The devil is in the operating system... maybe

Over the past week I've been several calls or messages a day from a friend who has been trying to figure out why his laptop takes forever to startup. The calls range from excited "I've found it" type messages to depressed resignation to the fact that "it" whatever it may be, will never be found. Apparently the laptop didn't use to behave this way so as the resident PC expert in his life we suspected anything from a configuration problem, virus to spyware. Either way, to the uninformed one might conclude his laptop is possessed by some nasty daemon. Now this guy is not a computer neophyte, he's written an real-time operating system, debugged embedded systems with his bare hands, and been a CTO of a multi-billion dollar company. But somewhere along the line he resigned from his duty of keeping up to date with the details of computer maintenance and that just about coincided with Microsoft Windows becoming the prevalent desktop platform.

So in the past week I've given him the low down on his registry, where all the startup program hide and how to use 'msconfig' or 'regedit'. I've given him Norton System Works (tip buy: last years version from eBay, a snip at $6 or less!) to clean up his invalid registry entries and remove IE plugins and ActiveX cruft, Ad-Aware to scan for spyware, and pointed him to Sandra 2004 to check all his system hardware configuration. Giving remote assistance its a slow process, you know how it is trying to get an exact explanation of the "all I did was" or "I didn't change anything" scenarios that inevitbly preceed dire straits. To date we've removed a lot of redundant cruft, and found one spyware program NewDotNet which was something particularly incidious lurking in his network stack that even I hadn't heard of yet. I guess I should have, however I tend to stay well away from programs that contain any spyware - its been a couple of years now since I fell victim to anything like that.

However, as far as I know, the truth is still out there and the laptop is still misbehaving. I'm hoping to avoid a "laying on of hands" session - if I'm lucky I'll depart on my vacation before that becomes necessary. I know this guy has probably spent the best part of 20 to 40 hours on this problem now and I'm about ready to recommend he back up the personal data and reinstall the OS, or at least try a system repair.

In the mean time I'm reminded that unauthorized modifications to the system code is one of the things that the next major version of Windows aka "Longhorn" is supposed to cure once and for all. Apparently much maligned data protection features that are being built in at the hardware level will also be turned to protect the operating system itself from modification. The use of data protection for enforcing copyright protection is highly contentious - it seems, that like on the freeway, everyone wants to be free to break the law even though they know its illegal to do so. Maybe that is just part of freedom - freedom to transgress the rules of society for whatever reason and freedom to experience the loss of freedom. However using data protection to protect the neophyte, or not so neophyte computer user from having to think about viruses and spyware is an emminently sensible thing to do. I'm not entirely sure how the protection of the OS from viruses and the like will work - if a program wants to install and pops up the classic license dialog with some disclaimer in 1point text way down at the bottom, how is the OS supposed to differentiate legitimate user approved installations of software from installation of spyware or other updates of drivers etc.?

Maybe future versions of Windows will, by default, be configured in such a way that only software digitally signed by Microsoft can be installed. After my last week of experience I'm begining to wonder if this isn't such a bad idea. For a certain class of computer users I'm sure there is a very strong case to be made for having the computer pre-configured and permanently locked in a mode where system maintenance, including installing programs can only be done remotely by a Microsoft support person or agent. This might actually save a bundle of cash on calls from people who went in and deleted half their system files, or messed with the registry or something like that. These things can be painfully slow to diagnose and debug and its probably just better to never let people get into this mess in the first place. So what about freedom? Well sometimes you've gotta earn freedom or pay a price to keep it. In this case I think 95% of computer users really don't need the freedom to install anything but approved off the shelf packages and should be given a discount for enduring blissful ignorance of the world of pain that awaits them once they start installing at will all the random junk that is lurking out their on the Internet. One benefit of having such a system could be that a higher degree of accountability could then be placed on software vendors for damage their software may cause. After installing a certain package the system becomes "unstable" its much easier to point the blame and seek recompense or at the very least remedial action. A company could no longer shirk its responsiblity and blame viruses or some other user action for the problems.

In the mean time I wont hold my breath waiting for Longhorn, and I'll continue to swaddle myself with anti-virus protection, firewalls, and the usual armoury of system utilities that are necessary to keep clean and free in the age of Internet Enlightenment.