As a few people may know, I spend some of my time at Columbia as a kind of low-level computer repairman: when someone's computer breaks, I'll do my best to get the data off and fix it. [1] For some reason, there's been a lot of it going around the last three days. I've come across three computers with faults in either the boot sector, the registry or a corrupt file in the C:\Windows directory. It's a fairly easy fix: load up a Windows XP CDROM, use Recovery Console to get to a command prompt, use the magic words "CHKDSK /p" and "CHKDSK /r"[2], and then wait two hours while the hard drive puts itself back together.

But I'm a bit mystified to see three of these at once: it's not a very common fault, at least in my experience. I'd expect to do this once a term, not thrice in three days. Anyone know of a virus going around that causes this kind of damage?

Anyway, that's why you've not heard much from me. My blogging time has been spent on other computers, doing some reading while gradually banishing the Blue Screen of Death.

[1]: Yes, I fix computers for Democrats, too. And I've never yet succumbed to the temptation to put a really big picture of Karl Rove on the desktop, then use the Profile Manager to disable their ability to customize the desktop...

[2]: Please note that this is no advice of any kind, only what I've done to fix things. Whatever you do, PLEASE don't base any attempted fix on what I've written above. Do your own research and find solutions from websites that claim to be competent to handle these things. This is a law student website, and that should tell you something about the quality of the computer advice you're going to get here.