I got my Windows machine back from the computer shop today. I feel practically itching to get Linux on it! It has a dual-core processor that chews through audio. I had purchased a second drive, originally to use for Linux, but it turned out the first drive had started going bad, not surprisingly, so he cloned it. I felt initially glad, and at $299 I got a real deal, including a new hard drive, 2 gigs of memory, and as it turns out a new dvd burner. Very nice!
Problem: When I tried to go to a web site, nothing happened. At first, I just shrugged it off as Windows acting like a bad lover, but the problem continued. I noticed that it could see other machines on the network and on the Internet, but other machines could not see it. Nevertheless, it should have still ran Internet Explorer. I know it sucks, but it works best with JAWS, the piece of crap screen-reader which we will soon switch. I went to the command prompt (ah good old MSDOS) and looked in the directory, and weirdly, I could not find the iexplorer.exe file. The thing went! Gone! Vanished! Missing! With horror, I also discovered that AVG had gotten uninstalled.
What the hell happened? Did this happen before I took it in the shop? I kind of doubt it. It creeps me out a little to get a computer back from the shop and find two critical programs mysteriously uninstalled. I did have to give him my admin password to update stupid XP to the new hardware, and he did save me by making sure my screen-reader worked with the new video intercepts, so I commend him for that. I just wonder what happened. I will get the full story tomorrow I hope. Let me just say that I love Dual Core. The machine also sounds a lot quieter too, a real plus! Of course, only time will truly tell. It looks like my girlfriend and I will reinstall Windows on it shortly, or maybe I will just flip and install Linux, though sadly we do need Windows for some things. I will keep you all up to date.
