A few days of suckitude...

[NFG]

So a few days ago MSBlast ripped me a new one.  Or tried to, it exploited a security hole I had more or less patched already, so although I was infected I didn't see the string of reboots that many others did.  I kicked its ass without breaking stride, in fact.  

Then I tried to upgrade my windows and boy, that's a bad call.  Or rather, trying to change your registry key so you COULD upgrade is a bad idea.  Basically all my settings and config were lost, so my networking went down.  Here's what I learned after no less than three solid days of working on it:

Windows Networking Sucks.  Here's why: It doesn't update all the settings reliably every time.  Some settings are only set by certain procedures, so while the first-time setup might set a networking flag to A, for example, another procedure might set it to B.  Trying to change it back to A might be tricky if, and this is the case, some parts of the network setup utilities don't do their fucking job.

Bottom line: Windows networking will randomly set your shit up based on what utilities you run, what values you change, and in what order you do it.  Fuck you, microsoft - your software is shoddy and I consider the successes I've had with it to be a result of only luck and my unnatural skills.

Mostly luck.