It's Alive!

My laptop had been getting progressively crappier and crappier over the past two years, what with all the nefarious spywares running in the background everytime I TURNED MY MODEM ON (though I take full responsibility for presence of said spyware), as well as other more esoteric problems. A couple of weeks ago, it even told me I couldn't install a new graphics driver because Windows is still in the process of installing something else. Please reboot. Rebooting doesn't help. I was like, fine, nevermind, I'll just not install anything for a while. Last week, though, it started attempting to install MS Money everytime I open Windows Explorer. So I lost my temper, pointed at the screen, and yelled "Your buggy @$$ is getting reformatted!". It's a good thing my neighbors moved out last month.

I didn't reformat it right away, though. First, I had to backup a bunch of things onto my external hard drive. I did that (or at least I thought I did... I did find out after the fact that I'd forgotten to backup all my website-related files, so now I've lost all my Flash files for Opposable Thoughts... Bleh!) and then I also had to know I had access to hacked versions of software I'd gotten used to having around. Hey! I'm poor and I just got out of college. I haven't been weaned of free uber-powerful image editing software. Oops. I've said too much haven't I? a-DOH-be! In any case, Paul hooked me up. All was good.

Finally, I got round to wiping my hardrive clean yesterday. Nothing fancy... just took out the QuickRestore CDs that came with the laptop (I'm glad I actually bothered to hold on to those), popped them in and told it to do it's thing. Now my laptop runs as good as new (well... the built-in keyboard still doesn't work, but that's a hardware problem), like a happy, wide-eyed grade-schooler, not the cranky old hag it been for the past year or so.

Now what was that free P2P app I was using before...?