Nuke it from orbit

Yesterday was not fun. All weekend my computer had been running slow, freezing up, and generally acting sick. I backed up all my files and sent up the bat signal to ask for some help from the Geek Squad. Nothing is stranger than seeing your cursor move around and open up files when you aren't touching the keyboard.

Over the course of 4 hours, 3 different agents discovered a virus, a strange file in my registry, some weird files labeled in Chinese, and the fact that I was missing important updates for Vista. The final agent suggested that I reboot the whole system from factory specs. Ouch! Then he told me that he does this every six months to prevent the kind of stuff that was affecting my computer. I mean even Firefox 3.0 wasn't working properly. I guess that should teach me not to visit skeevy websites.

I then spent the next 3 hours wiping my laptop back to the stone age, I mean factory specs, and downloading all the freeware that I had lost. I must have restarted my laptop more than 20 times over the course of the day. The Geek Squad did a good job wiping out the weird stuff, I just wish I hadn't had to wipe the slate clean.