I probably should have been an engineer, like my father, and his father, and...well, you get the idea. For some reason, computers make sense to me. This can be both a blessing and a liability.
My roommate's computer has needed a fresh re-install of the operating system ever since she got the computer two years ago. (It used to belong to her aunt or someone, and it's an old computer, but hey, it was free.) She didn't want to do it because it's disruptive, so she decided to just make do.
This morning, she said that her antivirus software said she had a virus. I went to take a look at it. Her update license expired in 2007, so it hasn't been updating since then. The computer had 26 unique viruses. I figured I would just download and install AVG, since it's free and it would solve the immediate problem. For some reason, the antivirus software that was already installed wouldn't uninstall, so I couldn't install AVG.
I decided to look around a bit to see what was going on. The registry was completely corrupted, and whoever had originally installed the operating system formatted the disk incorrectly. I was honestly surprised that it had lasted this long. I retrieved the files and then asked if it was ok for me to reinstall the OS. (I explained that it was the only way to properly fix the computer.) She said ok.
So, I've spent my entire holiday reinstalling Windows. It's a good thing I actually enjoy this sort of stuff. I'm going to set everything to be automated so that the Windows components and the antivirus software update themselves. Hopefully there won't be any more problems.
Update: One of my friends sent me this link to a comic on the subject.
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