So I had just installed a new game on my laptop, and I went out on the Internet to find a no-CD patch for the game. Unfortunately, this proved more difficult than usual, as the game had just recently been released, and a no-CD file wasn't widely available. I found the patch only on seedier Web sites, frequented by software pirates.

Ordinarily, I would have skipped the files from these sites and waited until some more-trusted Web sites had the file, but I was scheduled to leave on a business trip the next day and I really wanted to get this game up and running without the disc.

Against my better judgment, I downloaded the file to my local machine and ran the patch. Unfortunately, the patch was actually a Trojan, and it proceeded to download a bunch of particularly nasty spyware on my machine without my knowledge. As soon as I realized what was happening, I powered down the machine -- literally pulling the plug -- but it was too late. The infection had already spread into core components of the operating system.

I spent the next two days trying my best to get all the spyware gunk cleaned out of my machine. Even when it seemed that the infection was gone, I was still plagued by system instability, and for some reason, my "blue screen of death" was actually green.

Finally, I gave up in frustration and resigned myself to a complete reinstall of Windows. I booted my machine into Safe Mode, copied my important data off to a spare hard drive, formatted my C drive and ran Windows Setup.