Phew, my computer is finally back up after being out of commission since last Tuesday. I never imagined the problems that came up relating to getting my machine back up and running. Normally, on other computers, getting a PC up and running takes me about 2 to 3 hours plus minus for applications. This install actually took me 2 days to get running properly.
The problem started with the W2K image that was built for my specific PC. It was an old image, no patches etc, and so I was told by my support officer that I should expect it to get hit by viruses, trojans, etc within a few minutes of connecting to the network. We then proceeded to install all the required patches, updated the antiviruses, scanned for malware, adware and whatever ‘ware’ there is. (This paragraph I just described took almost a day by itself)
Next problem, I’m supposed to be ‘Admin’ on my machine, and yet I don’t have permission to access the registry or admin tools from Control Panel. I also couldn’t right click on my taskbar, hence no quick launch buttons. (Argh.. how could one live without the quick launch toolbar? 
). I was thinking some Global Policy or script that runs when I login. So I check the policy object, look at the script on the domain, and nothing really stood out. I ask my support officer, and she doesn’t know either. We’re both stumped (This after running virus scan with the latest .dat file and all those spyware removal programs mentioned above). Of course, the next course of action had to be a google search. Found out that I could just rename ‘regedit.exe’ to something else .exe and it ran fine. I then found some keys that had to be turned off so that I could get my Quick Launch toolbar running.
The funny thing here is that after some patch installs, and installation of Visual Studio .NET, somehow my registry gets reset back to prevention of right click and regedit. This doesn’t happen all the time, so I’m quite lost on what’s going on. If anybody could give me a clue on what’s going on, I’d be grateful. FYI, Microsoft’s AntiSpyware, Spybot, Winpatrol, and the latest McAfee antivirus doesn’t return anything even in Safe Mode without networking.
While trying to download Spybot, I also found this nifty util called RegAlyzer, which pretty much is a custom build ‘regedit’. This allowed me to bypass using regedit when it was disabled.
So that’s how my last few days have been going, I managed to install Cognos Impromptu andamp; Powerplay, Visual Studio.NET, SQL Server Client Tools and IIS to round up the last day. Just hope my HD never crashes again, it’s really a PITA to get things back running.
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