From what I understand it's a legacy Unix thing. I honestly don't know the real under the hood reason for it.

Try reinstalling one of the more minor programs you're having a problem with? I'm wondering if your problem isn't a damaged common DLL that a number of programs share for duties like opening files, rather than a malicious virus. This is why reinstalling the operating system in Windows often is the simplest and best cure for a lot of problems.

That's actually a good point. It could be a common DLL. I remember many years ago I had an Outlook Express problem that I solved by replacing a corrupted DLL file. I'll try uninstalling and reinstalling IrfanView, as that's the weirdest one and easiest to mess with.

Dust off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Waaaaaah. The very thought stresses me out, let alone the process.

It's why complete and current backups are something you should always have.

It's why complete and current backups are something you should always have.

Not just current, because the current backups could all have the same current problem.

It's why I try to have install files for all my apps lying around, but then there's the settings issue. It's hard to win any way other than rolling your system back and trying to step forward carefully.

My method is to have complete backups of all my data files that are stored in more than one offline location, and then complete install sets for applications.

Time Machine on the Mac does make it a bit easier to step backwards to an earlier setup.

I've recently switched to saving all of my documents on my iDisk and then syncing those to each of my computers, which keeps a synchronized local copy so that I can access them when not online. It also means that each machine acts as an additional backup.

If I could get Time Machine to back up to a network attached drive it would be more useful.

Plus Leopard hasn't been the most stable.

Leopard won't play nice with half my software, while Tiger does, which is the only thing keeping me from buying a new Macbook.

Yeah, there are certain approved NAS devices that it will work with. I know LaCie makes one, but on the whole it doesn't play well. I've got local Time Machine drives on my studio iMac, office iMac, and workshop iMac. I'm not running Time Machine on my laptop at the moment, but I don't really save anything locally on this machine so I don't see the need. At worst I'd lose a little time reconfiguring software. I tend to keep things close to the default settings when possible since I'm hopping between machines a lot and tend to replace my laptop every 12-18 months.

Le sigh. Reinstalling IrfanView didn't fix the problem.

And now Spybot seems to be stuck in an infinite loop trying to get rid of WildTangent. Okay, I shut it off.

But fuck. I have no idea what's going on, and I don't want to deal with a Windows reinstall right now. I wonder if I can even find my XP discs. And Office. But it looks like that may be the only option?

Have you tried going back to a restore point before all this started, P-C? Outlook Express is part of Explorer, so you could try upgrading Explorer. Then you could try a repair reinstall on Office, since that's common to a couple of your problems. My troubleshooting philosophy is backup your data, set a restore point and then throw things at it and see what sticks.

Why do all those dll files lose their tiny little minds or wander off?