What a week!

I'm glad this one is nearly over. It started out okay - until I got to work Monday. I was faced with an epidemic of computers suddenly suffering strokes, heart attacks, and various other maladies. It was as if they had all suddenly decided it was time to retire and head for the old PC's home. Granted, the majority are nearing 5 years old, with some actually almost 7 years old - ancient in PC years. Since we purchased 55 at the same time, and most all are in constant use nearly 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, it comes as no surprise that they are suffering the same fate we humans do when we reach old age. They creak and groan when they are asked to move quickly, they are slow to get going after a nap, they have frequent lapses in memory, and some days they simply won't get out of bed. Monday I had to rebuild two of our most popular public access PCs. They simply went berserk. These two were given to us through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundaton's Library Program. They have been reliable machines despite their heavy use. The only downside to them was that they were still running Windows NT and we have moved to Windows 2000 and XP. As a result, I could not manage them from my desk as I do the others, and they did not communicate with our servers in quite the same way. Upgrading them to Win2K was an option, but making all the Gates software available and still taking advantage of the strict security profiles the Gates Foundation created is an ordeal, so I was not ready to do that yet. That all changed on Monday. They simply would not work properly. Then, they wouldn't work at all. Time to rebuild. They both now run Win2K and integrate perfectly with my network, but the Gates software is not yet available. I have not had time to make that happen yet. Since they are primarily used for the internet and word processing, the other software is not that big a deal (Encarta, Streets & Maps, and a couple other programs). Those two rebuilds took most of my day.

Then came Tuesday. I started getting reports of super slow computers at the public access stations. Two computers simply stop going anywhere, not quite freezing up, but moving so slowly they seem to be frozen. It appears the anti-virus is slowing them down as it attempts to update. Turns out these machines have a meager 64MB RAM, a BIOS that needs updating, and are just getting tired. I upgrade the RAM on one since the other one seems to be in constant use. I get the anti-virus updated and running as it should, and things seem to be moving along fine for now. I start checking the logs of the anti-virus distribution server and notice that three of my public computers and two staff computers are infested with spyware. No wonder they're running so slowly! Spybot Search & Destroy v. 1.3 t the rescue. This stuff is the best - and it's free (you can donate if you like). Despite my security measures, and due to a temporary change in security settings, three public computers did have spyware on them. I have far less strict security on our staff workstations (that is going to change this week). Some of our staff like to visit web sites that are notorious for spyware - like astrology sites, shopping sites, and "free stuff" sites. Two staff computers were so filled with spyware it took me four runnings of Spybot to clean them completely. I have banned the offending web sites from being accessed, but that doesn't mean the problem will end. I loathe spyware (don't we all). So, that was Tuesday. Oh, and that was the day my husband got the chip/dent in our Audi. And Tuesday afternoon my son tells me he has another paper due on Thursday that he needs me to edit for him. That's not a big deal, except in order to really evaluate his writing, I kind of have to know what he's doing his essay on, which means reading the book or papers or whatever. Fortunately, this one was on a very short book, more of a devotional really, by John Calvin, pretty much the "father of the Reformation." I enjoyed the book immensely. It did actually make me stop to consider my behavior as a Christian - something that could use a lot of work. I'm glad I read it. It also led me to look into the whole idea of predestination. I found some awesome websites with great insight into the doctrine. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the doctrine and decide how I feel about it. That has been the sort of bright spot in my week.

Wednesday did not start off well. First, my dad calls with computer problems. His computer is stuck at the screen that says "updating DMI pool" or something like that. Apparently it had been working fine. My mom was playing solitaire, went to show Dad an email, and it screeched to a halt. Dad did what most people would do, sadly, and hit the reset button. That's when it got stuck. He called me. Not seeing the computer (he lives in Montana, 60 miles from me), I could only guess what might be the problem. I thought maybe it just needed to reset the BIOS, so I had him go into setup and we tried a few things. Nothing. After 20 minutes on the phone I realized I'd have to have the offending box in my office. He would bring it to me Thursday. Then the library attorney calls. He has been trying for two weeks now to reinstall Windows 95 on his 7 year old PC that he decided to rebuild. He's had all sorts of problems, the main one being that he can't get his system to recognize his CD after he boots to the Win95 setup floppy. Unfortunately, he had replaced the CD since the computer was made and since he had made his recovery disk, so he had the wrong drivers. He wanted to put XP on it. After he read me the system specs I informed him XP would not run on it. I told him to bring it to me and I'd fix it for him - or he could buy a new Dell since, at 7 years old, he was running on borrowed time. I'm not sure yet which option he has chosen. Guess I'll know if I see him next week, PC under one arm, heading for my office. Then, my best friend's husband calls. He can't get his computer online when his anti-virus is enabled. He keeps getting some popup when he tries to connect. I finally realize the anti-virus firewall service is just asking him if the proxy client his ISP requires him to run is an okay program to allow to connect to the internet. Once we get to that - about 20 minutes into the call - I tell him to say "yes" and he connects. Then it's back downstairs to work on our filtered computers. I have built a new profile that loads faster than the old one, but in order to use it, I have to uninstall Office 2000 and install Office 2003 on each machine. The rest of the day, until 7:30 that night, is spent working on that. Intermingled with those projects, I am receiving drafts of my son's paper from him, making editorial comments and suggestions, sending them back for him to rewrite, send back to me for review, and so on. We finally finish that at about 7:00. He has to go get ready for the haunted house his dorm puts on every year. I finish up and go home, tired and aggravated.

