Dang Computer

Yesterday was a day from hell! I could not access the internet, my server, or my e-mail system. It took a a long while to realize that it might be my McAfee virus scan or firewall casuing the problem. So I uninstalled them. Lo and behold I could now go on line and do what I needed to do. But I didn't. First I needed to find the cause of my problem, because I did not want to be without anti-virus protection or a firewall for that matter. But where to begin...

I turned this computer every which way but upside down and I would have done that too if I thought it was going to correct my problem(s). NOTHING WORKED!!! After uninstalling/installing many times (I don't remember anymore), I took a break. When I came back after shutting down, rebooting, and starting up I thought maybe, just maybe, the problem would be solved. NOT!!! Back to square one. It kept telling me it couldn't find my server, and throwing a stupid error message at me.
So I decided to dig in to the error message. I searched every file I could till I was blue in the face, and got absolutely nowhere! It kept telling me it didn't exist. Hold it! How can something not exist when it keeps slapping me in the face?

I finally quit when my husband came home. Took a little break. But at 11:00 PM I was right back on it. After I reinstalled both programs again, I ran a virus scan and nothing was found. I then ran a sweep for spyware/adware and found nothing suspicious. As hard as it was for me to walk away, I finally decided to get some sleep around 2:00 AM.

Needless to say this is the first place I came when I got up this morning. Didn't have breakfast, didn't attend to my rabbit. THIS was important! All my digging and researching and printing off instructions for this or that got me nowhere.
So I held my breath and called my server and explained everything to him. He said it sounded like it was McAfee's software messing with me and I should call them. I couldn't access the internet for their number and I don't keep it on hand so I asked him if he had it. No. But I should uninstall the programs so I could then access the internet and find it myself. Which is what I did. But they don't like phone calls and it would be very long distance. (No 800 numbers here.) I decided to e-mail them. They were very fast in getting back to me and provided me with lots of things to do.

First I was to reinstall the programs. Then one by one I was to decide which one was giving me the problem. So I installed the virus scan first. Now, I have slow dial-up so this wasn't going at a very fast pace. Once installed it revealed not to be the problem. OK, so I install the firewall. Again, no problem. Well what the heck! So now I have both installed and am able to access the internet, use my e-mail system, and have access to my home page. BUT, I still get that freakin' error message. And I still haven't done anything different.

Well, at least if it gives me a problem again I now have instructions on how to hopefully fix it.

And, after one and a half days of sheer hell, I can now go on about my usual business.