Viral infection

Maybe for me.. but surely for my computer! So I’ve been suffering from a terrible, relentless cold over the past week but that’s hardly worth any internet footage. But what is worth it is the fact that my computer contracted something over the weekend. Something that made it crawl like a learning baby, slowed it enough to alarm me and even went as far as disabling the battery. What was worse is like some haunted movie, it made a sound every few minutes as well. Something that sounded like disco drum beats and lasted a few seconds at a time. It was as creepy as it was crawly, if you get my drift.

 

So the first thing I did was to investigate the Task Manager to see what the heck was sapping all that speed that I had so lovingly configured and bought. Turns out there were 3 instances of Internet Explorer which held a large chunk of memory, even though I haven’t used IE for as long as I can remember. Shockingly each time I “ended” the task, it reincarnated itself and sat atop the memory usage pile, in essence occupying my strong systems’ wholesome memory. Surely it was a virus. My Norton that came with the system had expired a few months ago and lets admit it, how many of us renew it anyway? Neither did I. Big mistake apparently for the second I typed “iexplore.exe”, the default words that followed it were – virus, infection, worm, etc., none of them leaving a shadow of a doubt of what had gotten hold of my poor laptop.

 

The next step was of course to detect where the worm was lurking and so after reading a bunch of forums (which took insanely long), I downloaded something called PrevX CSI. And it was a free scanner only. But under 5 minutes, it diagnosed 93 infections. 93! A frisson of shock later, I tried hunting for a trial version (which wasn’t available) to clean it up. All along my computer’s performance kept declining steadily and this called for quick action… not something to ponder and then regret.

 

30 minutes, 2 restarts and 30€ of PrevX – licensed purchase later, the computer is back up and back running and fast again. All bugs gone. System protected. Sometimes, it is worth buying the good stuff. And I can’t tell how relieved I am not to hear those disco beats again. I swear it felt like the virus mocking me.

Of speeds n memory..

Ah.. so many memories and all at an avalanche.. Ok before any of you runs through a torrent of imagination, I think I should clarify. I took out my ancient HP laptop (this one) to copy some ebooks off it's treasure trove to read during possible lonely lunches. And I was hooked. Sure it took 23 minutes to entirely start up (yes I noticed). But there was something gushingly nostalgic about it. I was reminded of the times I sat in UC's Starbucks or the sandwicherie on Calhoun/Ludlow Streets frustratingly praying for the screen to come up so I could finish my thesis... And then the resigned state when I turned it on an hour before I needed it to save me the frustration. All that. And of course in this laptop, there are a million pictures, most of it, the US memories, specifically UC times. Such a big pool of stuff.. and it brought smile after smile to my face.The funny part though was that it got faster every time I started it after that, almost like some mechanical thing that required constant oiling. In effect, it's something like our own memories. We stash away a whole lot of memories in some corner of our brains and don't ever think of it often. But we use albums and videos to jog our memories every now n then when we want to revisit the good times that we've had. Only with the advancement in the digital era, the memories are electronic too. And just for those fleeting moments it feels so good all over again as if you just relived them. If only.

PS: I apologize for the lack of posts over the past week. We're busy moving and so you probably won't see much of me over the next week either. Thanks for hanging in there. :)