Still alive. (Loved that song)

Hello dear readers.
I have taken it upon myself to inform you that I am still alive and well, (as well as I can be at the moment anyway). Now before my message box gets filled with thousands of messages from my legions of devoted fans, (yeah right). I have taken it upon myself to explain my lack of activity.

In my last entry I told you all of how I had 'defeated' that nasty virus on my computer with my wealth of knowledge on computer care. This dear reader, was me jumping the gun it seems.

About a week after that post my computed decided that it didn't want to sign me into windows anymore. I tried everything in my arsenal,

safe mode - nope
starting with last know good configuration - nada
smack the damn thing and scream obscene things - nothing but hurt hands.

After about a month with no access to anything I grew desperate and called on my mother for help. Now mom herself is just about as useful at computers as say, well me. However one of her friends is a computer IT in collage, so we asked him what to do.
He kindly told me that I could try a repair install of windows, I asked him if this would delete any of my files and he said no,
still I was worried over what would happen to over a years work on my novel, and so I refrained from trying anything until I could pull the files off of my hard drive.
This took about two weeks to complete, as well as working on the weekends and every night as always, but I did it.
With book now safely on a USB stick, I began work on what I like too call, 'The battle of a thousand errors'.

The first decisive blow was struck by my forces of good. Using mom's laptop, I downloaded something called 'The ultimate boot disk for windows', and burned it onto a CD.
(Notice how I'm NOT doing what the computer expert told me to do first, it's a skill)
Booting from the CD worked like a charm, the program opened right up and I was in.
First thing was to run one of the six or seven anti-virus programs on the disk and try to root out whatever was on my computer.
The scans showed that I had gathered not one, not two, but FOUR Trojans and a worm, each bringing along their own personal legions of malware and tracking cookies.
I believe that I shouted something especially good at this point, because mom came in and asked me what was wrong.
"Two years!" I said, "Two years of having this computer and it JUST NOW gets over run?!".
As the anti-virus programs began blasting the little bastards to smithereens, I searched to see what could possibly have breached my AVG firewall.

Let me clarify here, I hate AVG, I don't know why, I just do. But dad was the one who installed it on this computer, telling me 'not to mess with it' and being a good little boy, I didn't. This was a mistake.
AVG apparently has the ability to scan once every day after it's set, (or at least dad tells me) however, my copy NEVER HAD.
That's right, never. What that means is that two years worth of crap had piled up in my computer after it had somehow passed the firewall, lurking inside my files like...a...lurking thing. All that it took was that last Trojan, (I called him Trojan 666) to push it over the edge.

Hours later, and the programs were done, each one showed a clean scope and I believed it a good time to attempt moving into windows. However.
No sooner had I opened windows then 666 struck again. This time changing my registry to make it impossible to open any programs. I was back to square one agian.

I was pushed to the limit now, all of my Anti-virus programs showed a clean system, I had preformed a defrag and disc cleanup prior to the windows attempt.
Finally I tried what I had been told to do weeks earlier, after securing the windows boot disk in a daring raid of my dad's office, I tried a repair installation.
It didn't work.

I was pushed against the wall, nothing I tried worked, none of my CD's or anti-virus programs had any effect on 666, he was like a tiny Cthulhu lurking in my computer.
Finally, after a last ditch attempt to secure a internet connection so as to update my anti-virus programs, the virus signed me out of windows and wouldn't let me back it.

That was it, the war was over and I had lost. I think that I lost a part of my soul that day, until I opened my boot disk again.
I noticed a tool that I had missed before. It was called 'Boot and nuke'.
The title is pretty self-explanatory, you fire the computer up and select 'Nuke', the program laser wipes your hard drive disk until it's totally clean.
I didn't see any other way out, so I pushed the button.

long story short, I reinstalled windows and updated it back to service pack three again, effectively returning my computer to it's previously clean state. I then placed my writing back onto the computer, no harm, no foul.

That is why I have been gone for so long, and I am truly sorry.
But now I must sleep, as it is one AM and I have to work in the snow tomorrow.

(PS: I have a new story for you all too, seeings as Mindfall part 2 is taking longer to write then I planned, you can probably expect it tomorrow).