chinese secret service

It's time to go to bed, but I'm still up. And while my Thinkpad is quietly doing its thing (and certainly taking its time), my old Sony serves as a typewriter. What's going on?

A while back I posted about updating my systems. While the verdict was clear (linux easy, windows hard), I was nevertheless quite delighted with the automated updating tool that lenovo provides - lenovo of course being the Chinese company that bought IBM's PC operations shortly after I bought my notebook. Turns out I was delighted prematurely.

Right at the time of the earlier post, I installed the ThinkVantage Client Security Solution, a piece of software that would make use of the security chip built into my computer and keep evil-doers at bay. Not that I'm surrounded by evid-doers, I just gullibly clicked yes when I was asked whether to install the long list of updates and improvements. And that's probably how the Chinese Secret Service took over my computer (Chinese smart, Andreas stupid), because when I tried to boot the next time, all I saw was a little box telling me that the security system is blocked from interacting with the operating system. Fine.

I was locked out of my computer. That's not too tragic, as linux keep running (and outperforming). But I paid good money for Microsoft Office and Adobe CS and would like to use this software. I needed to get Windows back working.

The smart user that I sometimes imagine I am, I do regular back-ups. I plugged my external hard-disk in, booted the Acronis recovery CD and discovered two things. (Bad news comes in pairs, at least.) First, the latest images of drive C were unreadable because created with a newer version of Acronis than the recovery CD was made with. Second, the oldest image was readable but compromised and thus useless.

Luckily, I found an unused hard disk floating about in my apartment. I put it into my laptop and installed Windows on in with the help of four IBM recovery CDs. Then, which means two hours and about three dozen reboots later, I reinstalled the newest version of Acronis and checked the backed-up images. Five minutes into the process, I started this post, and now the progress bar warns me that three more hours remain. I give up for tonight. Maybe tomorrow morning will greet me with better news. Good night.