If it sounds too good to be true, well, you know the rest of this story...

So, a while back, the friend of a friend of a friend, you know, says he will "give" me one of his three OS loads that he has left over from the Windows 7 software he bought and load it to my PC. It took a while, but I realize now that he gave me more than I bargained for.

He installs the system, leaves and it is working fine..for a while. Now my PC informs me every 30 seconds that "you may have a counterfeit operating system on your pc". Whuhhh??? This ain't gonna work at ALL, but the last thing I'm gonna do is let the super shade tree techie do anything else to my pc again. So tonight after months of looking at this notification blinking and going off and driving me up the crazy tree, I go to Best Buy hoping to find a cheap fix. I waited all this time hoping that by some miracle of technology, the system would just magically revert back to the system I had before. Well, this is where you can insert the title of this post...

I ask the young guy with the earrings that look like tires off of a Hot Wheels car if I buy the "Windows 7 Upgrade", will it "cure" the counterfeit operating system problem? Ok, this kid is working in the SOFTWARE section of the store and his answer is "well, I'm 90% sure it will, but I'm not so sure and to make sure, you might want to ask the Geek Squad over at the Help Desk, just to be sure". Ok, so I'm about ready to throw something around the store at this point and my first choice is the helpful clerk with the spare tires in his ears.

I go to the Geek Squad counter and the lady there gives me the exact answer I do NOT want to hear. "No, it won't fix your problem. As a matter of fact, since the operating system is counterfeit, it more than likely has other issues like shutting down other vital functions...sister, you just don't know.

Rewind, five days earlier. I'm in Wally World window shopping on my lunch break. My beloved has been asking for an external hard drive to dump her pics and other important info on for a while now, so I see this super-duper, highly technological Seagate Free Agent, Go Flex Desk External Hard Drive with, not one, but TWO terrabytes of storage space. Hmmm, TWO terrabytes??? And it was on sale for $99. Ok, that sounds like a deal to me, since a 500 GB external hard drive sitting next to it was $79. It has way more storage space for $20? Well, I might have been born at night, but it wasn't last night....sold.

So, I take it home and unpackage this wonderful, roomy black beauty and plug it in...I said I plugged it in...uhmmm...it's plugged in now PC, aren't you supposed to automatically send up a signal that you see it there and ask if I want to install it? In the real world, yes...but this is MY world. World of the good deals and a fancy new hard drive that is NOT working. So, I spend the next two evenings trying to get the Seagate to marry up with my pc.

Now then, fast forward back to the OH so helpful lady at the Geek Squad desk. After she tells me I can't fix my problem with an upgrade she throws in that "for only $149 more I can buy the software and truly fix the software problem". Well, that's what was supposed to happen when super geek came to my house to load up the OH SO GOOD DEAL OF THE WEEK.

So, I'm thinking, for $449, I can buy a new PC and actually I've been thinking about it, since my beloved has basically overtaken my PC. So I think to myself, since I'm here, I may as well ask her about the Super Duper mega-storage external hard drive with TWO terrabytes of storage . She then refers back to the conversation where she referred to "other issues" and guess what technology fans, this is another problem.

So as I silently plot how I'm gonna off the shade tree techie that got me into this spot in the first place, I ask her "what are my options"? So she says, you can go to the PC manufacturers website and for around $35 - $40 I can download the backup disks to put my PC back to original factory specs. I'm thinking well, that's the way I'm gonna go, a cheap, easy fix. So I ask her, "will I lose any of the files I have on my hard drive?" and her response was something close to, "everything", so I'd recommend backing up your files on disks or to AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE." Uhmm, well, you know where my mind is going now, yes, back to the other conversation where one of the "other issues" is that my PC won't recognize my super-duper, highly technological Seagate Free Agent, Go Flex Desk External Hard Drive with TWO terrabytes of storage.

I'm sitting here at the infected PC now, realizing that the only solution to fix this problem is to:

1.) Buy that new PC way before I wanted to
2.) Connect the two pc's together so I can transfer all of the data on the old PC to the new PC.
3.) Go online and buy the $35 - $45 backup software to get the old PC back to factory specs
4.) Install the factory specs back onto the old PC
5.) Hook up the PC's again and transfer the data BACK to the old PC from the new one.
6.) Delete all of the files from the old PC off of the new one
7.) Try to get the old PC to now recognize the new super-duper, highly technological Seagate Free Agent, Go Flex Desk External Hard  Drive with TWO terrabytes of storage
8.) Make arrangements for my beloved to visit me at the state prison, because you know who the next person I'm going to see is.

Remember friends, if it smells like a duck, sounds too good to be true, then it's definitely a shade-tree techie installing something on your $600 electronic briefcase that AIN'T gonna work.

The Impulsive Texan


"I may not get much done, but I sure am slow"...