As Scotty said, 'The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the works.' Windows is a very complicated operating system, and it sometimes can fail quite spectacularly. I remember a friend of mine who had what I believe is the most spectacular failure that I've ever seen. Something happened in his registry and any time you clicked on any icon or tried to do anything on his computer, it said you had to have admin permissions to do it. And he was the only user. There were two really big problems. He was running a really old version of Windows: it would be the equivalent of running Vista or Win 7 today. And he didn't have a router: he was plugged in directly to his cable modem, so his computer was completely exposed to the internet. I tried reinstalling the old OS, and literally as I was installing it, it was being compromised by automatic bots looking for machines to take over. Finally had to go out and buy the latest version of Windows, unplug the machine, install the new OS, and at that point it was strong enough to resist the automatic take-overs. I think he also got himself a router once I explained how vulnerable he was. This was long before everyone had smart phones and laptops.
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Date: 2026-01-18 06:12 am (UTC)As Scotty said, 'The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the works.' Windows is a very complicated operating system, and it sometimes can fail quite spectacularly. I remember a friend of mine who had what I believe is the most spectacular failure that I've ever seen. Something happened in his registry and any time you clicked on any icon or tried to do anything on his computer, it said you had to have admin permissions to do it. And he was the only user. There were two really big problems. He was running a really old version of Windows: it would be the equivalent of running Vista or Win 7 today. And he didn't have a router: he was plugged in directly to his cable modem, so his computer was completely exposed to the internet. I tried reinstalling the old OS, and literally as I was installing it, it was being compromised by automatic bots looking for machines to take over. Finally had to go out and buy the latest version of Windows, unplug the machine, install the new OS, and at that point it was strong enough to resist the automatic take-overs. I think he also got himself a router once I explained how vulnerable he was. This was long before everyone had smart phones and laptops.