Kids!

You know, when you tell your children not to download anything onto the computer, they listen, then they think they know better. The oldest, at some point, fell victim to one of the popups that looks like a Windows popup that says viruses have been detected. Which then downloads a "virus protection" to your computer - which is actually malware and infects you badly. But she didn't say anything.

By the time the computer was almost completely disabled, she asked me to take a look. The nasty bit of programming not only hijacks any searches for anti-virus software, but it blocks task manager and registry editing, so you can't root it out. The best I could do is install, via key storage, a self contained cleaner. Which got all the stuff it let in, but didn't get the main problem.

So, my long weekend was an ongoing battle with Russian programmers, via proxy. Finally I just gave up and reformatted the computer. It would have been quicker, but again, oldest forgot to let me know the CD drive is sketchy, and they had been using the external drive. Had I known, I could have been done much earlier, but the computer wasn't reading the boot disk.

Now we have a clean computer, with internet, MS Office, and brand spanking new passwords so the kids will have to ask permission to be logged on. And I have a fleeting sense of satisfaction that I could do this. It helps that I am a packrat, and have disks to computer we don't own anymore - so I had the XP reinstall disk, as well as the Office and ISP software.

Oh, and as icing on my potential upcoming interview, I created a student friendly web site for the research project. Hopefully it will put me over the top.