Geeks, in here...

[Bill Brasky]

Get Windows 7 man. It's awesomer.

I was gonna, in fact I have it from TPB.  But my leet is not so leet, and I'm kinda afraid to fuck with the OS.  If I fuck it up and can't get on, I'm screwed. 

[Elitist Bitch]

How did you restore your computer? Via disc?

[ForumTroll]

Get Windows 7 man. It's awesomer.

I was gonna, in fact I have it from TPB.  But my leet is not so leet, and I'm kinda afraid to fuck with the OS.  If I fuck it up and can't get on, I'm screwed. 

The only thing you need to do is make sure you have the drivers from the manufacturer website. I just put the final version of 7 Pro on my 4 year old Dell yesterday. Vista drivers worked flawlessly.

Seriously, it's a much better OS than Vista:

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Home-Premium-Upgrade/dp/B002DHLUWK

[Bill Brasky]

How did you restore your computer? Via disc?

HP system restore to factory default. 

[Bill Brasky]

Get Windows 7 man. It's awesomer.

I was gonna, in fact I have it from TPB.  But my leet is not so leet, and I'm kinda afraid to fuck with the OS.  If I fuck it up and can't get on, I'm screwed. 

The only thing you need to do is make sure you have the drivers from the manufacturer website. I just put the final version of 7 Pro on my 4 year old Dell yesterday. Vista drivers worked flawlessly.

Seriously, it's a much better OS than Vista:

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Home-Premium-Upgrade/dp/B002DHLUWK

I believe its entirely true that its better than Vista, no doubts here. 

I'd also have to buy an external DVD-ROM, because this internal one disappeared from the drive directory. 

I'm probably just gonna keep this machine as unencumbered of needless shit as possible, and use it as an extra.  I'd like to get a new machine soon, like in the next year.  It makes me very nervous not having a back-up. 

[Elitist Bitch]

Reformatting isn't terribly traumatic, and you could always do a system restore. I had a HP that had a System Restore function from the BIOS.

[ForumTroll]

It may just be a driver issue with the DVD drive. If I was there, I would fix that shit up for you.

[John Shaw]

7 is worth it.

Also -

Firefox extensions:
Adblock Plus - Blocks Ads
Downloadhelper - Download embedded shit of all sorts. I use it to gank flash games and youtube vids.
Flashblock - Blocks Flash
Gmail Notifier - Obvious
Reloadevery - Sets open tabs to reload periodically
Stumbleupon - Click for random awesome, vote for what you like or don't get better results the more you use.
Webmail Notifier - Obvious

Apps:
Audacity
Foobar2000
Nod32
Daemon Tools Lite


Most of the rest of my stuff is sorta specialty, (Graphics, movie stuff, etc) so I won't bother you with it.

[Bill Brasky]

If I was there, I would fix that shit up for you.

Thanks dude. 

[Bill Brasky]

7 is worth it.

Also -

Firefox extensions:
Adblock Plus - Blocks Ads
Downloadhelper - Download embedded shit of all sorts. I use it to gank flash games and youtube vids.
Flashblock - Blocks Flash
Gmail Notifier - Obvious
Reloadevery - Sets open tabs to reload periodically
Stumbleupon - Click for random awesome, vote for what you like or don't get better results the more you use.
Webmail Notifier - Obvious

Apps:
Audacity
Foobar2000
Nod32
Daemon Tools Lite


Most of the rest of my stuff is sorta specialty, (Graphics, movie stuff, etc) so I won't bother you with it.

That downloadhelper looks like something I'd use.  I'll take that. 

I'll goog the apps, see whats what. 

Thanks. 

[blackie]

The weirdest thing about this whole experience, the virus deleted my DVD/CD ROM drive from "my computer", its completely gone - even after the fresh install from the factory image.  I assume thats the haxors way of preventing you from manually booting a new Windows OS from disc.  Bastards.  

Can you see the cd/dvd drive in disk management or device manager?

start-->run-->compmgmt.msc

In the console tree, click Disk Management. If it shows up here you may need to assign it a drive letter.


In the console tree, click Device Manager if it isn't in Disk Manager. Look to see if there is an unknow device. There shouldn't be if you just did the system restore.

[freeAgent]

Notepad++ can be useful
Launchy is awesome
Trillian (Astra) for chat
FeedDemon for RSS reading (it syncs with Google Reader)
TrueCrypt for encryption needs
Paint.NET for basic photo editing
Foxit PDF Reader is better than Adobe's
Unlocker can come in handy
WinRAR for archiving needs
dBPowerAMP for CD ripping/music converting
MP3Gain (or AACGain) for making volume consistent
MP3Tag in case I need to bulk-modify tags on my audio files
uTorrent for any bittorrent needs
VLC for playing random audio/video
Slysoft AnyDVD/CloneDVD/CloneCD/CloneDVD Mobile for DVD needs
VSO CopyToDVD for media burning needs (or CDBurnerXP)
CCleaner and Spybot Search & Destroy for regular maintenance/cleanup
ESET NOD32 or Kaspersky for antivirus

All of these, combined with MS Office (or OpenOffice) and Firefox with:

AdBlock Plus
Download Helper
IE Tab
Weather Watcher Live
Xmarks

...makes a system pretty much good to go for just about everything I do on a day-to-day basis.

[Bill Brasky]

The weirdest thing about this whole experience, the virus deleted my DVD/CD ROM drive from "my computer", its completely gone - even after the fresh install from the factory image.  I assume thats the haxors way of preventing you from manually booting a new Windows OS from disc.  Bastards.  

Can you see the cd/dvd drive in disk management or device manager?

start-->run-->compmgmt.msc

In the console tree, click Disk Management. If it shows up here you may need to assign it a drive letter.

Ok, just tried that.  All I have is C, D, and E drives.  D is a recovery partition of C, and E is my external Toshiba. 

There are no unknown devices in Device Mgr.  I got into that tree from MyComp the other day, and expanded all the stuff.  So unless its mislabled, its gone.  I also clicked "show hidden devices" and nothing special happened. 

Thanks, though. 

[blackie]

UNetbootin is good for making bootable Linux USB drives.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

[Bill Brasky]

UNetbootin is good for making bootable Linux USB drives.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Book'd

Now if I only knew what the fux to do with it.  I don't know how to enter a drive through BIOS