Smiert Spionam

Problems with my laptop came to a head today. After it blue-screened three times within an hour of trying to play online poker, I called the Blue Yonder helpline intending to bang the virtual desk and demand a new modem. Instead the guy asked me to run a couple of DOS utilities, one of which was netstat. He asked me how many lines starting "TCP" were output. When I said "about 100" I could almost hear him sucking his breath in through his teeth like a car mechanic. He said he'd never had anyone tell him more than 30 before.

I don't understand these things (if I can't see the code I don't want to know) but apparently these were all locations that my laptop was sending messages to. He recommended SpyBot to clear it out and that did indeed reduce the number of TCP outputs to zero. That didn't stop the blue-screening entirely but after some more tortuous fucking about with device manager I was able to force-feed it some newer USB drivers, and I cleared out as many cookies and cache files as I could and finally managed to download something I've been trying to download all weekend, which feels like some kind of achievement. Hopefully now I can play online again without thinking "make your fucking play before I blue screen" every time I'm dealt Aces.