A Thunderous Night In Texas With A Gloomy Morning Of Computer Doom

It is a wet second day of September in Texas. The damp gloom is matching my mood. Thunder rumbling for hours, every time I woke up Thunder was rumbling. I assume it must have rumbled all night.

I was up well before dawn, but did not get around to taking a picture of my morning view, due to the fact that, at the time, I would have been unable to get the picture off my camera.

Two days ago I started having computer woes. I thought all was well. I only had one easily fixed computer problem yesterday.

And then this morning, something took over my computer as soon as I woke it up. Re-starting did not fix the problem. All would be fine on start-up, and then the PF Usage would start to rise, to the point where the computer would slow to a crawl, if moving at all.

I had nothing running. Except the Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus program I installed 2 days ago. There was no option to turn of MSE to see if it was the problem.

After an hour or two of trying various solutions I decided to un-install the Microsoft virus checker. It took about 15 minutes for the slogged down computer to populate the program list. I clicked to remove. After about 5 minutes the very program I was trying to remove told me it was doing me the favor of stopping the operation because it could harm my computer.

I decided to look in the program files to see if I could find the MSE problem. I found it, saw the name of the executable, went back to Task Manager and stopped that process.

Instantly my computer was back working correctly.

Now I have to figure out how to remove this Microsoft virus off my computer totally.

I always end up bailing on anti-virus programs for the same reason. They seem to be a worse problem than anything they are stopping from happening.

I thought Microsoft's Window Defender was supposed to stop bad stuff like Malware. It updates its definitions daily. But, during this recent debacle I learned that Windows Defender had not run its check of the system for 2 weeks.

Anyway, it's been a very frustrating morning, so far.

I Am Hoping Microsoft Security Essentials Keeps More Bad Stuff Away From Me

I started having computer problems early this morning. Before the sun came up. Everything was slow.

Then, I was writing a blogging on my TV Blog when the computer went into nuts mode. I hit the off button.

Upon restart I started up the browser so I could finish with the blogging. It took a long long time for the browser to open up. Eventually I hit the publish button on the blogging.

Then I started up Outlook Express. Usually this is pretty much instant. This morning nothing seemed to be happening.

I decided to walk away from the computer and go swimming.

But, I was unable to enjoy swimming due to worrying I was facing a major computer problem.

I returned to the computer to see that Outlook Express had finally started up.

I ate breakfast while playing Facebook Scrabble.

After that I started working on my website. That was going fine until Windows Defender did an update. When that was done Windows Defender told me it had found something bad. When I told Windows Defender to take the proper defensive action, all hell broke loose.

Something popped up telling me I had some horrible problem. I could not open things like Control Panel. Trying to open some things would generate a message telling me the problem contained an infected file "click here to run an anti-virus scan."

I'd been to a lot of webpages this morning, finding links. I figured I'd picked up something bad. I looked to see what processes were running. I saw one I knew should not be there. Stopped it. That stopped the bogus virus/infection warnings.

I found the same thing in the MSCONFIG start-up file. Disabled it there. Went to eliminate it from the Registry. Was told the Administrator (Me) was denying access.

I ran a Malware detector. It was blocked from getting the latest update. I ran it anyway. It found some bad stuff.

Then I was told Microsoft's new anti-virus program, called Microsoft Security Essentials, worked well, was fast, and did not bog down the system

But, when I tried to install MSE I had the same blocking an update problem.

I tried a couple other things, did a re-start. This time Microsoft Security Essentials was able to do the needed update. And then it quickly found several bad things. Those were removed.

Another restart and suddenly my computer is working better than it has in a long long time.

With everything seeming to be fine, I was back being a happy boy. So, I took off out of there to go on a bike ride.