I'd like to thank...Microsoft?

I'm not the world's biggest Microsoft supporter, but I'm not their biggest naysayer either. Remember a few years back when the U.S.A. was the #1 technology country in the world? How sure are you that would've happened without the folks in Redmond, WA creating the dominant computer operating system? Who is the better Star Trek captain--Kirk or Picard?

I tend to give most of Microsoft's big new ideas a wide berth for a while. It took me a long time to give up the DOS prompt for the GUI environment of Windows 95 that's now practically synonomous with desktop computing. When the world made the jump to XP I lingered on in relative comfort in Windows 2000 by choice more than anything else. Even after moving on to XP it took me well over a year of daily use before I embraced the XP GUI and jettisoned Windows Classic. So far neither Microsoft nor Google have convinced me that my life would be substantially improved by installing a desktop search engine.

One of Microsoft's big pushes I've been slow to adopt is the "live" nature of Windows Updates. From Windows 2000 I was used to--and comfortable with--manually browsing to www.windowsupdate.com and downloading the latest patches. With XP Microsoft introduced the concept of live updates as a service. I'm generally not a big fan of software on my PC connecting to the internet and downloading updates without my telling it to. It just has a Demon Seed-esque bad idea feel to it. However, when I built my current desktop PC I put a deliberate emphasis on modern technology. Part of this is because I'm an IT professional, and part of it is because I'm a PC geek; either way, I wanted to expose myself to as many current technologies as possible that I hadn't worked with before. I decided to include the "live" feature of Windows Update in that configuration. Of the 3 PCs on my home network, my primary desktop is the only one that automatically receives Windows Updates, then prompts me to install them. Microsoft has been using this method of delivery with much success for the duration of Windows XP's reign, so it's a proven Microsoft technology. Right?

Sure, keep sayin' it.

Last Thursday was Patch Thursday, the monthy release date of Windows Updates. When I logged into my PC after work there was an icon in my system tray politely notifying me that I had a handful of Windows Updates downloaded and ready, and would I care to install them? Having used the service for the past 10 months without incident I had no reservations about accepting the updates and rebooting. But a funny thing happened when I rebooted and logged back in. That's funny strange, not funny ha-ha. I couldn't connect to the Internet. Firefox and IE couldn't find any web servers, Outlook couldn't find my mail servers, and my big bad PC was ostensibly cut off from the wide area world. My cable modem's lights didn't indicate any service disruption, and my router appeared to be working normally too. A quick check with my other PCs showed me that there was nothing wrong with my Internet connection--only the one PC was affected. I began to feel particularly annoyed.

A recurring theme of my job is helping people with Internet connections, so I knew I had a few steps to go through before I had to start scratching my head. The standard methods of restoring my connection bore no results. Furthermore, I could see my other local devices on the LAN just fine, so I knew it wasn't a matter of equipment failure. I checked my network connection's TCP/IP settings against those of my other PCs and could find no settings that had changed. I switched network ports (my motherboard sports two Gigabit adapters) and still could not connect, though I noted that the connectivity lights on the Ethernet ports were normal. I took the router out of the equation by connecting my PC directly to my cable modem. I disabled my firewall, albeit only briefly, just enough time to test my connection. (The last I heard it took a non-firewalled XP PC exposed to the Internet 8 minutes to get infected. Practice safe computing, folks. Get a quality firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, and a router with NAT, even if you only have one PC.) Then I remembered the third hard drive in my PC, sitting nearly forgotten due to the Creative X-Fi's total lack of Linux support. I rebooted my PC into Ubuntu Linux, which apart from not being able to work with my hot shit sound card I like very much. When you can connect to the Internet in Linux on the same PC that Windows fails on, you know Microsoft has seriously left your cheese in the wind.

Anger flared. The desire to destroy small shatterable objects arose briefly but was not indulged. Instead I decided to listen to Mastodon's new CD "Blood Mountain" really fucking loud for a few minutes, then fly around space blowing shit up in DarkStar One. It's good therapy, and you don't have to clean up broken glass afterward.

My PC remained isolated throughout Friday. I had a tooth pulled Friday morning, so I wasn't exactly in the mood for heavy troubleshooting. I checked once in a while, hoping that what magically broke would magically fix itself. I knew better. Microsoft magic don't flow that way. More loud metal. More dead space pirates.

Saturday morning, armed with two little cups of applesauce and a whole day of free time, I decided to dig into the problem a little more. The restarting of services and checking of the hosts file were among the ideas of mine that failed to produce any results. I even turned to yet another big MS idea--restore points--to get back onto the Internet, but rolling my system back to before Thursday night didn't work either. On one of my other PCs I spent a good long time looking through the MS Knowledge Base and the Windows Update Newsgroup for some guidance but came up emptyhanded, a fact I was more than happy to espouse about when Microsoft picked the wrong day to ask me to participate in a customer satisfaction survey. The point I tried to make to those on the other end of the survey was that if Microsoft was going to fuck up my system by installing critical security updates, the least they could do is prominently post a fix on their website. Is that too much to ask? I don't think so.

