Yeah, when I was fighting my system over the weekend, I bought and installed several utilities to try to figure out what was wrong and what I needed to do to fix them. None of them really did much, unfortunately. Had one program that was supposed to fix broken dll files. Nice of it to tell me that I had 34 broken dll files, but it didn't fix a damn one of them, nor did it TELL me which ones they were so I could find them myself and replace them. Another found 1400+ registry errors, which it said it fixed, but it didn't change anything as far as my system's operation was concerned. Then another "super uninstaller" had me going into the registry to delete entries for the programs that wouldn't undelete nor reinstall. That didn't work either. Then I found a writeup about having to change permissions and ownerships in the registry to fix that uninstall problem, and surprisingly enough that did the job.
Last night I went to bed after buzzer went off in my computer and the only way I could get it to shut up was by hitting the switch on the power supply to the box. When I tried to start it up, I got the blue screen of death with white letters basically saying "Hi, you're now screwed! Your computer won't start up, we don't know why, but look at these codes that will mean nothing to you. And have a nice day!"
Fortunately Vista has a repair utility on the install disk, which wonder of wonders, seemed to actually fix my system. At least, so far. But it had to roll back far enough to where some programs were removed that I had installed, but it seems like a fair trade. I was beginning to think I was going to have to reinstall Vista (or go to Windows 7) to get my system back on it's feet again.
I'm pretty pissed at BitDefender. Their update zapped any 64 bit systems that it was downloaded to (which is normally an automatic update) on Saturday by eating as many files as it could before crashing the system. They didn't contact ANY of their customers, even though they have that info on file, and didn't put anything on their site about their screw up till Monday. They offered a downloadable file that could be written to a CD, but heck, how many people were going to just shut down their system and leave it by, twiddling their thumbs. I didn't even know what the heck happened. I thought some virus had snuck through all my defenses and zapped me. Heck, I don't even get email on this system, and except for sites I find on Google to buy stuff, or research such material, I really play it safe with my browsing. Funny thing is (ha ha!) the thought actually did cross my mind that it acted like the virus software had gone insane. But who expects that to happen? On top of that, I ran MEMTEST and found I had some memory errors, which I fixed merely by reseating the memory cards, so that had me thinking maybe the flaky memory had botched up the virus program's definition file or something.
Would have been REAL nice had BitDefender contacted users right away to alert them about the problem. Anyway, I've sent them a couple of real nasty grams telling them I wanted a refund of their piece of crap software and I was going to use someone else's product. The damage they did was every bit as bad as what you could expect from an actual virus, and I PAID for that privilege.
On another line of thought, I have had several instances in the past whereby I would use products that were from companies competing against Microsoft that once I loaded them on my system, BAD things started happening. Intermittent lockups, crashes, and the usual fun stuff. The thought has crossed my mind that perhaps Microsoft puts these sorts of booby traps in their operating systems to keep people from falling in love with their competitor's products. It does seem significant that once I deleted those products, the system was then happy again.
Yeah, there are a bunch of people/companies lately that I wouldn't shed a single tear if they were all boiled in oil..... Honestly, I don't know what is worse: smart hackers creating these virus programs, or dumb programmers blowing up systems with their own brand of "malware".
Really good to know I'm not the only one that has to fight my computer.
