I used to enjoy tweaking computers, whether it involved fiddling with the latest linux distro or optimizing boot times on my operating system. Not anymore. The other day I was trying to figure out why my relative’s computer was running so sluggishly. I had configured it over a year ago, and it booted in less than a minute. Now, it took nearly 2 minutes to reach the desktop. Execution of applications after a double-click crawled painfully.

The system is an Athlon 1800+ with 1 gig of ram and a GeForce4 video card. There is no reason for the computer to be slow, especially without any newly installed software. It turned out that the McAfee antivirus program was the culprit, which reinforced my distaste of all antivirus programs. Moreover, McAfee’s uninstall program failed to remove a component that lingers in the system processes to prevent worms from disabling the antivirus program. The program was, in essence, a virus itself. How ironic.

It took me approximately 45 minutes to pinpoint the program and wipe out the badness. However, I hated every step of it. I didn’t enjoy the challenge of solving the problem of a slow computer anymore. It was a chore. In the end, I was glad that my stint in the tech support industry lasted only 1 month in college. Maybe my next computer will be a mac…

computing computing