Welcome to the rant page... I talk about stuff that pisses me off... Formatting a computer shouldn't be that difficult... but when you learn that you system pre-dates the gigahertz processor... and you're running Windows ME... things get hectic and rather annoying... luckily things are back up and running, and should stay that way for another few months until I need to reformat all over again... One thing I found the most annoying when I formatted the first time was trying to put into my system was an antivirus... granted I put in Norton Systemworks 2003... but in order for it to work I needed to install everything, and nothing is more irritating than a protected recycle bin... what is it protecting?... it's protecting the trash?... I threw it away for a reason, if I wanted it back I'd go in and retrieve it myself, I don't need a program to NOT delete something I wanted deleted in the first place, and the most annoying part of that is it will keep the files after I empty the recycle bin... feh! I eventually uninstalled systemworks as it was basically crashing, and the virus protect never initialized... I was left unprotected, vulnerable and thus my computer succumbed to a spyware/viral attack... and I was forced to reformat once again... ARGH!.. I was pissed, annoyed, in a rage!... luckily it happened after I was able to say goodbye... so it worked out well in that regard... but still annoying... anyhow, back to systemworks... I installed it because I wanted my computer protected but instead got a hassle... I know that I have to purchase the straight version of Norton Antivirus sooner or later, cause I'm relying on liveupdate to give me accurate virus definitions even though I'm running an older version of NAV, that has a considerably quicker expiration than what it should have... but eh.. it's still ticking me off... anyhow, I just find it annoying that I can't customize what I want installed... I figure it would make sense that if you only wanted a piece of the program they give you it should install and work regardless of the lack of other components... soundblaster lets me choose what I want to install and it didn't make me have a load of useless garbage installed into my system, I stripped it bare and it works without a problem... then again, it seems that the newer versions of things make it more difficult than how it was back in the day... makes me nostalgic for the old way of computing... Old school computing was easier... I didn't have to worry about anything, I just bought the premade system and powered it on... yeah, that's right... a premade system... I own a dell that's almost 5 years old... or somewhere around there.. I'm not really sure.. but I'm not a cybergeek or a techsavvy person, I know enough where I'm not afraid to tweak my system or open up my case and fiddle around.. and granted if I wanted to I could go and build my own computer... however I'm lazy and don't care to build my own.. and no.. I don't think that'd make a good analogy for life.. it'd seem overly wrong to analogize life like that... cruel even.. Still, I have my dell and I have a new DVD drive a 160 GB harddrive partitioned into two, a regular 40 GB drive to hold my OS which is Windows ME and I'm running at 933 Mhz... with 512 MB of Ram... it's an old system that is still working even today... if I were to take anything from my computer experiences is that I don't give up on things even when things make it seem like I should just get something new and junk the other... I'm a steady person, I find something I like and I stick with it, I'm stubborn like that... and I'm not about to give up even though I should... I'm not about to admit defeat so easily... sorta straying from what I was talking about... regardless.. that's all this week, see ya next time... take easy ^^;; - Tiki Man