TWO POSTS IN TWO DAYS ZOMGNOWAI
It has been an interesting week for me, starting at Monday being the most awful and today being okay. Tomorrow is going to be awesome simply by virtue of going to the Village and marching in the parade.
I will tell Monday's story the way I have been telling it to others.
Monday morning:
I get into work. I turn on the computer. The system config window pops up. (~.^) How odd...
I close that window figuring maybe I forgot to reset it after doing some startup menu editing. But then McAfee starts jumping up and down in the system tray. I click on it to find out what's its problem is. Apparently, my registration certificate disappeared and there are files missing from the program.
_ _
\ (+_+) /
What the butt McAfee? Files do not just erase themselves.
Then a bunch of DOS prompts open and close very rapidly. Now, I know what is causing this. It is SpyBot. It keeps trying to delete these registry values and I keep telling it to leave them alone.
So then I open up Firefox and try to get to the McAfee website. And my interbutt is not working. (o_O) Rage building... So after doing what I normally do to get the wireless connection back up, I go and check the router. And the little light is not on. I called the ISP and they say it's the line and they will send a guy to fix it ASAP. Fine. Out of my hands.
Meanwhile, I have to completely uninstall McAfee and re-install it from a 2-year old installation disk. The installer tells me that it cannot install McAfee because a conflicting program is on the computer. Oh really? What's that? SPYBOT. WHATWHY?! So I have to un-install it. No big deal. As I am doing this, it occurs to me what exactly has happened.
McAfee (and Norton) both see other AV/Spyware monitor software as conflicting programs. Even though SpyBot works just fine with McAfee installed, McAfee is a selfish little bastard and does not want to share. I like SpyBot's immunization function. It does it's job quietly. Unlike McAfee site advisor that puts this little fucking square that says MCAFEE on the page you are trying to view. And you cannot remove this square. I tried.
In any case, I think McAfee tried to erase or undo or generally bully SpyBot and SpyBot saw this as suspicious behavior (like a virus trying to erase your security software) and did what I told it to do with attacks like these. It erased the thing that was attacking. So SpyBot erased some McAfee files.
I had to borrow some CAT5 and a working internet connection (every office is responsible for their own) and update McAfee. This takes 40 minutes.
Tuesday comes along and I still cannot connect to the internet. This is annoying because I have e-mails to prepare and I miss my lolcats. The tech came and went. The line was now working but my wireless connection...not so much. The hardware on both ends if fine, so it's clearly a software issue. I went out and got a USB extension for the wireless antenna and 25 ft. of CAT6 so I could stop borrowing. I connect myself directly to the wireless router, adjust some settings and get absolutely nothing. I spent the next hour and a half un-installing, downloading, updating and generally fucking about with the wireless utility software. Eventually, I get fed up with the whole scenario and un-install the entire utility. Strangely enough, the wireless connection started to work. ooOOOOOOooookay. Dubya tee eff? Windows needed to driver to make the antenna work. It does not, however, need the utility. Of course, Belkin does not tell you this.
Every day since Tuesday has been markedly better, not just because I have the internet back but because I HAVE THE INTERNET BACK.
I will tell Monday's story the way I have been telling it to others.
Monday morning:
I get into work. I turn on the computer. The system config window pops up. (~.^) How odd...
I close that window figuring maybe I forgot to reset it after doing some startup menu editing. But then McAfee starts jumping up and down in the system tray. I click on it to find out what's its problem is. Apparently, my registration certificate disappeared and there are files missing from the program.
_ _
\ (+_+) /
What the butt McAfee? Files do not just erase themselves.
Then a bunch of DOS prompts open and close very rapidly. Now, I know what is causing this. It is SpyBot. It keeps trying to delete these registry values and I keep telling it to leave them alone.
So then I open up Firefox and try to get to the McAfee website. And my interbutt is not working. (o_O) Rage building... So after doing what I normally do to get the wireless connection back up, I go and check the router. And the little light is not on. I called the ISP and they say it's the line and they will send a guy to fix it ASAP. Fine. Out of my hands.
Meanwhile, I have to completely uninstall McAfee and re-install it from a 2-year old installation disk. The installer tells me that it cannot install McAfee because a conflicting program is on the computer. Oh really? What's that? SPYBOT. WHATWHY?! So I have to un-install it. No big deal. As I am doing this, it occurs to me what exactly has happened.
McAfee (and Norton) both see other AV/Spyware monitor software as conflicting programs. Even though SpyBot works just fine with McAfee installed, McAfee is a selfish little bastard and does not want to share. I like SpyBot's immunization function. It does it's job quietly. Unlike McAfee site advisor that puts this little fucking square that says MCAFEE on the page you are trying to view. And you cannot remove this square. I tried.
In any case, I think McAfee tried to erase or undo or generally bully SpyBot and SpyBot saw this as suspicious behavior (like a virus trying to erase your security software) and did what I told it to do with attacks like these. It erased the thing that was attacking. So SpyBot erased some McAfee files.
I had to borrow some CAT5 and a working internet connection (every office is responsible for their own) and update McAfee. This takes 40 minutes.
Tuesday comes along and I still cannot connect to the internet. This is annoying because I have e-mails to prepare and I miss my lolcats. The tech came and went. The line was now working but my wireless connection...not so much. The hardware on both ends if fine, so it's clearly a software issue. I went out and got a USB extension for the wireless antenna and 25 ft. of CAT6 so I could stop borrowing. I connect myself directly to the wireless router, adjust some settings and get absolutely nothing. I spent the next hour and a half un-installing, downloading, updating and generally fucking about with the wireless utility software. Eventually, I get fed up with the whole scenario and un-install the entire utility. Strangely enough, the wireless connection started to work. ooOOOOOOooookay. Dubya tee eff? Windows needed to driver to make the antenna work. It does not, however, need the utility. Of course, Belkin does not tell you this.
Every day since Tuesday has been markedly better, not just because I have the internet back but because I HAVE THE INTERNET BACK.