All you PC owners know the symptoms. You have a Windows unit that's been running for months, if not years, accumulating software. Then you start to notice little glitches...a few more yellow exclamation points in the device list. An idiosyncracy or two. A cryptic warning of some obscure file that doesn't load properly at startup. Your computer still runs, but it isn't quite right in the head any more.

This is "computer senility," which seems to affect any PC that's been running for a long time. Something deep in the system is corrupt, and the only sure fix is a complete wipe and reload. I have yet to see a diagnostic that will dive into Windows, fix only the files that need fixing, and come back out again. Microsoft's own repair system is a joke, amounting to a system reload under another name.

My main PC is in pretty good shape. The only weirdness is when I installed a USB Maxtor backup drive. The system was unable to install any drivers. Neither was I. But oddly, the drive runs just fine, yellow exclamation point and all. "If it works, don't fix it," but it still bothers me.

My laptop, I believe, has been bollixed by spyware. The finder is messed up so that clicking open more than one folder crashes the finder. It reloads immediately, but I can't work that way. When I did a low-level disk fix, a sea of corrupted files swam across my screen for a full three minutes before repairs were complete. Most seemed to be cookies described by Ad Aware as "data miners." Bastards. Cause and effect? Who knows? I don't know how to fix it short of a rebuild.