Liz the Computer Wiz

I have a decent knowledge of Microsoft Office, I know how to navigate online and I'm a good typist. Past that my knowledge of computers is pretty limitted (as became evident in my attempt to use links in my blog originally). I did however recently fix a massive malfuntion in my computer in the strangest way possible.

I will explain it in lay-man's terms since that's the only way in which I actually understand it.
My computer was turning on and telling me that I had a critical problem with one of my drivers, then it was logging onto my Windows account as though I had never installed or downloaded anything (with about 8 icons and that cheesy green fields desktop background). All of my files were gone and the computer kept sending system failure reports, giving me a million pop-up warnings, trying to access the internet and shutting down at random. I tried system restore and it refused to do it, and as far as I could tell I hadn't downloaded a virus. Finally after logging on I decided to try all of the different windows and figure out what each was doing. One of the windows popped up and said that it was trying to re-install Corel Word Perfect 10. I moved all of the other crazy stuff out of the way and tried to figure out what was going on.

That's when I figured it out. Word Perfect had uninstalled and therefore uninstalled a driver file that my system was reliant on to run. So I stuck in the Word Perfect 10 CD and let it install. As soon as it was installed my system was running totally normally, but I didn't have any of my files. I was on the verge of total freak out (none of my documents including a few theatre practicum journals that are due next week, none of my pictures or movies and much more freak outish.... none of my music). But all was not lost. Thank goodness for System Restore! I restored the bugger to two weeks ago and she's back to normal :D

Sometimes I would like to do a system restore on my life. I've been known to screw things up from time to time (almost consistently the day after I've been drinking heavily) and somedays I would love to be able to erase that and just start up again as though I hadn't downloaded any viruses or wrote an angry letter to my landlord... or wrote a lame poem on my blog that I feel obligated to keep up so that I won't feel like I chickened out :S

At any rate, I now pronounce myself computer genius, and I promise next time I'll talk about the Tempest.