Weird

The weirdest computer shit keeps happening. For example, tonight while I’m playing Battlefield 1942, a random windows error box pops up saying something along the lines of “Want hot sexy babes? Press YES.” Now, I find this a tad alarming. My first thought was “virus” which was quickly followed by “backdoor.” For those that don’t know a “backdoor virus” is one in which serious damage is often not done, but the perpetrator gains control of the infected system and can then do nasty things. So, I’m puzzled for a minute or two in which time I run Norton AntiVirus. It comes up clean. I don’t entirely trust my system at this point and have to mention that I really never have in the past. I don’t like the way XP deals with certain things, especially registry entries. Last month I tried uninstalling Style XP but to my surprise when I tried reinstalling it it surprisingly found “a previously installed version.” Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but when I uninstall something, and then run RegClean, and then AntiVirus… IT SHOULD BE GONE! But no… hidden deep within the system files, a copy remains. So, if I wasn’t able to rid my computer of a legit program, what chance do I have of getting rid of one that’s obviously trying to hide? At this point I started thinking about things I’ve downloaded in the past few days. All of them seem on the up and up: a Microsoft pacth for GTA 3, new Nvidia drivers and the Battlefield 1942 demo. That’s it. I somehow doubt one of them is to blame. Which means that it must have been here for a little while. I scan and scan for virii and come up empty. At this point I start thinking that maybe Norton AntiVirus is infected or being told not to look in certain places… so I download McAffee AV (the free trial version) but that yields nothing. So, I either have a random backdoor virus, one of the guys is playing a trick with BackOrifice or I’m going insain and seeing things. If I find out it’s one of the guys, I will physically harm you. I kid you not. But, I don’t think they’d do that so I’m assuming that’s not case. At this point I’m debating whether to wipe the harddrive and start over clean. I’d just need to back up email and documents. It’s unfortunate that is has to come to that since I’ve gotten the system working and acting just the way I like it. We’ll see what happens.