[OT] Bloody Computers :-(

["Keith Doxey" <ukha@xxxxxxx>]

Subject say it all......

dont you just hate them.

Its been a bad week for PC's in my household.

Problem 1
Because of all the Viruses going around I decided it was time to ensure
that
ALL PC's had AntiVirus protection especially with the new HTML distribution
method employed by Nimda.

Because Amber now accesses the internet by herself I "attempted"
to install
McAfee on her PC.
First step was to put Windows Installer on the machine.
"you must now restart your computer".

Booting starts......

Error reading Drive C Abort,Retry,Fail
Wouldnt boot.

Got to the DOS prompt and ran Scandisk. 29% gave up :-(
Got to the DOS prompt again and DIR C:\ /s
Part way through listing the Windows Directory it dies :-(

New Hard Disk required. :-(
Someone advertised a 6.2G HD on the newsgroup at work for £20, I was first
to reply to the post and also tried to ring him, phone was engaged,  I was
second in the list ;-(

Problem 2
My PC
Already had Antivirus software and was running WinRoute Pro for sharing the
Internet connection but since installing Winroute I had lost the ability to
use Proxy (similar to VNC but better) to access other PC's on my network.
Also ShieldsUP was reporting ports CLOSED rather than STEALTH which Sharons
machine reported when running Zone Alarm.

After several failed attempts at purchasing ZoneAlarmPro and several emails
to their customer support I finally succeded in downloading it. Unistalled
Winroute, re-installed ICS, installed ZoneAlarmPro. Everything working fine
including being able to access my other PC's using Proxy. At this point,
Keith is one happy bunny.....but not for long.

Now when I boot the machine up it hangs. It will come up in safe mode OK.
If
will come up in normal mode if I escape the Network Logon. If I logon it
hangs. Ctrl+Alt+Delete show several different things but normally VSMon not
Responding. This is part of ZAP. If I end task I get blue screened. When I
try to shutdown I get RPCSSWindow not responding. Trying to end task this
just locks the machine.

There are three possible causes for all this hassle.
1. Too much crap after installing/removing various programs
2. Zone Alarm Pro and eTrust EZ Antivirus are incompatable
3. PC is too slow to run everything it needs to. (Cyrix P200+ 128Mb Ram)

Looks like the weekend will be taken up with a machine rebuild which if
....
(1) is the cause of the problems should solve it.
(2) is the cause then EZ Antivirus will be ditched in favour of McAfee
(3) is the cause then I'm buggered until I can upgrade the machine ;-(

Anyone got any suggestions other than throwing it in the skip, which I
would
love to do if I had a replacement for it.

What OS would you suggest, stick with Win98SE or would it run Win2KPro

yours desparingly

Keith