I thought the hard drive had crashed, but that was not the case, because the 80 gig drive was split into two 40 gig partitions: D and E, and I could access the files on drive E just fine. Drive D was totally unaccessable. I could not read anything from it, I could not save anything to it, Partition Magic showed the drive was completely full, yet I could not get Scan Disk to touch it. One of the times when I tried to save a file on it I got an indication it was not formatted, so lacking any other alternatives I told Windows to format it, but it timed out and said Windows could not format it.
Because my setup made it difficult to do a backup of it my most recent backup was from the end of February, but I restored that backup on a spare drive I had, and installed it, and I was able now to access files on Drive D, but I could not connect to the Internet. When I opened a command window and did a IPCONFIG /RELEASE and IPCONFIG /RENEW it hung for a long time and then came back with DHCP NOT ACCESSABLE. DHCP is what assigns dynamic IP addresses, which is what Cox uses for residential customers. When I did a IPCONFIG it showed I did not have an IP address, but if I would wait a few minutes and check again I did have an IP address. I could access a web site if I knew it's IP address, but when I tried going for it by name (like tcs.org) I got a DNS error. I called Cox Technical Support, and spent a long time on the phone, first with the Tier 1 technician, and then with a Tier 2 technician, and they had me check a number of things, and determined my problem was clearly hardware, and in all probability it was the modem, so they scheduled a service technician to come out. Unfortunately the earliest he could be scheduled was 12-3 the next day, and he had a really bad day, and it was after 3pm before he got here. He was very knowledgable (as almost all Cox technicians I have ever met have been) and he tried many things, both with his laptop and my computer, using both his modem and mine on both machines, and he tried using my DLink USB Converter, using his Linksys USB Converter, and connecting the modems directly to a NIC I had in my computer, and nothing would work. After several hours he did an exhaustive test with his laptop, using both my modem and his modem, and decided that my modem was working just fine, and the problem must be on my computer, but he was not allowed to work on my computer.
Wednesday and Thursday were spent trying to get my computer working again. Lee Pang stopped by CompUSA and bought me a new 80 gig drive, and we removed the old 80 gig drive and inserted another 80 gig drive onto which I restored my most recent backup (from the end of February), then we spent most of Wednesday trying to get my computer to access the Internet. I could not find my Windows 2000 CD but Don Greer brought over one for me to try, but both that CD and another one someone else loaned me could not install Windows on top of the old Windows (I wanted to avoid having to reload all of my programs). Finally I tried hooking up the modem to one of the Win98SE computers from our computer refurbishing inventory, and it was able to connect to the Internet, but the computer was too old to recognize my 80 gig data drive, and with my disability I find it difficult to move a computer from one room to another, but my neighbor, Darline McGinnis, was kind enough to bring my Image Machine into my office from the other room, so that I could get back online with that computer. Jim Erwin showed up with his Win2K CD, so we tried it, but it gave the same result, although for some reason it did offer me the alternative of repairing Windows 2000, so we gave that a try. The repair worked, in that Windows 2000 was now able to connect to the Internet, but each time I booted the system up it kept bringing up several copies of Windows Installer saying I needed to reinstall some program, but with one exception (EZ Creator) it did not tell me what program I needed to reinstall, so I gave up and decided to start with a blank HD and installed Windows 2000 from scratch.
Since the reason for the reinstall was to be sure I could browse the internet and get my mail, those are the first things I did, but once I was certain both worked the first two programs I installed were Norton Anti Virus and Zone Alarm Pro (my AV program and my firewall). Before they were installed I only read email from people I know (although when I first started reading email Outlook Express was showing the Preview Pane)
and therefore some messages I did not intend to read were opened (in the Preview Pane). That is why one should normally disable the Preview Pane. I definitely DID NOT CLICK ON ANY ATTACHMENTS until I got Norton and ZoneAlarmPro installed, and I don't know whether it was because some undesired messages were opened in the Preview Pane, or whether it was my short term lack of a firewall, but I was infected by the W32.Spybot.Worm. This just goes to demonstrate that one should always have a good AntiVirus program (with recently updated virus definitions) and a good Firewall active anytime one goes online.
I still have a lot of programs that need to be reinstalled, but I was able to get caught up on my email by Friday morning, and now (Saturday afternoon) I have most of the programs I use frequently reinstalled.
I want to thank Lee Pang, Don Greer, Darline McGinnis, and Jim Erwin for their help in getting me online again, and I also want to thank Paula Sanders for being willing to go down to her Safe Deposit Box to get her Windows 2000 CD, before I found others who could loan me theirs (I also finally found my CD, after trying CDs from others). I am very fortunate to have so many good friends.
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