I'm talking about spyware, of course. Sorry to disappoint you, but I know no real-life spies. And if I did, I wouldn't wanna know they were spies, anyway, for my own good. Besides, if I knew they were spies, that would make them bad spies. And bad spies are as good as not-spies.

Anyway. Remember my new laptop? The one with a wireless network card? The one that comes with a leather case? The one I keep reminding you of? Oh, also, the one with a DVD/CDRW drive.

So I tried to play The Matrix Revolutions -- which, BTW, I am yet to watch even now -- DVD to impress my man Maung Maung. Unfortunately, he was not a bit impressed as a) his was also a DVD/CDRW drive and b) the DVD failed to play. No suitable decoder to play the format, it said. Or something like that.

Being a good friend, Maung Maung offered me a DVD decoder that he had downloaded and used himself. The word "downloaded" itself should've triggered my spider-sense. But it didn't *sighs*. Yup, you guessed it, I installed the software, was able to play The Matrix, and before long found my brand new laptop loaded with spyware. (The majority use "software" and "hardware" as non-count nouns, so I guess "spyware" should be treated likewise.)

Not long ago I was a satisfied (illegal) customer of Spy Sweeper -- redundant now that I use (also-illegal) ZoneAlarm -- so I downloaded their trial version and started cleaning up. Sure 'nuff all the spyware programs were detected, some removed, some had to be left alone.

Because I thought I was so smart, I manually dealt with those that couldn't be removed. Kids, don't try this at home. Basically I turned off Windows System Restore, rebooted in the Safe Mode, and removed the registry entries one by one, based on the info given by the Sweeper.

Restarted again and all was good. Until I found that I had no network connection at all. Not on the normal LAN card. Not on the wireless card. Not even on the infrared device. Holey cow! A peek at Event Viewer revealed that all the problems resulted from NLA not being able to start properly, specifically with error code 11003.

Apparently one of those spies had corrupted some system files so that Windows always searched for the spyware. With the spyware removed, the system failed to start as well. I almost gave up on my best friend Google as it kept returning only pages with explanation on the error, not one solution. Oh, oh, there was one solution, sorry. Re-install Windows. Not very useful in my situation since I had moved all my files from the old laptop and the new one was effectively deaf and dumb. Now would you believe me if I told you puters were social creatures? They couldn't survive without one another.

The only thing I could thought of was to burn everything into CDs -- hey, I got that CDRW drive after all -- and then re-install Windows. Last resort, really, as burning 20 GB worth of data was not something you would call a brilliant idea. So I kept my faith on Google.

And it delivered. I found this.

As a quick reference -- to myself more than anyone else, here's what to do to reset your system files, it applies to both Win2K and XP.
1. Insert your (preferably) original Windows CD in the drive. Make sure the booting order is correct.

2. Go to Recovery Console.

3. Go to the Windows system folder and backup -- always backup -- the existing files.
cd c:\windows\system32\config
ren system system.old

4. Copy the original config files.
copy c:\windows\repair\system

5. Exit Recovery Console and restart the puter.

6. Pray hard. Or hope hard if you don't believe in any TPTB.

It worked for me. If it doesn't work, try the second method. If it still doesn't work, well, tough luck, mate. Re-install Windows it is, then.

Moral of the entry: never invite any spies into your house, no matter how beautiful they are. No matter how much they love you.

Current music: Ten2Five - I Will Fly
Current mood: happy