On a Side Note: Watch Your PC

The past two weeks, I've been hit by different computer problems, many of which eluded my best efforts to overcome them. Everything from browser hijaakings to having my Office installer load everytime I clicked on Email, and around to worse things.

Mind you, I'm a computer professional. I know what to do to reduce risks, and pretty much take all the necessary measures. In nearly 20 years of online work, I've never had a significant virus or hack.

At least, until the last couple of weeks. The problems (there turned out to be about six in all) apparently developed from incomplete updates to my Windows XP network which left the gateway system particularly vulnerable. But even once I discovered this and got fully up to date, the problems remained. Finally, I worked through a series of issues until I got the system fully clean late yesterday.

But if this happened to me, I suspect it's going to happen to some of you. Drop me a note if you want some software recommendations, since virus scanning did nothing to locate these problems or fix them (appropriate since these were not viruses).