Fucking Microsoft.

Charter is my ISP, and I've loved them for the two-and-a-half years I've subscribed to their hi-speed cable service. They even have decent customer service. I knew my problem wasn't their fault, but I was fresh out of ideas. Maybe they'd be able to help. I gave them a call on their toll-free number and spent a few minutes grunting at the automated assistant until a live tech support agent became available. I explained my problem and what I had done to troubleshoot it to him, and he actually appeared to listen and, for the most part, understand. He tried a few things that were decent suggestions but didn't pan out. Finally he gave me a toll-free number with which to contact...Microsoft! The very cause of my plight, and he was suggesting I call them for help?! To be honest, the thought had never crossed my mind.

I had little faith that calling Microsoft and suggesting they fix what they had broken (I'd be more polite than that, of course.) would do anything but make my still uneaten applesauce get a little warmer, but I was out of options, so a free tech support line sounded better than another day of checking my email through Charter's sluggish web interface on my wife's PC. (That the tech support line was free was not a given. Years ago I had a company try to charge me $75 for a tech support call to determine whether or not their $20 network card was compatible with my motherboard. That was a card that went back to the store.) At this point I had all but resigned myself to spending the rest of the weekend backing up my data and reinstalling Windows. Warm applesauce mocking me from my desk, I dialed.

I was immediately connected to a call center in Redmond, India. My already low spirits sank to igneous depths. Other tech support calls I've placed that have wound up in India have been of the script-reading variety. I was pleasantly surprised. The woman I spoke with seemed to know what she was talking about, spoke well, and listened to what I had to say. She ran through a bunch of troubleshooting steps with me, some of which I had done previously. (I know how help desks work. Even if the customer says they've already tried X you still have to have them go through it with you, so if you have to escalate the call you can say, "Yes, I tried that.") Then she had me set a system restore point (once again trying to use one Microsoft technology to save me from another) and uninstall all my network interfaces from within Device Manager. I had no particular reason to believe this would work any better than the couple dozen or so other things I had tried, but I did find it to have one unexpected perk: removing the nVidia network adapter allowed me to uninstall the nVidia firewall associated with it. Of the two NICs built into my motherboard I use the Marvell Yukon instead of the nVidia; nVidia's firewall program works only with its NIC, and with no apparent way to uninstall it I've been having to manually close it from the system tray each time I reboot for the past 10 months. No more of that, so I've already gotten my money's worth from this free tech support call.

I rebooted the PC and expected Windows to rediscover my nVidia, Marvell, and IEEE 1394 NICs and prompt me to provide drivers, but it did not. My tech support agent prompted me to go back into Device Manager, and when I did I found all 3 NICs right there, ready for use. I fired up Firefox, and lo and behold, the web showed the first signs of XP-related life in three days! Outlook pulled down mail from my three addresses. Light returned to the world. The urge to give up on computers and persue a degree in aromatherapy subsided. Space pirates would once again be slaughtered, but this time I'd be able to check for a new patch first!

I didn't think I'd say this until I'm nothing but a disembodied brain and spinal cord floating in a jar of life-sustaining futuristic liquid, but I was very happy with my Microsoft India tech support experience. Wow, just typing that feels strange. It's true, though. That was probably the finest overseas tech support I've ever dealt with. Actually no, about a year ago I talked to a Taiwan-based tech support office for Corsair memory and spoke with two guys who answered my question in a minute flat and actually seemed to have fun doing it. That was the best, but the Microsoft call was right up there. Yes, Microsoft broke my PC, but then they fixed it. And they did it for free. And they didn't even ask me for my product key.

Since restoring my Internet connection I've downloaded the 32-bit Release Candidate 1 of Windows Vista, Microsoft's upcoming operating system slated to replace XP early next year. I'm going to be blowing that Linux installation away to check out first the 32-bit, then the 64-bit preview versions of Vista. Microsoft initially promissed the moon with Vista, but over the past year has disappointingly thinned out its list of key features. I'm just hoping it doesn't suck, because it's apparently going to be the only way gamers like me will be able to get DirectX 10. That means by this time next year gamers will have no choice but to pony up for a copy of Vista if they want to see the latest generation of graphics improvements. I greet every major new operating system from Microsoft with a mixture of hope, curiosity, and dread. I love exploring new operating systems, but I know from past experience that the introduction of new versions of Windows are frequently marred by unexpected complications, unsupported software/hardware, and new features that turn out to be far less useful than the Redmond camp would like you to believe. The chance to check it out in nearly complete form months before it's commercially available--legally--is pretty sweet. I'm looking forward to getting familiar with it and putting it through its paces.

Don't fuck me at the drive-thru, Bill.