Thoughts from the abyss

Yeah, the title is correct. Today started out with thinking I was going to set up my girlfriend’s wireless router and Windows XP install, so that it was encrypted. Remember, no good deed goes unpunished…especially when working with Windows. I always say no to Windows work, but I mean come on it’s my girlfriend…I can’t say no! Anyways, I start to get everything set up and of course it needs a reboot, because why would you be able to do anything without rebooting first. Reboot. The laptop crashes…oh what a surprise. I put in a Windows XP Pro disk and hope to put up to the recovery console and it asks for the administrator password, so I asked her what it was.

She proceeded to rattle off her Social Security number! EEEEK! I asked her who the hell set that! Her college is kind enough to do all the computer work to the student laptops and PCs, since she bought her laptop through the school, BUT, what network or computer guru uses a persons Social Security number as a Windows XP password! That’s the damn dumbest thing I’ve yet to hear of, especially since her PC had a virus on it…that’s why it never came back up from a reboot. I know it’s a tad difficult to get the admin password, but it’s not impossible. Dumb, just absolutely dumb. You don’t use your Social Security number as passwords, what the hell?!

After I couldn’t get the Windows partiton repaired or even reinstalled because the recovery partition was hosed as well, I did the thing any self-respecting geek would do, burned a copy of Knoppix so she can use her computer until the Einstein’s at school can reload ‘Doze. If it wouldn’t be for her needing to access a few things at school requiring Windows, I’d have just loaded Linux and be done with it. I made sure she understood she needs to change the password after they reinstall this week, before someone gets ahold of her number. And the funniest part of all, she told me later on in the evening that she wasn’t used to her laptop running so fast. Knoppix running off a CD and RAM runs faster than what it was running with Windows XP loaded on the hard drive…just another reason why I don’t do Windows tech support.