How’s that for a cryptic title? It’s got a bit of Halloween flair to it as well. The title really relates to a customer of mine who fired up the bat signal (or should I call it Matt signal) to tell me about another ugly PC situation with the family Dell. And the “cursed PC” part of it pertains to the fact that this PC had it’s HD image completely rebuilt from the ground up as part of a spyware exorcism (ooooh, more Halloween). It also had a failed CD-ROM drive: Dell shipped out a replacement part for that was delayed to a shipping mix up. So after all was said and done, their PC was back up and running with all critical MS updates installed and a full security suite to try and protect them future Internet goblins.

This was back in Mid-summer. Fast-forward to today, and I get a frantic call from the customer reporting their PC was stuck in BSOD purgatory. Their PC was toast, we couldn’t even get it to boot into (any) Safe Mode. The error that displayed every time was:

Stop: c0000218 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the hive (file): \SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its log or alternate

Yes, the part of Windows we love to hate, the Windows Registry, was all messed up. I’m aware of several techniques and procedures to try and recover from a corrupted registry, but these are all pretty intense and would require me to be in front of the PC. And therein lies the rub… I’m booked up solid, including most evenings during the week and even this coming Saturday. Add the fact that they are geographically distant from me, and it makes it even tougher (if they were reasonably close), I might be able to work something out.

This is a customer I am very fond of, and it pains me that I cannot get to them in a timely manner (The kids are back in school and needing to use it for homework). It also pains me that this PC was completely rebuilt 3-4 months ago, and that it’s hosed up again (PC is roughly two years old). When I rebuilt it, I put a full Internet Security Suite (NIS 2005 Antispyware Edition) and made Firefox their default browser. I really thought I’d minimized their risk profile. Is this PC cursed? Granted, it is in a household where it is shared between both the parents and their four children (ages 6 through High School). So when you think about it in terms of the “computing environment”, perhaps it is at higher risk than the same PC only used by one person. I always tell people that a PC can have the best available protection running on it, all it takes is a couple errant mouse clicks to defeat it.

Coming back to the situation at hand, I brainstormed with the customer on locating a repair resource that can help out. She said a friend might have a PC guy (I offered to discuss their PC’s history if they were available to work on it). Because it’s not a hardware problem, Dell can’t be called in for warranty repair (they have 51 days left on their warranty). I’m not worried so much about losing the business, but rather having them find a competent and reasonably priced onsite repair service. As a last resort, I thought about Geek Squad. I haven’t been able to form an opinion of them since I’ve never seen their work. But they do have a presence at a Best Buy store near this customer. I’ll be keeping tabs on the situation as best I can. Stay tuned.