| Encounters with a Stone Cold Hoochie
Amber first told me of the current computer problems on Wednesday 21st. Many errors were appearing in Internet Explorer, programs were crashing, Windows refused to copy/paste/cut or even send files to a floppy drive, and the virus checking program dissapeared on startup. Then, the killer blow to any uncertainty that I had came when she told me that the computer refused to show her the files within the Program Files folder; it knew they were there, but no icons would load. After confering with Craig and my brother we are all pretty certain that either Satan had returned to earth inside a Gateway laptop, or she had a virus. Seeing as how defeating one might be easier than the other, we prepared to reformat on Friday evening.
Amber had left the computer disconnected from the network and turned off. I booted it up, and all of the same symptoms persisted. We reformatted, deleted a previously (accidentally) installed partition, and installed Win 2000 Pro. After a series of installing the new service pack, virus software, a personal firewall, and some other ad-catching programs, she proceeeded to recover her files from floppies. A job well done. 
WRONG. Despite our best efforts, if indeed this is a virus and not a hard drive error (scan disk tells us nothing, really...) then the virus is back. Eighteen hours after reformat/reinstall/and increased protection, symptoms have begun to return. First the virus checking program turned off immediately after startup. Then, a few reboots and fiddling with settings later, the personal firewall went down. Incidentally, the firewall had done a good job blocking a very buggy network - more than 80+ attacks and probes in less than a day. After the Program Files folder once again went down and all my attempts at restoring the virus checker to its proper place failed, I deemed it the STONE COLD HOOCHIE VIRUS. It wants something, it's tearing down the defenses, and it won't go away!
Earlier today, I conferred with my brother and then with Craig, and they seem to agree that it could be a boot virus that reinstalled itself at some point when the firewall and virus checker were disabled, or at startup (albeit strange and unlikely); that, or it is a hard drive error ... But why it would wait 2 weeks of solid running after transport, and then another 18 hours after a reformat to show this problem is beyond me. So, to begin with, I am going to search the registry for this STONE COLD HOOCHIE VIRUS and attempt to disable it. I rather wish I was dealing with Satan at this point ... at least we know what he wants.
UPDATE:
It seems that this is the beginning of the end. After checking the registry and finding no suspicious interlopers, Clark suggested that perhaps the incorrectly installed virus checker was causing a conflict. (I had inadvertently checked the "managed" instead of "unmanaged" box upon install, causing it to never update, among other things). Since it is evil, and can only be removed with a password that I don't have, we decided to use the Windows Repair utility, which basically resets the registry... and this is now where the tale must sadly end, because we found out from this tool that the hard drive is corrupt, and Windows refuses to repair it. Maybe it has a wobble, or maybe it is scratched, or maybe this is just its time. However it happens, the hard drive on Amber's laptop will be gone soon. Already it has begun to ignore commands to copy and paste, as before. This is no virus -- this is our old nemesis ENTROPY, and there doesn't seem to be any stopping it.
New drives for this computer run $90.00 to $280.00. Sadly, neither of us have any money at the moment. The computer will have to do its best, suffer out its existence, and hold the line. We're prayin' for ya', little buddy!
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