I should know by now to never do any of these things:

• Never use Internet Explorer to download anything
  
• Never look for (or download) anything that has "cracked" or "hacked" in the name
  
• Never assume anything will ever be any different "this time"
  
• Never, ever consider computers as a good thing
  

Ever.

Just after I posted my last UNEVENTFUL post, everything went to Hell. Quite literally. I think I saw the face of the devil in the monitor, and I could swear I got scratched by a horn, and the temperature in here has gone up about 3000 degrees. And I smell something burning.

It all started a few days ago with this feeling of dread - like something bad was going to happen, soon, with my computer (or at least one of them). That is what spawned my backup activities. But just when I was feeling so good about my preventative activities, something had to come along and ultimately piss me off beyond recognition.

My wife has this computer that runs Windows 2000. Nothing runs on Windows 2000 anymore. Including my backup software. Well, the nice little drive image program I used yesterday works...but only if there are no bad sectors on the disk, apparently. If it finds a bad sector...well, let's just say the author apparently never considered the possibility. Oh fucking well.

But, as [extraordinarily bad] luck would have it, I knew of this great little utility called HDD Regenerator, which actually fixes bad sectors on a drive. The bad part about it is that the demo version only fixes the first bad sector that it finds. Less than useful if your drive is pitted.

I didn't feel like buying yet another piece of software to fix computer problems, so I decided to see if I could dig up a hacked version of it, or at least a serial number. I knew this was risky, as wandering into hacker land is a stroll through a mine field. But I didn't realize the threat of exploits was SO great, that all it would take was one bad piece of code on a web site to infiltrate my machine.

Jesus.

I should have known better, first of all, than to enter this venture using Internet Explorer. What a piece of...well, you know; pick your favorite set of four-letter words here. But, it was the only browser on the machine. What interminable bad luck.

As with any venture into the land of crackz, cryptic web sites began to appear on my screen, generally adorned with porn. After a while of digging, I finally found what I thought I was looking for, and downloaded it. It passed my virus scans and my background research, so I ran it. It appeared to be what I wanted, but it was missing a file to make it work, fully, so I went on a quest for that file.

I eventually wound up back on the same site that I found my gem on, initially, so I trusted it. Big mistake. Suddenly, weird shit began happening to my browser - windows popping up here and there - even after shutting down the browser!

Watching the task list, I could see IEXPLORE.EXE appear at irregular intervals. I would kill the process immediately, and it would return. I then went to my file system and renamed IEXPLORE.EXE to something else, but magically a new IEXPLORE.EXE would mysteriously appear to take its place. I don't know if this is a function of the operating system, or the malware I picked up, but it was a "fun" game of cat and mouse there while it lasted.

I then disabled my network connection, but this think just kept merrily trying to make connections, and the system would complain. Wah! I wanted to install another browser, or some anti-something software (isn't it all anti-something?) to attack this thing, but to do that, I needed my network connection.

So, I went around the back door a bit, downloading installers from another computer, and then making quick connections to my network to grab them on the ailing machine. I tried to install Spy Sweeper, but the installer kept mysteriously disappearing. Whatever virus I had contracted was killing the installer! I tried to install SpyBot Search & Destroy, and got the same welcoming. I finally had to boot into safe mode to get anything to install.

I have since installed probably half a dozen or more tools to attack this thing, but so far NONE of them have touched it. Just my luck I have picked up something that nobody knows about, yet. AND ALL BECAUSE I WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING TO HELP ME BACK UP MY COMPUTER SO THAT I COULD AVOID SHIT LIKE THIS!

I have killed my entire weekend futzing with this futzing thing, so now I am ready to kill. But that's just what computers WANT you to do. After all, they are the tools (and the evangelists) of evil. Pure evil is disguised as a bit. After all, how else could something so small and insignificant cause so much pain and suffering in the world?