After I got that trojan and all traces malware off my machine, things went fine for a few days. Then the bluescreens increased dramatically. It took me a few days to narrow it down to a failing hard drive, which by the way, was the thing I suspected before finding that trojan… So, I basically spent almost two months fixing the wrong thing.

I figured it’d be easy enough to pop in a new drive and reinstall Windows. But, of course, this laptop came preinstalled and I never wasted a thought on backing up my system. After all, all my important files are backed up online. Big mistake. Turns out the motherboard will only accept an Asus specific version of Windows 8, which I’d have to buy from them. Since I was already playing with the idea of switching to Linux, that wasn’t happening. I just didn’t want to switch cold.

After a lot of back and forth and trying to force 8 on this machine, I caved and made a Windows 10 install iso. Of course, that worked and the stupid thing even activated itself somehow. Despite my not entering a product key…

Thing is, I went for a new HDD rather than a new laptop to avoid Windows 10 and it’s so much worse than I’d feared. I don’t like the way it looks or the way it handles. I’m running Linux Mint Mate in a virtual box now to get myself used to it while I finish up a few things I don’t want to try and port over just yet.

I’ve known for a while that this would be my last Windows machine. I just didn’t expect it to be so soon.

I guess this is goodbye.