The PC from Hell
So, we went down to Oxford again last weekend to visit Mandy's parents, and the totally innocent phrase of:
"could you have a look at the PC, it's running a bit slow and keeps giving me these pop up boxes to connect to the internet"
were muttered. Internet at their house is still somewhat 20th century. A dial up connection, but I suppose we were all there at some point in history. I figured nothing could be too wrong with it, as gone are the days when the best form of attack for the wannabe virus distributor and zombie creator is to target dial up connections. So we booted up the offending article, and waited about 10 minutes until it loaded.
"Probably just a lack of RAM" says I, still in my dial-up is relatively safe Utopia., "I can get you some more for �50"
Indeed, when it finally let me look at My Computer -> Properties, it backed me up, reporting 128Mb (although this turned out to be misreported, as it actually had 256Mb), not much for running XP on. Sure enough a pop up appeared. Paraphrased:
Windows wants to connect to site: www.microsoft.com. Please select a network connection to use
"Just Windows Update", says I, beginning to have doubts.
When that pop up was cancelled and another one appeared for *******.loves.the.cock.biz, alarm bells started ringing.
Yank out telephone cord. Power down PC. Wrap in 3" lead casing and post an armed guard.
Well, maybe not quite. After it's less than serene journey back oop north, stuffed behind the passenger seat in the car, it was down to the hard work.
Two hours with a memory stick, Ewido, AVG, HijackThis, TrojanHunter, and a couple of other programs I'd never come across before, and I'd got rid of 17 assorted viruses, trojans, backdoors and other nasties.
Six more hours, more googling that you could shake a stick at, some very dubious service hacks and lots of crossed fingers, and I finally got rid of the last bastard virus, one which no-one else in the entire world seems to have had before. Or at least, there system hasn't survived long enough to record the results on teh mighty interweb for posterity.
Good. We're on a roll. Let's fire up Windows Update...
...oh, my, god. First thing to fire was to update MSI (Installer) to version 2.0
2.0!!! That must be three years ago!!! We're clearly in this for the long haul. Check My Computer -> Properties again. No Service Pack 2. Hell, not even a Service Pack 1.
Install 17 updates.
Install Windows XP SP2 (and pray quite a bit, as god knows what software compatibility problems are waiting for me)
Bonus, that worked without a hitch - must be time for bed. Start again first thing in the morning 'cos I'm working from home...
Next morning:
Upgrade MSI to 3.1 (noting that Windows sneakily adds KB898461 at the same time)
Wait a minute, why won't the system reboot anymore? Why won't it reboot into safe mode? Or last known good configuration? In fact why won't it do anything other than cycle reboots every 15 seconds or so.
PANIC. Hyperventilate. Stress about never being allowed in the inlaws house again
It must be a hardware problem, figures I, in fact I remember an old laptop doing this when it had a memory problem. As if by design, at that very moment the postie arrived with the new memory I'd ordered.
Swap Memory in, reboot, nothing.
Bugger.
Resort to posting on work's internal usenet group. Eight suggestions come back within the hour, all different, some proposing using the strangest of proprietary software to roll back Microsoft updates. Such are the joys of Usenet, even when restricted to a single bunch of geeks.
Try reseating all the cards/peripherals? No.
Try swapping out Mouse/Keyboard/Monitor/Graphics Card? No, or at least not the ones I had spares for.
Then there's always the useful clever sod who says it's a "painful lesson about how you should use virusguard and firewalls." Yes, thankyou. Don't you think I might know this?
More judicious googling revealed that kb898461 had caused more people more big issues than you can pick up in the centre of Sheffield on an average lunch hour. This was to be one hell of a red herring...
Anyway, last option was to mount the Hard Drive in another PC to check it wasn't a Hard Drive crash. Now, I am terminally afraid of hard drives. Those nasty Master/Slave connections, and the fiddly jumper thingies on the back mean I'm loathe to go near one usually, so after breaking the news to dearly beloved other half, it was decided to wait until she got home.
With the drive mounted (with only a couple of broken fingernails) it quickly became clear from viewing the 9532451234345 million dump files that had been created, one for every time the machine had tried to reboot, that a particular file was corrupt. This turned out to be the Software Registry Hive.
At this point it's time for me to hold my hands up, and say that, however much we slag them off, there is some good about Microsoft. In particular, their web page How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting is truely excellent. What's even better is that having the drive mounted as a slave on another machine completely removes the need for using Recovery Console, and makes a three step process (with lots of careful typing) into a point and click "lets rename some files and copy some more in" jobbie. The Software Registry promptly proved it's corruptedness when it refused to be copied due to Cyclic Error Check failure. Renaming it worked, however.
With a bit of judicious use of System Restore (good job I'd turned that back on after getting rid of the nasties, eh?) once we'd rebuilt and rebooted, everything was fine and dandy (apart from having to go through SP2 install again)
So now I can go back to the Inlaws with head held high at the weekend, PC under arm, jokingly revelling in stories of how "it was touch and go for a while" and "it was in intensive care for a few hours, and it looked terminal" and laughing off the technical ignorance that ensues, whilst breathing an inward sigh of relief to finally be rid of the PC from Hell that gave me more stress in one 12 hour window than my (reasonably stressful) project management job gives me in a month.
I can look back and laugh now, but the fact was it took me about 15 minutes to install two memory chips on that horrible, horrible day. My hands were shaking so much I couldn't hit the slots. But it's over.
For now.
Coming soon: Part two. Purchasing kit for, installing and configure their Wireless network.
