After talking to the tech it's apparent the only thing to be done is run a system restore. Even though I agonize over this, we agree it's for the best. I don’t want him to walk me through. I open the two disc set and sliding one in the computer is like spoon feeding medicine to an unsuspecting toddler. It goes in and you wait for the reaction.

On the monitor a blue screen comes up first. Not the right shade of blue to be the blue screen of death, but I feel myself pale nonetheless. I hope it isn’t an omen of things to come. I face that whatever was there is now forever lost. What will be gained is the focus.

It’s like moving. You can start completely over. In your new city you have no history. You’re a clean slate. You get a brand new life. It wouldn’t be much different if I bought a brand new PC. I’m still getting a squeaky clean beginning. Only now, the computer will have more memory. I have become attached to my computer, named the Intelligence Center.
Recovering a PC feels a little like Men in Black using the amnesia inducing laser.
The monitor shows the Intelligence Center racing through all the files, then asks for disc 2. While recopying, most of the files I see are not ones I entered.
When the effort reaches 66% finished, my computer’s becoming so new it may not remember me. It blinks at 100% still running the disc at warp speed, sucking down files like a starving dog wolfs down kibble.

It requests the first disc again. I reinsert one and watch all the files from XP pour in alphabetically. I almost have a sense of going back in time…
When it fires up again (?) I wonder what it will think the date is?
Streaming by so much code, my head could explode. Less than one minute remaining has been on the screen for three minutes. Total time 20 minutes searching for user data and settings.

"To restart press control alt delete." I comply. Restart. Open up. Work, be the happy spunky machine I know you can be. It shuffles through it’s beginnings.
"To restart press control alt delete." No...
"To restart press control alt delete."
"To restart press control alt delete."
I comply four, six... ten more times then I stop.
We are strangers to each other. My machine has been lobotomized.