Monday, August 15, 2005

Series Of Unfortunate Events !


So after registration for Autumn sem 2005 days were rolling slowly gaining momentum. Barely fifteen days have been passed, some stupid planet ( probably Shani, Raahu or Ketu) might have come to a wrong position to disturb my astrological calculation and making my all-good-going life miserable.

So the tale stars from Monday Aug3, 2005. This was the day when I took my first project assignment from my guide and insure him to meet him in next two days with assignment completed.
At night, 8:00 PM, I found my Antivirus had been expired and was not up-to-date. 'Ah! Who is going to attack? I will install recent one afterwards ( for me this mean forever).' I thought.
At 10:00 on same night I felt light pain in my left ear. 'Might be a wax problem.' and I ignored it.
At 11:00 PM body temperature began to rise (This time I was reading Five Patients by Michael Crichton.... It was making me sicker) ..I recognized, it was cold and I decided this time I am not going to have any medicine for cold.
At 12:00 o'clock my computer was attacked by anew version of Backdoor virus and Antivirus was unable to do anything about it except bugging me through dialog boxes. I turned off computer and went to bed thinking next day's schedule.

4Aug was a hectic day. After attending three double lectures, I collapsed into bed when returned to room and woke up at 8:00 PM. Ear pain was sharp, headache, sour throat and running nose were amplifying its sharpness. I took nothing as medicine. At 12:00 I turned computer on and loaded a new Antivirus which deleted the virus. By this time I started feeling weak and went to bed.

5 Aug : I was unable to rise in morning and woke up at 1:30 PM, completed lab work and rushed to lab at 2:00 PM. After lab I went to library and got nothing what my project guide directed to read. Exhausted from fever, paining ear and searching book I came back to room in the hope of entertaining myself by watching a movie available on LAN. No Luck, this time too! Download speed was in kilobytes per second which normally remains in 3 to 13 Megabytes per seconds range. 'Must be some problem in hub' I insured myself but this was not a long time relief antivirus again detected and deleted Backdoor virus.’ Okay that’s the reason' I was suggested by others 'Virus is still in your computer. Format it!’ Hold on.....I have at least 8 GB of my favorite songs and 1.5 Gb of MY DOCUMENT consisting 700 e-books, many research paper and fundas from Painting to Robotics, from car designing to web designing. I can’t format it. More-over I am sick and will do it in weekends.

6Aug Saturday: Formatted C drive installed window.... Antivirus loaded....connected to network...and ""Ding"" virus found....download speed in kbps....Ah!.... Went to BC Roy Hospital....Shit! Only emergency ward was open coz it was Sat. and ENT specialist will come on next Wed. .. got some antibiotic and analgesic... came back formatted C drive again this time installed XP with SP2...No improvement; neither in health nor in computer nor in project work since 5:00 AM .. Went to bed...in bad mood.

7Aug Shifted my audio songs and My Documents to Baby’s comp formatted whole 40 GB installed XP with SP2 .. had pills for fever…. Read some material related to project… restarted my comp… no improvement again in any of the fields.
Got some idea that SP2 limits Download speed but then the same was working fine on others comp…then there may be some problem LAN’s physical port or LAN server …. Some one suggested there are some viruses which corrupt BIOS .. Days were going so bad that I had to believe that the Virus CAN reside in BIOS memory.
So I had a total of 3C1*3C2*3C3 = 9 choices … I started with most probable one i.e. SP2 limits download speed.. Coz I got some supportive docs on web… again formatted and installed XP without SP2.. Didn’t work! Ear pain was tremendous and it was already 4:00 AM I went to bed.

8 Aug : Woke up at 12:00 Noon … Weakness due to fever was enormous and I was unable walk and focus my sight. Had a glass full glucose water .. one cap of amoxicillin.. an Aspirin take some rest and calculated how much attendance I would loss in next two days because it was clear that attending lecture wouldn’t be possible until 10th Aug… and found out possibility of having a meeting with project guide is impossible till 15th Aug if it is not done today – which, clearly, was impossible for me … and also I will be marked late in Robotics assignment.. This was just a though but actual loss was bigger than the thought.
Now lying on my bed, I was thinking that OS is not the problem so I am left with two options 1. Virus either in BIOS or some where in disk 2. Some hardware problem in LAN architecture it can be any thing from my LAN card to Main server.
Two incidences, Virus attack and Hardware Problem, have negligible chance that both occurred simultaneously and Virus attack was sure. So? What to do next? ….reload/update BIOS ? Too dangerous ! then? .. Change OS ? Load Linux?.. It’s hard to handle! Then? Try one more 40 GB formatting? Good ! Sure ..will try this tomorrow and support the OS with Norton 2005 Systemworks. Good night!

Aug 9, 10 and 11 : three days passed in formatting Disk, installing uninstalling OS, antivirus applications and repeating these processes again and again .. Or taking numerous pills… each effort with no result.
Mean while I went to doctor fortunately Specialist was there. Got some more pills and ear drop.
At the night of 11th Aug, I started to focus on second option – a problem in LAN architecture - I replaced my LAN card with Dharmu’s one…. No improvement…. Then an idea strike…why not put my LAN card in his comp…. working fine... means No problem from my side.
Now my computer with my card in other’s room... was working fine. Shit! So those eleven formats for nothing… oh god!

Aug12: Complain was made and instructed that if they don’t come today I will not be able to access LAN until 16th Aug. God made them come that day problem solved temporarily... some problem was still there they just got it working.
Ear drop and medicines worked fever was nowhere and ear pain was minimal … perhaps normal days were coming……

On 13th I asked Baby to share my stuffs that I had dumped on his computer … ‘I’ve deleted it. I had a virus infection I thought It had come from your .doc/ .mp3 files’ he said. God! Nothing left to be ruined.

Wait… I am feeling some thing while writing this blog…. In my right ear… yes... it’s a weak pain. God! Is it a new starting…?