Here is a sad tale of hubris and stupidity - my own. It is also a tale about my saviours at Tech Support Forums (www.techsupportforum.com, a free online consulting service for those whose computers go awry.

During all the eight or so years of writing this weekly column, one of my constant refrains has been: backup, backup, backup.

Backup all your important documents; backup your computer registry; backup your e-mail; backup anything you think you will cry about if your computer crashes for good. Put it on a rewritable CD-ROM or put it on the newer DVD discs.

Because my life is currently in an upheaval for various reasons, I put off making a backup for the past two months. “Too busy,” I said as I closed off the automatic reminders I put in my Outlook diary. That was the stupidity. Now for the hubris.

My computer problems started with a minor (it seemed) glitch with ZoneAlarm, my anti-virus software and firewall. I kept getting some error message with the software not being able to find a certain file it needed to operate.

Internet Explorer would also crash as soon as I directed it to a web site, but it would open a page stored on my hard drive.

In fact every program that tried to access the Internet would crash (such as Outlook Express).

The error messages gave the source as unknown but mentioned Rpcss.exe as the culprit. Finally after fiddling around I removed ZoneAlarm. The fun really started. The same error was occurring. Using the Windows Registry Editor I removed all remaining references to ZoneAlarm following the instructions for what seemed like a similar problem I found on the Internet.

I also disabled the Rpcss.exe software and later Mdm.exe. Thinking it was a problem with Java I removed Java.

Still no luck. At this time I was still able to boot up and get into windows and use other programs. I reloaded Internet Explorer. The problem remained.

I have always been able to fix my computer and those belonging to my friends.

So I was confident I would fix this annoying problem.

I did not think it was a virus as no virus site mentioned behaviour like this. Besides I had Zone Alarm on and a fully patched Windows, right?

About the only smart thing I did at this point was to use the free HijackThis (available at www.tomcoyote.org to make a log file of my registry and hard drive's contents).

This I saved to a floppy.

Why I did not backup my system at this point I will never figure. I guess one gets into a stubborn, blinkered battle with the computer that shuts out rational thought.

Then one of several things I did after (including another edit of the registry) must have led to the complete crash of my computer. I was only able to get into MS-DOS, the basic command line system that is normally still available even if you cannot access Windows. I relearnt all the MS-DOS commands and for the next two days began renaming certain system files to disable the problem. I could not reload Windows from my original disk as I had a compressed harddrive. I was left with the possibility of reformatting my drive and thus wiping out everything after tediously copying what I can via DOS to floppy disks (thus weeks of work and the loss of any files bigger than 1.2Mb).

At this point I went to Tech Support Forums and submitted my problem online along with my HijackThis log, a requirement by those helping out there. Within 24 hours I received an answer from “Geekgirl”, who lists herself as an analyst and security team assistant manager of the Microsoft Computing Forum section of the site.

After attempting several of her suggestions with no success over two days of postings, Geekgirl advised me to hook my computer up to a friend's and then use the good computer to transfer all the files.

“Hooking my computer up as a slave to my friend's computer to get the information seems like the solution,” I replied.

“I had not thought of it. Is this difficult? Is there a site with instructions on how to do this? Thanks Geekgirl, you have given me hope!”

She replied promptly with the relevant Internet links and photos: “It's not hard at all. You take out your hard drive, change the little jumper on the end to slave, connect to friends computer as slave on primary controller.

“ Boot the machine, go into My Computer and your hard drive should be the D:\ drive. You can right click and chose explore and start copying your data.”

Now I am attempting to convince my girlfriend I am not a computer dolt after all.

“She has backed up all her files just in case!

****

Mac users are slavering over the release of Apple's latest operating system, Tiger, due to hit US stores at 6 p.m. on 28 April. Apple lists its official resellers in Bermuda as The Complete Office Ltd. and Digimedia.

@EDITRULE:

Contact Ahmed at ahmed.elaminwanadoo.fr . For the latest security updates visit www.SecureBermuda.com.