So there I was, innocently minding my own business, when suddenly I came across a video on some blog site named Maggie's Barn or sumpin' and I wanted to watch it. Little knowing that my fate was already sealed, I clicked on the box.
It started playing, but it seemed a little small so I clicked on the side of the window to go to the YouTube version so I could watch it full-screen. The original was still playing in the background when the YouTube page opened and its video started playing as well.
Blink!
That was the last online video I heard for the rest of the evening. Somehow, two videos playing at once messed up something in the system and that was that. I ran Registry cleaners, Norton WinDoctor, warm-booted, cold-booted, prayed to the various computer gods, promised I'd never look at porno again, but nothin' worked. (I think my computer knows when I'm lying to it, dammit)
The next step would have been to reinstall Flash, but I wouldn't have been hopeful. Program files don't "break", and internal system settings (like what got messed up here) usually aren't touched by program installations. Regardless, in this case I had a much better option.
It's to note that during this entire time, when most people would be pulling their hair out, my blood pressure never rose an iota. After trying the fix-it programs last night and getting nowhere, I watched a movie and hit the hay. This morning while I was eating breakfast I reinstalled the image file I made of the C Drive last Saturday and the system works perfectly.
And if this had happened to someone not using an image file backup system?
Nightmare.
Regular backup programs only back up files, and, even if you tell it to back up the system files, it can't get them all because the ones that are "in use" can't be copied. The answer is an image file program. It makes a 'snapshot' of your entire C Drive and turns this 'image' into one great big file. Come meltdown time, you merely tell the program to write the big file back to the hard drive, overwriting your damaged system. Ten minutes later and you're good to go. Nor do you lose any email or bookmarks or personal files if you follow my routine.
And that's all. Just a little reminder as to how quickly a system can go into the toilet, and how easy it is to fix if you have the right tool. The full Maggie's post is here.
By the way, a couple of readers named "Meta" and "Luther McLeod" left a whole bunch of nasty comments in my posts over the weekend (since deleted) so I'm forced to moderate the comments until the situation improves. An example from Meta is down below in the comments (the quote). If you think you're actually real, Meta begs to disagree.
