After spending an entire day (between customers) trying to restore a Dell laptop computer, I thought I’d have one more go at it today. It is a few years old, but in its day (in computer terms, years are like decades…) it was a blazing little machine. It arrived completely dead.

Fortunately, I had a restore disk that was included with an earlier purchase and it brought the little Dell back to life. Everything, that is, except an internet connection.

I scoured the web from my other machine, trying to find the necessary files that would enable a connection. Scattered everywhere around the internet were similar searchers looking for the same file, same machine. There were several solutions offered, and I downloaded them all, hoping each time that it would be the last. This morning when I fired up the store computer, it advised me that some program on the machine was trying to connect with the internet.

One of the files I had downloaded (and it didn’t even contain the right file!) was a rogue program intended to communicate with some other Borg unit or something. The program, disguised as a downloader, is called MediaGet. Don’t get it. Don’t let it onto your machine. It turns out it was developed in Russia (nothing against Russians, but I keep thinking of James Bond and 007 and this is a lot like a spy program). Here is what another web site said about MediaGet:

P2P.MediaGet is a malicious bittorrent client that pretends to be the actual file the user wants. It uses a timer within the installer to proceed with installing adware like Babylon toolbar without the users consent.

I removed the program immediately after being advised it was trying to connect to the internet on its own.

Presumably, the other people who were searching like me found their solution. Viewing the posted queries is almost depressing. The frustration was obvious in the posted comments. I can tell you, I was mightily frustrated yesterday. Every curative I applied failed. I gave up about 7pm.

This morning, I thought I’d try it one more time.

I scoured through the search results, bypassing the links that I had visited yesterday. Page after page of people searching for the same file for the same computer had posted notes. Many had similar situations to repair – dead machines, hard drive failures, downgrades from Vista to XP. No one had a clue as to where to find the file.

Finally. In no uncertain terms, someone had writted the words “This is the file.”

http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R174291.exe

I’m repeating it here, in case anyone else is trying to repair a Dell Latitude D630 and cannot connect to the internet.

At this moment, I’m sitting here looking at the Google search screen on that very machine, well connected to the internet, with a grin on my face.