Hey, Puma, no problem. Using the dark chips can definately become a problem, unless you have some nifty tricks up your sleeve to counter it.
If you haven\'t beaten Duo yet, this may take a while: the most time-consuming but cheapest way to get rid of the Darkness is to beat a whole bunch of tough viruses or navis, preferably the former, while keeping in full synchro. this will slowly bring your karma, which I don\'t think you can measure, back up.
The next way, easier but still taking a long time, is to beat duo 2 times, and getting all 6 soul unisons. yeah, this will be difficult, in fact more difficult than the viruses in the undernet. but once you do, there is...
Spoiler (click to toggle)
a statue in undernet 5 of Bass. this statue will animate after you\'ve gotten all of the unisons and standard chips. beat him, and you gain the opportunity to battle a total of 30 viruses, 10 at a time, for 3 DarkChips. get the other two from viruses and a GMD in the dark navis\' areas (LaserMan and ShadeMan; LaserMan\'s easier in my opinion) respectively, and you can venture into Black Earth. now you\'ve got to get all the basic Navi chips. Collect helps immensely(sp?) in this. the door will open, and you\'ll face off against the dark forms of the navis you soul unisoned with. you\'ll get their chips, then warp to a sectioned off area, and face your own DS form. beat it, and you\'ll get the HubBatch and the SoulCleanser. The SoulCleanser, a NaviCust part, will enable you to heal yourself from darkness in no time at all. HubBatch is your best all around NaviCust program, it gives you HP, a shield, an auto-barrier, etc. but what you want is the SoulCleanser.
Yeah, you\'ll need to go through all that to get it, but it helps immensely.
There is only one way that I know of that is both legal and moral to get lost HP back: you need the E-reader and a card that relates to the game. This card(s) will help you gain back all the HP you lost.
That\'s just about everything I know about the DarkChips and recovering from the effects of them. Hope that helped some!