ibdreamy brought her machine over to my place and let me unleash the full fury of my powers on it...which ain't actually that much, truthfully. But hey, it's now clean, running fine, and considerably more protected than it used to be. I wish I could get it connected to my network, it would be so much easier to update the OS and the virus scanner over the cable connection, but, alas, apparently no network interface. Actually, that's the one weird thing on this machine that i cannot figure out. The motherboard HAS an ethernet plug, and my network cable, once plugged into it, showed power and traffic LEDs, lit up oh-so-purty...but the machine's hardware shows no network interface. None. ANYWHERE. So, blinky lights notwithstanding, no hooking into my LAN for it. That's too bad, too, since that means she'll have to take it home, hook up her EXTERNAL dial-up modem, and get all that shit over dial-up speed.
Yes, external modem. I wasn't even sure they made those anymore. Why, I wondered, would someone in today's day and age deal with that? A look in the case shows me a mini-tower motherboard in a half-tower case...which means the PCI and AGP slots don't actually match up with the slots on the case. Whoever the mongoloid techno-dweeb is that built her this machine apparently didn't think this would ever be a problem.
I asked her about that. She mentioned that some friend of hers built her a machine, and was letting her pay for it in installments or something. Come to find out, this guy is an auto mechanic. How this qualified him to build a computer is anyone's guess...but from looking at the inside of the machine, I'd say that particular diploma needs to be revoked and burned. Freakin' machine has 3 cooling fans, all for a 1.5 GHz processor system with a single memory stick, a single harddrive and a single DVD-ROM, and nothing else. Christ.
Well, anyway, it was fun, got everything done while alternately watching Eddie Izzard's 'Dress To Kill' (which was very funny - I'd never seen his stand-up comedy before) and playing 'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic' (which was not funny at all). Glad I got that done, too, because Di and Erik both came in the house in a rotten mood, so it was up to me to get them both turned around. Worked, too...heh, I can fix anything. Computers, bad moods, horse races, you name it!