downloading the 22(!) critical updates, two of which requre a rebooting (kill dog, kill other thing), reopening IE (kill dog, kill other thing), renavigating to WindowsUpdate.com (get nasty letter from PETA; kill other thing).
Then I find out how to eliminate adware that was causing the dog and the other thing. Follow instructions, descend into safe mode, erase the files.
Return to normal windows, run an indepth AdAware scan; eliminate several more adware files. Breathe sigh of relief.
Open up internet explorer.
Promptly reinfect the computer with more spyware than before.
*sigh*
I've traced the problem to (I believe) a damaged version of Kernel32.dll. Fixing this will require creating a boot disk and running from DOS, because the damaged file is integral to the Windows OS. Assuming that that's the problem and I don't miss any others.
//end long-winded discussion
Again this process, in total, took about five hours, maybe more.
My brethren, these things ought not to be.
That's why I'm going to, starting now, call for the execution of authors and knowing distributors of spyware, adware, malware, and virus. Think about it: they're actually killers themselves.
I myself spent five hours on this; tomorrow I'll spend longer. Multiply my experience by the millions of others like me who've had to fix these problems. Then add in the man-hours lost by those who weren't aware of the *ware problem, only that their computer was running really slow.
One year is 8,760 hours. (24*365). Assuming the average lifespan to be 75 years, that means that every 657,000 hours is one person's life.
Every 657,000 hours that these... people... force others to spend fixing the problems they cause--viruses and *ware--is the equivalent of killing one person.
These people are slowly killing us all. They must die.
Posted by Blog Jones at August 26, 2004 12:01 AM
| Category: Technology