I'm still here!

I'm still here, folks. I haven't abandoned blogging - I've just been doing other things since my laptop conked out. This old computer is incredibly tedious, so it's not been my most inspired blogging month. I'm going to try to get back into it this week. But first, I have a crime to commit. Yes, that's right. I'm about to become a criminal!

It's looking more and more like the laptop has a nasty virus, rather than hardware failure. I can connect to the Internet with it for about an hour, but then, both network cards, wired and wireless, are disabled. I can't copy data to anywhere else on the computer, nor can I burn discs. I also have goodness knows how many corrupted files, plus the C drive seems to be filling up of its own accord. Worse yet, the My Documents folder is now inaccessible. I originally thought something had shorted out on the motherboard, thanks to a broken power connector pin. But with so many things going wrong, and the situation getting worse every time I turn the laptop on, common sense tells me this is a bug. Oh - and I can't get any antivirus software to scan the C drive in its entirety.

Okay, there is a slim chance this is still a motherboard issue. But I have to at least try reformatting the hard drive and installing a clean copy of XP. Trouble is, Acer didn't provide me with a Windows disc - it was pre-installed. Rather than rush out to buy a new copy of XP Home, I'm going to be naughty. I have a genuine XP Pro disc. However, it's a single licence copy - and that licence is already in use on my desktop. However, in order to ascertain whether or not I have an infected machine, or a major hardware failure, I'm going to install my XP Pro illegally on the laptop, and run it for a few hours, just to see if everything is okay. If the machine's problems are solved, I'll know it was a virus, and will happily buy a legal OEM copy of XP from eBay. I already have a valid licence for XP Home - it's printed on the bottom of my laptop.

If the same problems re-surface after a complete reformat and reinstallation, I'll know it's hardware failure, and will have saved myself the cost of buying a new XP disc. Either way, I'll only be running XP Pro illegally on the laptop for a few hours for evaluation purposes. Fingers crossed that this works. It certainly sounds like a virus, though why I didn't think of that in the first place, I really don't know. I just assumed hardware failure, because of the power connector issue. So please, wish me luck and pray that my laptop just needs some medicine, not major surgery.