well that was hell

[darkhavens]

Three powercuts in swift succession made Opera inaccessible and slowed my computer to a crawl. I had to burn off a load of stuff and then delete it just to create the 15% free spaces required to defrag. Defragged. Opera still wouldn't appear.

Now, let me explain this because it has totally and completely boggled me and I'm hoping someone can tell me wtf has happened to my browser:

I click on my Opera icon in the quickstart menu and there's a pause, the little eggtimer goes around and around and then stops, but no browser pops up. But when I ctrl>alt>del to view the Task Manager, there it is, running, under my name (supposedly the only identity on the computer - and WTF is ASP.NET anyway and why do they have a user account on my machine?!). But while it's there in Processes, isn't not there under Applications and it's not visible on my desktop at all.

I dialed the system back to a system restore point in August to try and undo whatever damage had been done by the freaky-ass power fluctuations, but after the restart - click - eggtimer - processes but not apps, yadda yadda yadda.

I finally had to install a new copy in a different directory and copy over what settings etc I could. (Thankfully that includes bookmarks and other precious data), but my Opera session was lost, so those 6 or 7 tabs I had open earlier? Yeah, not a freakin' clue what half of them were.

ETA: I also updated and ran Spybot and Ad-Aware and got rid of several evil cookies and registry entries (gods, I loathe Internet Exploder) and got a clean bill of health spy wise.


In conclusion: *CLINGS*

Comments

[katbcoll.livejournal.com]

and that was me! *points up*

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

LOL! Thanks! I forgot to mention that - yes I did run both Ad-Aware and Spybot, both specially updated for the occasion. Just because you're paranoid... *g*

The ASP.NET thing freaked me out, but it has a limited account, not administrative, and I changed the password on it anyway, just in case, but dood, way to seriously freak me out!

I'd never messed with the UserProfiles thingy before and was expecting to see mine and only mine. The second one - guest - was simple to figure out, and also not active, but the third one. First thing I did before anything else was hit the off-button on my router so if some b*st*rd was playing about in my machine, I had just cut him of at the balls knees. *g*

[katbcoll.livejournal.com]

Yaaaay for paranoia!
Sometimes I wish it realy worked like that! The whole, turning off the router and really cutting them off at the... knees thing *snerks*

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

we can dream. ;)

I hate when stuff like this happens. I get the shakes and nausea and worst case scenarios whizzing through my head at warp speed, and dammit, I only have one measly little chocolate bar! That's nowhere near enough to cope with this level of stress. But I have marshmallows and some hot chocolate (powdered but meh, it's an emergency!), so I should be able to survive until I can hit the store tomorrow. *g*

[katbcoll.livejournal.com]

Oh gods, no chocolate?! *shudders* I am soooo grateful for all night grocery stores!

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

It's what comes of living out in the boonies - beautiful scenery and no popping out to buy chocolate at 3am. :/