THE WORM...

Yes, I'v been gone. I know everyone missed me. Both of you. This is a scary story, so if you spook easy you should'nt read this.
About three weeks ago I noticed something funny going on. My PC was a little sluggish. Out come the scanners. They tell me that everything is okie dokie. Then all My Yahoo stuff quits working. Crap. I really dig this time, and still find nothing. At this time msn and explorer quit letting me go to the places that I go to all the time. My most used web sites are these blogger sites. Instead I am directed to a site that promises that they can remove the spyware that I am infested with. Well for 75$ they can. So, being the stuborn ass that I am, I send them a strongly worded e-mail telling them what they can do with thier spyware. And what I thought of them and several of thier family members. I mean they put it there, I did'nt want it, they can just take it back for free.
After several trys at the normal stuff, McAfee, Microsoft and a spyware killer or two,I realized that this was gonna suck. And it did. At a forum dedicated to helping people get rid of this stuff I found derictions on how to remove it from my system. A long and complacated list of go here do this then that. Which only served to enlighten myself to things you should never touch on your computer.
I also found out that I don't have a virus or adware, or even spyware. Its a worm. A worm is an erant program that these companys set up in places that you go to sneek into your computer. The product that they sell only removes the program that they gave you. They can do other things, but I'm talking about the one that I had.
You can get this one by just getting online, says the PC geek that was trying to help me get loose of my growing mess. It regenarates parts that you manage to whak off, move to new spots, and kills programs on you computer that you could use to kill it. At the end of week two, "Hey I said I was stuborn" I finaly decided to use my last resort, system recovery. This is on a partitioned spot on the harddrive. It returnes the computer to is factory condition. Like you never owned it. Except, the worm has eat'in this also. The files that start it are gone. And three days of looking for them did me no good at all.
By now I'm getting ready to go shoping. I was sitting there about to pull the plug when I saw something I had'nt tried. HP Tools. I ran the program and, after awile it told me I'm screwed. Then it sent me to another spot for recovery directions. I went to my Dads house and got on line there. In a area of HP suport I found a spot where you can chat with a real person who knows whats going on. WOW. He gave me instrutions on how to make a set of rescue disks, which is basicaly putting the recovery system on disk, and told me how to use them. It took six hours to make the disks and another two hours to use them. But here I am. After an entire day of reloading programs back onto my puter. Heavy sigh.
Thinking back on all this the only moral to this adventure could be is. DON'T GET ON-LINE. Yeah right.
My one wish is to meet the people that could do this to other peoples computers and still sleep at night. I'm thinking of hanging them by the balls until they fall off, then hanging them by something else.
On a final note, If you can make recovery disks, do it right now. You only have to do it once. And you might not be a stuborn ass, like myself.