Reformatting my life

When Kevin got his new PC, it had XP on it.  The old PC has ME, which we hate.  I tried to reformat the hard drive to get rid of all the crap that comes with use.  It got to 65% 3 times and errored out.  Wouldn't do it.  Finally, I reformatted with Kevin's reinstall XP disc.  It worked great, but told me that I had 30 days to "authenticate" it. (I don't remember the word, but it's not the same as registering)  Several people told me that it wouldn't work on a second system, but I was willing to ride out those 30 days.  Those days ended last weekend.

I decided to try ME again, and it reformatted flawlessly!  I think it was so unstable before, that it wouldn't allow it.  I reformatted last night, and life was good.  I didn't d/l the antivirus, thinking I would do it tonight.  I forgot that the 16 yo was home today.  He SOOOO screwed everything up.  He still doesn't admit to doing so much as launching a browser, but I had 12 programs running that I don't recognize.  Those annoying types that come with downloads.  I couldn't uninstall most of them.  I couldn't reformat!  Hell, I decided to start over again, and they were all still there.  I was so mad at that boy! 

Kevin stopped at WalMart on the way home for cold medicine (he's dyin', I swear) and while he was there, picked up a copy of Win XP!  We can't afford it, but damn if it didn't fix all my problems!  I loaded it, load AOL for the kids, set up all of the logons as "user" except for mine (you ain't downloadin' shit, boy) and life is good!  I hate that he spent the money, but at the same time, I'm glad to have control back.  I HATE Win ME.  It is a crap system that should have allowed XP as a free patch.

Anyway, that's how I spent my evening.