I actually thought quite awhile about what to title this entry.  It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written anything and I didn’t want to burst back on the scene with a potty-mouth.  I get mocked for it (especially from the “I shame sailors” girl I married) but in general, I try to avoid “irrational exuberance”.  However, the last day or so has tried my patience and settling for “Curiosity killed the computer” instead of more colorful metaphors is a triumph.  

It all started with CNet and Warren Buffett.  A few weeks ago, I was watching the CNet Buzz video podcast that I subscribe to via TiVo and they were showing all of the cars at some auto show and they talked about this Chinese company, BYD, that was making (seemingly preposterous) claims about an electric vehicle.  A major supplier of batteries, BYD is branching out into the electric car business.  A Chinese company and their claims of pie-in-the-sky breakthroughs typically aren’t worth the breath to even mention them but this one has one very big reason to get your attention: Warren Buffett has acquired a 10% stake in the company.  This is very peculiar as he’s not really known as a risk-taker.  Regardless, I filed that away as “interesting…” and promptly forgot about it… 

As I ate my lunch on Thursday, I was perusing some of the financial news I subscribe to.  It just so happened there were a few mentions of the BYD company.  This is almost certainly do to the fact that Warren Buffett is an investor but still, the company was starting to get some press.  Always curious, I decided to do a little research on my own.  I googled and visited any number of websites and eventually came across a compromised website.  The website had been hacked and was distributing viruses.  When I navigated to the site, Adobe Reader launched on my computer and seemed to freeze.  That was a bit odd but a moment later, my computer decided to restart.  No good!

I immediately suspected I had just been infected with a virus of some sort, one that was taking advantage of a vulnerability in Adobe Reader.  My computer restarted “normally” but a few glances at the event viewer indicated that something had started and instigated the restart.  Unlike most events, the application that triggered this activity didn’t have a name, just a string of characters.  A google for that string led to several results for a rootkit.  Uh oh.

I’ve been using Windows since Windows 3.0 (though I remember thinking Windows was a waste, DOS worked perfectly fine).  As far as I know, this is the first time I’ve ever been infected with a virus, trojan, or any of their ilk.  I have never particularly cared for Windows as an operating system and have preferred Linux since I first learned it in 1998.  Linux was my primary OS until OS X came out and I picked up my first Apple computer in 2002 (2003?).  With Linux I learned there was a better way to do things and then, with OS X, a nicer way to do those better things.  Since that time, I’ve kept a Windows PC, mostly for the odd PC game, but very rarely as my primary computer.   At work, most of my work is done on Linux machines but I do have a Windows PC that I use as essentially a dumb terminal.  

 I have two rules when it comes to Windows.  Don’t connect it directly to the internet and don’t use Internet Explorer.  I’ve spent way too much time fixing Windows computers for relatives who have violated one or both of those rules.  As the saying goes, Internet Explorer is good for one thing: Downloading Firefox.  As I mentioned before, I’ve also been testing out Chrome and it was with that browser that I was surfing when I got infected though the vulnerability was most likely in Adobe Reader.

Rootkits are nasty.  Really nasty.  The very nature of a rootkit makes them extremely difficult to get rid of.  The best option is a complete wipe and reinstallation of the operating system, which is what I decided to do after running numerous virus scans Thursday afternoon.  Since the Windows PC is essentially a dumb terminal as I said before, no great loss except for time.  Friday morning, Operation Refresh PC begins.

Most people who try out Linux give up in the installation phase.  ”It’s too complicated.”  The funny part about this argument is that installation of Linux is so much nicer, smoother, and easier than Windows.  However, no one typically ever installs Windows as it comes pre-installed by the Dells and HPs of the world.  If something fails, that person typically falls back on the support disk provided by their vendor or, more typically, just buys a new computer.  The latter makes no sense to me but the average person simply doesn’t understand the different between the computer hardware and the computer software.  If one is broke, the whole computer must be.  

I’m sure there is a reason that vendors do not typically include Windows installation CDs with your purchased computer.  And I’m sure there is a perceived notion of preventing piracy.  And I’m sure some business manager thinks the support CD is good enough.  And I’m sure that is all wrong.  My particular vendor, Gateway, didn’t even provide the support CDs.  They provided a software program to burn a support CD and helpfully included some blank CDs… Why they couldn’t provide a copy of the support CD directly is beyond me.  It couldn’t have been less useful than the software program which helpfully never worked, exiting with a worthless error message when I thought maybe it would be a good idea to make those support CDs.  Silly me.

When I arrived Friday morning, I tried to track down a standard install CD of Windows XP.  If this wasn’t a work computer, a quick visit to any number of sites would have helped me track down a copy and have it burned in less than 30 minutes since those anti-piracy measures work oh so well.  I had a valid Windows XP license after all.  Regardless, I played it straight and took the much more difficult road finally tracking down a copy from a coworker.  

