This morning I was up early (for me, during the summer). I planned to work on the blackboard component of my classes - specifically, for the fully online class, which goes "live" on Monday. I was greeted by a black screen - apparently the machine had re-started at some point during the night. An error message about wininet.dll resulted when it tried to load my desktop, and all I got was the wallpaper and screensaver, no icons. It wouldn't go into safe mode, except for the one with the C prompt. Going back to the last good boot didn't stop the error. I could get the task manager by hitting ctrl-alt-del, but it wouldn't run anything. After trying many things, and the feeling of panic starting to set in that I might need to use the repair CD...or worse, maybe it was a hardware problem...

I found this website, followed the steps, and it worked like a charm! Must have been another virus. I fully scanned the system, but didn't come up with anything obvious except for registry errors. But, so far, so good.

The remainder of the day was spent with graduate student emails. Some sticky situations always arise this close to the start of the semester. So blackboard and the Fall online class will have to keep.