Thursday morning I am accosted as I walk in the staff entrance. "Gina, I need your help with my computer. It won't do anything." I haven't even made it to my desk to drop off my purse or lunch yet. I sit down, start on her computer, and find that it too is infested with spyware. I'm going to have to implement some serious security restrictions on our staff profiles in order to stem this flow of spyware. It's getting ridiculous. That project took me an hour. I am no sooner walking upstairs to my office when I am told my folks are here. I greet them, take the offending PC from my dad, and head to the "hospital." I boot up the PC, jump into the BIOS, figuring I will find the ECD reset that he could not. Nope, it does not exist. Weird. So, I let it try to boot... yep, stuck at the "updating DMI pool" screen. Then Dad tells me something he didn't mention before. He had at some point changed the boot options form "C only" to "CDROM, C, floppy". After he did that, he got an error saying there was no CD in the drive from which to boot. Okay, so the DMI pool is updating but, for some reason, it won't boot and won't throw a hard drive error, no boot device present error, or something like that. Hmmmm. I put my XP CD in the drive and let it boot to XP. When I go into the recovery console I get a C prompt. I try to do a dir and get an error saying "can't enumerate directory" or something along those lines. Hmmmm. So, then I boot to the CD again and act as if I'm going to reinstall XP. I get to the screen that shows your hard drive and existing partition. Usually it will show the Windows folder and tell you an installation already exists, do you want to overwrite it. Or it will show you the drive and partition size, format, etc. This time it shows the drive as C but the partition as "partition unknown". Gulp. My folks are looking at the screen, then at me. I must have had a scared look on my face because they both asked "what does that mean?" I started to ask if they had important stuff on their computer, but stopped. I knew they did. Gulp. I told them to leave and come back after they'd run their errands and I'd figure out how to fix it. Trustingly, they did just that. Fortunately, my initial panic subsided and cooler heads prevailed. I realized this was likely just a corruption of the MBR (master boot record) and XP has utilities to repair that sort of thing. I rebooted into the console, switched to the CD drive, and ran fixboot c:. Quicker than you can say "Microsoft" it was repaired. I booted the computer, logged on, and began cleaning out more spyware than you can imagine.

My dad has a penchant for "free" "cool" software. Of course, almost nothing is free. The price is spyware. When my folks returned to see their computer humming along, a look of relief crossed both their faces. Then I gave Dad my sternest warning: "No more free stuff, Dad. Do not download anything unless I say it's okay!" I was in the midst of cleaning off all the old "free" programs he had installed, cleaning the registry, and dumping temporary files so I showed him what a mess he had made. He gets it now. He called me this morning to tell me he ran Disk Cleanup and freed up another 1GB hard drive space. He's a happy camper.

Then my uncle from California called. His computer is giving him the dreaded BSOD with an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error. I walk him through starting in safe mode and doing a system restore. Still won't work. We go back even farther. Nothing. It's a Dell, still under warranty, so I tell him to call them. I don't have time. I have to go downstairs and replace two floppy drives, rebuild another computer, and add more RAM to two.

On a happier note, my son is home from college for fall break. He picked me up from the body shop yesterday afternoon and we met my husband at Chili's in Coeur d'Alene for dinner. We drove home where our cat gleefully met our son at the door after hearing his car in the driveway. She adores him. He was hoping some of his friends from school would accompany him home, but that didn't work out. He's pretty disappointed, but he'll get over it. I'm thinking maybe his roommate, Nathan, might want to come back with us Saturday and go back on Monday with Jonathan. And then again, maybe he likes being in Mac almost by himself. Jonathan wanted Travis to come too, but he also opted to stay in the dorm. I guess a trip to some guy's parents' house isn't very cool - not like going to a ski cabin in Sun Valley or a condo on the beach. I promised both of them I'd cook whatever they like, but that didn't impress either of them. Oh well. At least we get to hang out with Jonathan for a few days. We are going to go over Saturday and help him and Nathan rearrange their dorm room. It's not arranged very efficiently at the moment. They did some measuring and figured out a much better use of their very limited space, so we offered to lend our assistance, which they gladly accepted.

So, maybe it was the full moon, the eclipse, PMS - who knows - but the week has been awful. I'm praying the weekend is much better.