"Viral Warfare" (Cont.)

As my computer came back up, I was greeted with about twelve different questions. Apparently, every program on my computer was trying to get on the internet at once and McNasty wanted to play traffic cop. To make matters more confusing, none of the programs were recognizable, resulting in questions like

While sorting through those, McNasty tells me that "games.exe" is trying to hook up to the internet again. Great, I not only have a virus, it's now risen from the dead to seek vengeance.

I check the file, it's still there. Like Green Lantern's ring against yellow, McNasty is helpless against games.exe. I resign myself to sharing my computer with games.exe for the rest of my life, and look at some of the other fun toys McNasty offers.

I check the records of people trying to hack into my computer. I'm online all the time, so I get about a dozen people an hour stop by my computer and jiggle the handle to see if it will open. For some reason, McNasty offers me a visual on where the hacking attempts are coming from. I check it out, only to find out most of them are in Taiwan. That perplexes me. I picture a team of Taiwanese hackers in Ryan Leaf jerseys, all ticked off at me and hungering for vengeance against the smart-mouthed infidel who cracked wise at their esteemed one.

Meanwhile, I've got a new problem. McNasty's Security System is refusing to open more than one internet window at a time. When I surf, I open windows like a second-floor burglar. Now, I can't get more than one open without the pop-up blocker knocking it down. I emailed McNasty about it, and they sent me instructions on how to disable the pop-up blocker, which means I just paid fifty bucks to install software and then turn it off.

I start to wonder about a program that can't tell the difference between windows opened by me and windows opened by evil computers not located in my house.

A day after I install the software, I'm checking my email when I notice it's downloading an update for the firewall. Great, I think, we've got to stay ahead of the Taiwanese Hit Squad. It finishes, then I check McNasty's Security Center to see if everything's finished.

And I no longer have a firewall.

It's gone. The firewall, which is the program keeping my family safe from the evil Taiwanese Liberation Front has vanished. I check it again, it's still gone. Even better, when I click on the Firewall portion of the Security Center, ads pop up to try and sell me McNasty's Internet Firewall.

I grow less and less amused by the moment.

I restart the computer, because I figured at some point the program would tell me to anyway. No change. Games.exe is still there, the firewall isn't.

I insert the McNasty disk, and try and reinstall the Firewall portion of the program. Nothing happens. I try and reinstall the entire suite, nothing changes. I begin to wonder if I ever owned a firewall program, or if I was just hallucinating.

Sick of McNasty, I put the disk back in and just try and take the entire security suite off. I figure I'll clean the whole thing off and start over again. I uninstall everything, then go to check my mail before starting the Bataan Death Install again.

Except my mail's not there.

I can't connect. I load up Internet Explorer to check the web, and nothing happens there either. I am locked out of the internet. With its last gasp, McNasty has extracted its vengeance from me.

Of course, McNasty's home page does offer tech support forums to help me deal with problems like this. You can see the obvious problems with their software locking me out of the internet, then directing me to their website for assistance.

Somewhere, I hear Taiwanese people laughing at me.

I dig on my computer to see if there's anything left-over that I might be able to use to either get my computer working, or find somebody with McNasty so I can hunt them down and kill them. And there, right in front of me, is McNasty's Security Center.

Apparently, telling the computer to uninstall McNasty just makes the programs sit there. They don't actually go away, they just sit there. It's like cleaning out your refrigerator, and just leaving all the old meat sitting on your kitchen floor.

In anger, I sum up all of the experience I gained in my seven years of junior college and wipe McNasty off my computer. A few restarts and a panicked call to a twenty-four hour tech shop gets me back on the internet.

A few hours later, I've got the other Anti-Virus program, the one that doesn't keep your computer from getting infected by keeping you off of it.

And McNasty is headed onto EBay, a real bargain for a soul more patient that I am.