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thistlechaserSo ol' Hooch does a virus check on herself every Friday at midnight. I've always had these automatic checks run, and never in many many years has there ever been a virus on one of my machines. Well somehow, in the three week's I've had it, Hooch picked up a bug. Mr. Norton says it's a "mild" one, but still! A trojan horse! On my computer!
"Grr, grrr," I grr'ed at my screen. Even though I had just woken up and had to be at work in a half-hour, I wanted to get this fixed now. So I looked at the fix for it:
1) Shut down computer
2) Restart in safe/vga mode
3) Run virus check, delete any viruses it finds
4) Restart computer in normal mode
Sounds simple enough! I checked the *on the computer* help files on starting it up in safe mode. It said something like "when the 'pick your OS' screen comes up, hit F8". "Hm," I hm'ed. "I've never seen a 'pick your OS' screen, but then I guess I never pay much attention to it when it's booting up..."
So I reboot. Of course there's no 'pick your OS' screen. There is, however, some black screen with some options at the bottom, but it lasts under a second before Windows starts itself.
As the clock clicks towards down towards me having to go to work, I reboot and reboot and reboot. Forget about reading the screen, it flies by too fast for that. I just try to see the options to hit at the bottom. Hm, it says to hit F10, not F8 like it said in the help files... (Are we surprised? Keep reading!)
So I reboot more and keep trying to hit F10 in time. After many reboots (and a rushed shower, so I don't go to work stinky), I finally get into that area. ...oops. That's not a safe mode, that's reinstall your OS and losing everything. Eeep!
Though reformatting my computer would get rid of the virus, I decided not to go that route. I'm a mad-woman, I know! However, my mouse was no longer working. The "continue" button was highlighted, but I didn't want to continue! And the arrow keys weren't working, either. No way was I going to hit 'continue', so I decided to just turn the computer off.
Now here's something that I bet is new to a lot of people: The power button on my computer does *not* turn the power off. In their infinite wisdom, the makers of XP decided to make the power button do other things. You have to configure it, and you only get three choices. 'Reboot', 'log off user', and 'stand by'. Yes, I understand that computer users often hit the power button when they want to do other things besides turn the computer off. Why, just last night I thought that pizza would be good for dinner, so I hit the power button to try to order some! Wasn't it kind of the XP people to foresee this sort of snafu and keep me from turning my computer off when I really only wanted dinner?
So, since I wasn't even getting the 'reboot' option when I hit the power button, I crawled under my desk to unplug the damned machine. (And note, it was now time to leave for work, and I wasn't dressed and my hair was still totally wet.) Since the wonder-makers of XP haven't yet figured out a way to change what unplugging the computer does, the darned thing thankfully stopped. Then I plugged it back in and turned the computer on.
Frankly, at this point I highly expected the OS to be corrupted or something like that, but for the first happy point of the morning, it actually booted up. Of course, it didn't boot up in safe mode, but hey!
So I decided to learn to love the virus. XP apparently is lonely sitting on Hooch all by itself, and so it's understandable that it wants a friend. Who am I to let my wants and needs get in the way of what XP desires?
Thank you, XP people, for knowing what I want and need better than I myself do! You've made this one grand morning.
"Grr, grrr," I grr'ed at my screen. Even though I had just woken up and had to be at work in a half-hour, I wanted to get this fixed now. So I looked at the fix for it:
1) Shut down computer
2) Restart in safe/vga mode
3) Run virus check, delete any viruses it finds
4) Restart computer in normal mode
Sounds simple enough! I checked the *on the computer* help files on starting it up in safe mode. It said something like "when the 'pick your OS' screen comes up, hit F8". "Hm," I hm'ed. "I've never seen a 'pick your OS' screen, but then I guess I never pay much attention to it when it's booting up..."
So I reboot. Of course there's no 'pick your OS' screen. There is, however, some black screen with some options at the bottom, but it lasts under a second before Windows starts itself.
As the clock clicks towards down towards me having to go to work, I reboot and reboot and reboot. Forget about reading the screen, it flies by too fast for that. I just try to see the options to hit at the bottom. Hm, it says to hit F10, not F8 like it said in the help files... (Are we surprised? Keep reading!)
So I reboot more and keep trying to hit F10 in time. After many reboots (and a rushed shower, so I don't go to work stinky), I finally get into that area. ...oops. That's not a safe mode, that's reinstall your OS and losing everything. Eeep!
Though reformatting my computer would get rid of the virus, I decided not to go that route. I'm a mad-woman, I know! However, my mouse was no longer working. The "continue" button was highlighted, but I didn't want to continue! And the arrow keys weren't working, either. No way was I going to hit 'continue', so I decided to just turn the computer off.
Now here's something that I bet is new to a lot of people: The power button on my computer does *not* turn the power off. In their infinite wisdom, the makers of XP decided to make the power button do other things. You have to configure it, and you only get three choices. 'Reboot', 'log off user', and 'stand by'. Yes, I understand that computer users often hit the power button when they want to do other things besides turn the computer off. Why, just last night I thought that pizza would be good for dinner, so I hit the power button to try to order some! Wasn't it kind of the XP people to foresee this sort of snafu and keep me from turning my computer off when I really only wanted dinner?
So, since I wasn't even getting the 'reboot' option when I hit the power button, I crawled under my desk to unplug the damned machine. (And note, it was now time to leave for work, and I wasn't dressed and my hair was still totally wet.) Since the wonder-makers of XP haven't yet figured out a way to change what unplugging the computer does, the darned thing thankfully stopped. Then I plugged it back in and turned the computer on.
Frankly, at this point I highly expected the OS to be corrupted or something like that, but for the first happy point of the morning, it actually booted up. Of course, it didn't boot up in safe mode, but hey!
So I decided to learn to love the virus. XP apparently is lonely sitting on Hooch all by itself, and so it's understandable that it wants a friend. Who am I to let my wants and needs get in the way of what XP desires?
Thank you, XP people, for knowing what I want and need better than I myself do! You've made this one grand morning.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-19 10:48 am (UTC)They tried that with Windows 98. I actually decided to try the "Standby" option... since I use that fairly often. So... I configure it... and hit the button.
The computer shuts off.
Apparently, it was still a work in progress on 98. Be thankful they finally fixed the problem on XP or you may have had less of a user friendly experience!
Cheers! ~_^
no subject
Date: 2003-09-19 10:57 am (UTC)The computer shuts off.
Heehee! Sorry for laughing at that, but it's so typically Windows behavior! Hee. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-09-19 08:12 pm (UTC)Don't try to wait for a specific time to press F8. As soon as you turn the thing on, press it repeatedly (not holding, pressing many many times).
Eventually you SHOULD come to a screen that lets you pick between Normal Mode, Safe Mode, Normal Mode with logging, Confirm stuff mode, and such on.
I'm not sure if this screen would be any different with XP other than you wouldn't have Boot to (real) DOS. I believe that may be what they mean by 'choose your OS', particularly if you upgraded from something else to XP.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-20 02:48 pm (UTC)In my experience thus far, XP has few of the expected behaviors I've experienced with other versions of the Windows OSes, and the few shared ones are bad ones.