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If you ever find yourself in need to reinstall you computer or if you are installing a new computer I recommend doing the following. I wanted to find a way to skip the installation process of Windows all together. I’ve done it so many times. I hate the update process, and all the drivers to install. I started looking for a way to create a bootable disk that could restore my computer to a completely updated Windows installation with all my drivers and a few of my more useful pieces of software.

DriveImage XML is a great piece of software that can create an image of your whole drive. It’s very easy to use. After I got everything installed just like I wanted it I used this to create my image. That is in essence my restore point.

BartPE was created for the purpose of having a much better system administration and restore platform than the Microsoft restore functions on the Windows install disk. It uses your Windows install disk to create an ISO you can burn to disk. It also allows you to include plugins and extra files you may need. That way I could incorporate DriveImage XML and my restore image into BartPE.

Once done I needed to test it to make sure it worked like I wanted it to. There was only one way to really test it. I booted from the BartPE disk I made. From there I could browse the hard drive. Booting from the disk is a lot different that restoring the whole hard drive. I opened the version of Explorer that is included and I deleted the entire contents of the drive. Everything was gone. I then started DriveImage XML and performed the restore process. Once done I rebooted to the restored hard drive with no problems at all.

The whole restore process took roughly thirty minutes. That makes me happy.

I got a virus that’s been going around. It really knocked me for a loop. I only wish I was talking about the kind of virus that you go to the doctor for. I caught the kind that kills your computer.

I downloaded a program last night. I scanned it with AVG to see if it contained a virus. AVG said it was clean, “No Threats Found”. I ran the program and that’s when it started. I noticed almost immediately that it was the wrong thing to do. It replaced my desktop background with an image that said I was infected with a virus. It even had a link to purchase their software to remove it. I run a program that alerts me when something tries to add itself to the Windows startup. It started popping up boxes saying the this or that program is trying to register itself for the startup, and it was asking if I wanted to allow that change. I was clicking no like crazy. Then AVG got into the mix. It started popping up alerts that this or that threat was detected. I quarantined several files in that process.

I eventually did find out what virus I got, and I found instructions on removing it. I rebooted to go into safe mode to carry out the instructions. I never booted up into safe mode, or any other mode again. At that point the box was dead. It would get to the Windows loading screen and reboot. It was an endless cycle.

Thank goodness I got a USB thumb drive recently. It arrived on Monday. I had just finished backing up all my mission critical files a few minutes before the virus hit, and the thumb drive just happened to not be plugged into the computer.

Now I’m looking for a new virus scan program, and I can add another notch to the many many times I’ve formatted and installed Windows on a computer. I hate that process, yet it’s so familiar.

Today was a good day. I was invited to go see a Third Day concert followed by the Pepsi 300 Nascar race held at The Nashville Superspeedway. I had never been to a race or a Third Day concert.

Third Day is amazing. They have great music, and their live performance is incredible. The played a lot of songs I like but I didn’t know who sang it. It was pretty cool to hear the music I listen to on The Fish played live, and played well. Soon after they got done the race was under way.

Most of the race was led by the number 20 car driven by Kyle Busch. As he was coming around the last turn towards the stands he seemed to lose traction in the rear wheels. He slid into the grass, and was able to recover fairly quickly. The next time around he took a pit. After that he was done. He went from 1st place to not showing on the top 15 board. He and the number 2 car driven by Clint Bowyer had battled over 1st place up to this point. After that the battle was between Clint Bowyer and the number 29 car driven by Scott Wimmer. Wimmer passed Bowyer with 21 laps to go and held onto the lead for the victory.

I found myself rooting for the number 20 car. He held the lead for the entire first 60 laps. He was in second for two or three laps when he got out of the pits late. Everyone went in because there was a yellow flag. He went in first and came out second to car number 2. A couple laps later he retook the lead and for the most part held it until he slid off into the grass. Until I got home and looked it up in Google I didn’t even know who was driving the car. All in all I had a great time. Next time I’ll take some kind of hearing protection. It was a little loud.

Third Day	Flying Flag 1
Flying Flag 2	Flying Flag 3
Pit Row	The Race Begins
Fighting for 1st Place	The Victor