tired(I really must dig up "Later than Chandler" sometime. It's funny. Chandler was a student perpetually late to one particular poetry class I was in, because of his schedule. The poem is an explanation of why I was later one day.)
I left Tigereye talking to the service pack. One can only hope that she decided to do something good with it. Oh, if only we could train cats as sysadmins.
*looks suspiciously at
note_to_cat* In lab, which is why I'm updating. I don't know when Tigereye's going to be back in service. I don't know if the drivers for the DSL modem on XP are going to get here -- the guy on the phone said 2 to 3 business days, which I suspect means, like, Friday or Monday.
I called up to see if they had drivers for that on XP. The guy said that yes, they did, and they would have to send the CD to me, because there was not a place that it could be downloaded online. He said that in any case, he'd probably have to be doing the sending, because it did not sound like I would be able to get online. (This, after I vented at him.) I described the lead-up symptoms, and asked him if it was anything he could think of, besides the "side effect from spyware/removal of same" that I'd guessed. He said that that's what he would have guessed too, along with the possibly flaky USB hub. (Sheesh. That USB hub.)
Then I got transferred (by request) to someone to help me connect dial-up. I rather firmly said that I would not be using the MSN anything to dial up, because I thought that I had removed that shit from my computer after the last time I was forced to use it. The guy gave me setup instructions and a local number to try. Then I had to be swapped over to the password people, because as we don't use the MSN account for anything, we don't remember the password, because we never log in, and they couldn't touch the Qwest passwords, it had to be someone else to do it.
So then I changed the password (randomly assigned unpronouncable one, whee) and went back to the dial-up support to talk me through it.
Of course, after I got off the phone, the dial-up didn't dial right, and I was pissy, and instead of calling back (I was getting fed up by this time) I started hacking at the system to get the DSL modem working on Tigereye again.
I uninstalled the drivers for the thing, reinstalled them, and that seemed to have made things a little better, but still slow. I called Darkside to vent and be comforted. (Fic writers, take note: a good form of hurt/comfort for heavy computer characters is to have their system hurt. Spock physically assaulted? Not good for a Sexual Healing fic. Spock's computer assaulted? Sexual Healing ahoy!)
Much comforted, I bounced around the Temple for a while. Then I learned that a) I could not log in and do many things on the web (still), and the other computers were without internet service.
Garr.
So I hauled out the Dell Product Recovery CD, and I proceeded to try several methods of attempted repair, some of them better than others. By midnight, I had something approximating a good job done (it really does help when you remember the admin password...) (...even if you're not going to use it...) ...and booted 'er up...
Only to find that not only was the 'net not on as far as the other computers were concerned, but also that svchost.exe kept dying on me. Hmm. Doesn't that sound a little familiar?
I tried downloading a service pack, but I had to keep restarting, based on the continued death of svchost.exe -- we shall see what happens today. I'll have to do a lot of it tonight, though -- I'm going to be working and need a pre-work nap after all the sleep I didn't get last night.