"could you have a look at the PC, it's running a bit slow and keeps giving me these pop up boxes to connect to the internet"
were muttered. Internet at their house is still somewhat 20th century. A dial up connection, but I suppose we were all there at some point in history. I figured nothing could be too wrong with it, as gone are the days when the best form of attack for the wannabe virus distributor and zombie creator is to target dial up connections. So we booted up the offending article, and waited about 10 minutes until it loaded.
"Probably just a lack of RAM" says I, still in my dial-up is relatively safe Utopia., "I can get you some more for �50"
Indeed, when it finally let me look at My Computer -> Properties, it backed me up, reporting 128Mb (although this turned out to be misreported, as it actually had 256Mb), not much for running XP on. Sure enough a pop up appeared. Paraphrased:
Windows wants to connect to site: www.microsoft.com. Please select a network connection to use
"Just Windows Update", says I, beginning to have doubts.
When that pop up was cancelled and another one appeared for *******.loves.the.cock.biz, alarm bells started ringing.
Yank out telephone cord. Power down PC. Wrap in 3" lead casing and post an armed guard.
Well, maybe not quite. After it's less than serene journey back oop north, stuffed behind the passenger seat in the car, it was down to the hard work.
Two hours with a memory stick, Ewido, AVG, HijackThis, TrojanHunter, and a couple of other programs I'd never come across before, and I'd got rid of 17 assorted viruses, trojans, backdoors and other nasties.
Six more hours, more googling that you could shake a stick at, some very dubious service hacks and lots of crossed fingers, and I finally got rid of the last bastard virus, one which no-one else in the entire world seems to have had before. Or at least, there system hasn't survived long enough to record the results on teh mighty interweb for posterity.
Good. We're on a roll. Let's fire up Windows Update...
...oh, my, god. First thing to fire was to update MSI (Installer) to version 2.0
2.0!!! That must be three years ago!!! We're clearly in this for the long haul. Check My Computer -> Properties again. No Service Pack 2. Hell, not even a Service Pack 1.
Install 17 updates.
Install Windows XP SP2 (and pray quite a bit, as god knows what software compatibility problems are waiting for me)
Bonus, that worked without a hitch - must be time for bed. Start again first thing in the morning 'cos I'm working from home...
Next morning:
Upgrade MSI to 3.1 (noting that Windows sneakily adds KB898461 at the same time)
Wait a minute, why won't the system reboot anymore? Why won't it reboot into safe mode? Or last known good configuration? In fact why won't it do anything other than cycle reboots every 15 seconds or so.
PANIC. Hyperventilate. Stress about never being allowed in the inlaws house again
It must be a hardware problem, figures I, in fact I remember an old laptop doing this when it had a memory problem. As if by design, at that very moment the postie arrived with the new memory I'd ordered.
Swap Memory in, reboot, nothing.
Bugger.
Resort to posting on work's internal usenet group. Eight suggestions come back within the hour, all different, some proposing using the strangest of proprietary software to roll back Microsoft updates. Such are the joys of Usenet, even when restricted to a single bunch of geeks.
Try reseating all the cards/peripherals? No.
Try swapping out Mouse/Keyboard/Monitor/Graphics Card? No, or at least not the ones I had spares for.
Then there's always the useful clever sod who says it's a "painful lesson about how you should use virusguard and firewalls." Yes, thankyou. Don't you think I might know this?
More judicious googling revealed that kb898461 had caused more people more big issues than you can pick up in the centre of Sheffield on an average lunch hour. This was to be one hell of a red herring...
Anyway, last option was to mount the Hard Drive in another PC to check it wasn't a Hard Drive crash. Now, I am terminally afraid of hard drives. Those nasty Master/Slave connections, and the fiddly jumper thingies on the back mean I'm loathe to go near one usually, so after breaking the news to dearly beloved other half, it was decided to wait until she got home.
With the drive mounted (with only a couple of broken fingernails) it quickly became clear from viewing the 9532451234345 million dump files that had been created, one for every time the machine had tried to reboot, that a particular file was corrupt. This turned out to be the Software Registry Hive.
At this point it's time for me to hold my hands up, and say that, however much we slag them off, there is some good about Microsoft. In particular, their web page How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting is truely excellent. What's even better is that having the drive mounted as a slave on another machine completely removes the need for using Recovery Console, and makes a three step process (with lots of careful typing) into a point and click "lets rename some files and copy some more in" jobbie. The Software Registry promptly proved it's corruptedness when it refused to be copied due to Cyclic Error Check failure. Renaming it worked, however.
With a bit of judicious use of System Restore (good job I'd turned that back on after getting rid of the nasties, eh?) once we'd rebuilt and rebooted, everything was fine and dandy (apart from having to go through SP2 install again)
So now I can go back to the Inlaws with head held high at the weekend, PC under arm, jokingly revelling in stories of how "it was touch and go for a while" and "it was in intensive care for a few hours, and it looked terminal" and laughing off the technical ignorance that ensues, whilst breathing an inward sigh of relief to finally be rid of the PC from Hell that gave me more stress in one 12 hour window than my (reasonably stressful) project management job gives me in a month.
I can look back and laugh now, but the fact was it took me about 15 minutes to install two memory chips on that horrible, horrible day. My hands were shaking so much I couldn't hit the slots. But it's over.
For now.
Coming soon: Part two. Purchasing kit for, installing and configure their Wireless network.
-
-
relieved
-
busy
uncomfortable
gloomy
optimistic
bouncy