Why Is It So Hard?

I am computer literate. I know how to do things on my computer. I even have a degree in computer networking. I know this stuff.

I have used Norton’s for a decade now. I am used to Norton’s, I like Norton’s. So far, it has found all viruses and deleted them. Actually, the most astonishing thing I ever got was my sister sending me a virus. But Norton’s caught it.

My computer must be about 13 months old. It came with Norton’s trial for one month and I had a one year subscription to Norton’s as well. It ran out. Yesterday. It has been annoying me for a month, but I kept postponing the inevitable. I also looked at McAfee to see if I wanted to change in midstream. I opted not to do that.

So today there was a huge notice that my computer was vulnerable and the computer bugs were going to ravage my machine and savage my files. I needed to correct this problem or every three minutes another warning notice was going to pop up.

So, I started the arduous journey of updating my system. I was doing both firewall and virus stuff. I opted for the download version since I obviously couldn’t have notices popping up every three minutes for days while Symantec mailed me the disks. Not a problem, I know how to download and all that.

The download didn’t start automatically, but again, I know how to work around that. I finally got the things to download. Notice the plural there? There were two separate, discrete, different [would Roget be proud?] files. Every time it looked like an important page, I printed it out for my records. Good thing I know computers.

So I started to install the anti-virus program. This should be no problem. It didn’t like a spyware program that I had on my computer so I deleted that. Restart as directed [1]. Then I again tried to install the anti-virus program. I got an error message that it couldn’t uninstall Norton 2005, but I told it that I had plenty of space and didn’t mind, please just install 2006. It tried. But it didn’t work because it couldn’t do something about sharing a whole vast gigabytes empty hard drive with a 2005 version. So it uninstalled itself and I had to go online to get a 2005 uninstall utility downloaded. Then it uninstalled the 2005 version. Restart as directed [2]. Then I could install 2006. Restart as directed [3].

Of course I then had to authenticate my new version of Norton’s anti-virus. This takes inputting a 25 character letter/number combination that is helpfully written in a string without breaks or hyphens for uneasy reading. I had the wrong code. So I retyped it. I had the wrong code. Of course, on the paper I printed with my codes, it didn’t say which code went with what program and I had the wrong 25 character code. The other code worked. I was authentic. Did I want to update and get current information? Of course, because without you might just as well have no anti-virus program. So it updated. Restart as directed [4].

Then I had the another program to work with. It installed without incident. Then authenticate. I used the other 25 character code. It worked. But again – restart as directed [5]. The second program, I thought, had a second portion to it. So I installed that. It needed an authentication code. I again typed in the 25 character code. Didn’t work. Checked for errors. Seemed fine. Used the other [insert favorite scatological term here] code and was authentic. This was then installed correctly. Restart as directed [6].

So then I actually scanned my computer for problems. Then did a complete scan for viruses. Since that takes over an hour, I had breakfast, took the dog for a walk, and started some laundry.

My computer is now safe. It took the better part of two hours to get this stuff ordered, downloaded, installed, and my computer restarted so often I was ready to weep. Then another two hours to scan the whole thing.

It’s really hard to believe that computers are our friends. By tomorrow, I will probably be on speaking terms with this machine again. But today, I’m not all that happy with it.