If there ever was a virus that could be created to do worst damage possible to humans using XP Pro it may have hit me today. Or perhaps in my carelessness, I struck a master delete stroke and I deleted the folder, or someone else, using my computer id.
I still can't figure it out or how, but somehow, my driver file for my mouse is gone from my system.
I stared at my PC trying to remember all the hot keys. I hit F1 for help; then grabbed the mouse to look for a topic. Okay, nothing. Now what?! So I did the old Alt-Tab to shift between windows. I went to Ctrl-Alt-Del to go to Task Manager. I tabbed and tabbed, shifted and shifted but nothing happened. I did the piano on F-keys, i banged away in every combination possible, mixed with all the Alts, Ctrl, Shifts that would have made Beethoven proud; it finally brought down a tab.
Since I had hit so many keys, I tried to remember what to do next so I did an old thing I used to do with my older windows 3.1 (or was it 2.5 or 5.0?!). I hit the key to minimize. It shut down my PC, saving all the setting for whatever piece of keyboard strokes I had done in the process!
I called our resident geek-of-this-condo; he came in after the PC rebooted and powered up. Took one look at my settings and ran screaming down the hallway. I don't know what I had done but there was this screen saying Missile Launch Confirmed. Have a nice day. The rest was in Hindi... oh well...
Another friend got in touch; he told me, no problem - hit Win-M to minimize and Win-D to display a window. Cool... I only had about 170 windows. And half of them flashing with the words ‘funds transferred’ and ‘funds deleted’, and all in Russian - something else I couldn’t understand. So I hit Ok, Ok, Ok.
Then the Power went off and stream of black vans came up the driveway.
No, it wasn't me. They were there for the neighbor. He kept screaming, “We’re all doomed! We’re all doomed! Were all doomed! “, as those nice men in white jackets put him in a nice robe with sleeves that wrapped around his back.
I also learned, from another friend who called, Alt-F4 closes a window as well as other important keystrokes. I am trying to write this to see if both my hands work and I can actually write something without cutting and pasting from something, somewhere else. The feeling is actually refreshing.
It has only taken me five hours to get this far.
Okay, now my friendly neighbor is back. He seems so relaxed in the stretcher. I'll just go to the window to say hello. Wait.
Ok I'm back. He was fine ‘til he saw me. Then he started screaming again.
This time, all I need to do is use the master control: Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Throw-the-PC-out-the-window. I think I'll try it now...
In brief: Can you imagine the impact of something like that would have on, say, a system filled with people who don't know hotkeys, who don’t know what to do if the mouse dies?! What would you do when there is no mouse in house? Or touchpad on the laptop? The pointer device is perhaps something that deserves the Nobel Prize, or a heck of royalty check. But I must admit, the hotkeys are fun and bring me back to a yesteryear of early PC'ing.
So I see I can still write…well, a little. Perhaps it’s not all that bad, after all…
Okay, gotta go buy a new mouse or PC, or see if I can figure out why I’m suddenly on all these new fun chatrooms.
And, oh, some guys have come to visit. Why are they wearing those helmets and goggles and dressed in black, though....
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