So around 6 pm, after walking the dog, I figured I was ready to button things up. Things seemed to be running fine, drivers were all installed and I was preparing to start service packing the system when one little thing went amiss. First it started with secur32.dll is missing or corrupt. Just out of the blue that message pops while the system is idle at the desktop. So I hunt for the file and sure enough, missing. Alright, I’ll re-install it using SFC. I put it back and reboot only to be presented with “ATA66 BIOS driver not present” when the OS is strapping which leave me at the blinking cursor. No safe mode. Nothing. About all I can conjure up is a choking murmur of despair.
So here’s where it takes an odd turn. Thankfully, I still had the original hard drive, untouched and filled to the rim with rootkits, trojans, worms, and various other forms of malware so I swapped the drives and what do you know, the system boots. After some 8 hours of work I am right back to square one so I decide to go the Windows 2000 route, damn their kids games. After 2 hours of prepping the drive the system won’t boot, same error, “ATA66 BIOS driver not present”. By 9 pm I was defeated. Redmond had pounded that smirk off my face and left me a quivering bundle of skin and bones. I hate my life and curse myself for taking this job.
Resigned I slowly placed the original hard drive back into the cage and began anew cleaning out the first line of viruses by hand while in safe mode. Since the CD drive is disabled in safe-mode I need to book back to normal mode and copy McAfee off the disc. With only seconds to spare the copy is done when the system locks up with a kernel32 error. Thankfully, I can still boot to safe mode and am able to install and run McAfee. After 3 hours of scanning it only dredges up 100 viruses and assorted ad/malware, I expected more. With renewed confidence I reboot the machine into normal mode only to find that the network card is no longer operational. Again with the cursing of myself.
As the night creeps along past midnight, I uninstall the card then reboot. It detects it and installs the drivers but I am confronted with McAfee detecting a trojan at the same time. System locks up. Reboot. Card works. Another trojan. Re-scan. Nothing. Rescan again. I crawl into bed dreaming of what it would be like to slip Ubuntu about the tired shoulders of this poor PC.
Awake and not so refreshed at 5:30 am I shuffle back to the silicon demon I have now been wrangling for some 10 hours. So now my plan is to get the system operational and functional and hand it back to them at a reduced charge. For my own sanity, and Management’s, I think I’m going to take a break from fixing PCs for a bit. This experience has been harrowing, frustrating, ulcer inducing, and makes me wholly appreciate my Linux network. Windows is broken.
