The Stallion rises from the grave

The PC in the dungeon, nickname Stallion, is now back and functioning as best as I can expect.

Fixing the USB problem -- no mouse, no thumbdrive, printer, scanner, external HD, PODxt, camera, etc. -- was easier than expected. I went to Device Manager and opened the USB connections. I opened Properties for the first one on the list and clicked Update Driver. Windows said "oh yeah, right, I forgot about that... you need new drivers for this thing ... gimme a sec" and pulled together a USB 2.0 driver for the whole pile of ports. Ta-da! You have a new mouse! Wanna use it? Oh, and a thumbdrive! How keen!

Now it's on to installing all these Windows updates. IE7 came in smoothly. A couple of security updates installed fine. But Service Pack 3 is giving me the same headaches as SP2. I may just learn to live without it and concentrate on backing stuff up, slipstreaming a new Windows+SP3 install CD and setting fire to the whole C: drive.