As I mentioned, Windows installs are not nearly as smooth as people would probably expect.  Fortunately, my computer avoided any issues and, after an hour or so of acquiring the XP CD, was up and running.  Well, mostly.  Windows didn’t identify several pieces of hardware in my 3-4 year old, stock Gateway PC.  Most notably, it didn’t identify my ethernet card.  Lucky for me, it offered to go online and find updated drivers for it… Obviously, Windows never learned irony.  

I’m sure they have their faults but Gateway did have a great little interface for tracking down drivers for your computer.  You typed in your serial number from the back of your computer into their support website and it would returned a list of devices and driver software for each of them.  From my other primary work computer, a Linux machine, I typed in that serial number and … got a message that Gateway support was no longer available and it was handled by a third party.  Of course.

At least the Gateway site was nice enough to provide a link to the new support provider.  I had vaguely remembered hearing something about another company buying Gateway awhile back and I’m assuming this was the company I was now being sent to.  Whatever the company was, the website failed to load.  Just my luck that their support providers website was down.  Except that it wasn’t.  Or rather, it wasn’t the site but the whole company.  That’s right, the company that bought Gateways business unit, MPC Corporation, went out of business in Dec 2008.  Lovely.

My ethernet device was on-board and, since my motherboard was of an Intel manufacture, I assumed that I also had an Intel ethernet chipset.  Seemed reasonable at the time.  From the Linux machine, I found a software package on Intel’s site that identified and installed drivers for all Intel ethernet devices…. Sweet!  I started the download and started brainstorming methods for transferring this software to my Windows PC. 

I feel my company must be one of the least tech-savvy tech companies in existence.  Our work environment is completely unsuited toward getting anything done.  If it wasn’t for a collection of problem-solving, work-around-finding engineers, I simply don’t know how we’d get by.  I didn’t have my kit of gear with me so I had to make do with the equipment in my office.  No USB thumbdrives, no USB or firewire cables, etc etc.  I did have those blank CDs helpfully provided by Gateway so I finally found a use for them.  

I burned the Intel software to a CD-R (so wasteful, I know), popped it into the Windows PC, and ran the software.  ”No Intel devices found”.  So much for that idea.

At this point, I figure I’ll have to wait until the next day and bring in some gear from home (e.g. USB ethernet, thumb drive, sledgehammer, etc).  Then I glance over at one of the other computers in my office, a 10-year old desktop.  On a hunch, I checked and sure enough, it had a PCI Ethernet card in it instead of the now-typical onboard devices.  I popped that out and into my work PC and voila, Windows XP recognized it!  Swapped some network cables around and I was online.  I was able to now track down drivers for my on-board ethernet card (which happened to be some random brand I have never heard of before), get that configured, pop out the PCI card, and put it back in the other computer.

I finally had a stock Windows install with a working network adapter.  The former is essentially useless without the latter as I then had to go track down numerous software items to make Windows usable: Firefox, Notepad++, and TweakUI among others.  If only that was all that was required.

Unfortunately, my company recently migrated to an Exchange-backed mail system.  I can’t imagine Exchange wouldn’t be as popular as it is, with the price that it is, if there wasn’t a decent reason to use it.  That said, I have yet to figure out what that reason is.  Worse, I was forced to transition to Outlook so I could start accepting “meeting invitations” instead of a standard IMAP client.  Outlook seems to me to be one of those things, like Windows, where people are familiar with it and so that’s what they they think is the best.  I find it slow, cumbersome, and non-intuitive.  Give me anything else, any day.  

However, my company is much too small to have a person doing IT.  Well, probably not really, but regardless, we use an external hosting provider for our Exchange services: Mailtrust.   It seems to work for us, more or less.  They helpfully provided a .PRF file on the website along with “Basic Instructions” on how to setup Outlook to work with the Exchange server.  Those instructions didn’t work but at least they provided them.  

Clicking through to the “Advanced Instructions” provided me with a PDF with even less useful instructions until the very end which instructed me to run, from the command line:

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Off
ice12\OUTLOOK.EXE” /importPRF “c:\Documents and Settings\sdawson\Desktop\shawn.d
awson.prf”

It appears the only way to import a profile into Outlook is through the command line.  All of the setup wizards in Outlook that attempt to automagically setup your profile couldn’t take the time to add a “Import Profile” function, I suppose.  The one “automagic” method of setting up Outlook that should have worked was probably due to my company’s non- tech-savviness but I can only work with what I have.  That doesn’t excuse the fact that Outlook/Exchange should have a basic server/user/password setup and an import profile function that doesn’t require dropping into a command line — Isn’t that was Linux is for?

So finally, after all of that, I finally had my Windows PC functional.  Along the way, I thought of many of those colorful metaphors with which I could express my deepest feelings for all things Microsoft, Intel, and Adobe.  In the end, I decided to write a long and pedantic article on my blog.  From my Mac.