I got one of those bad, bad very bad computer viruses today, the kind Mac users gloat about. (Not you guys though.)
It came in an email from someone I like, and was loaded with those kinds of cute :))))))))))) symbols that let me know of course it was from her, and indeed with this kind of virus the friend doesn't send it-- it just sucks up the Outlook email addresses and sends it on to everyone in the address book. I don't use Outlook. I even looked at the cc names on the email and thought gee, this must be something really outstanding. duh.
I have all kinds of virus and cookie tracking detectors plus Firewall on, so I didn't give it a thought, except that it was sort of naive of her to send an .exe file when everyone knows they can be dangerous. Um, everyone? Guess not!!! Sally says so!
Right away I could see that something was very wrong, and I struggled along, downloaded a program that detected it but after trying to remove it the computer restarted with less than a full deck. I had to do a clean wipe of my C drive, so now it's back like brand new in 2005-- kind of weird and a giant pain.
It could be worse though. I'd made the restore discs when I bought the computer and never had to use them until now, but there they were in a drawer. All my files are on a backup drive or the D drive, so it's just that now I have to reinstall every program I use and hope I have the id numbers saved for them.
8 comments:
Ouch!
This is way too much to bear.
This sounds just awful.
What a pain!
What kind of jerk writes these viruses? Sabotaging someone's computer is just like burning down someone's art studio or library.
Mr. Mean's computer died last night!
Did Mr. Mean get a virus? I've almost got mine back together again, still working on the programs. This particular nasty is known for seeking out external hard drives too so they were also hit.
In case it's of use for anyone in the future, I used Bit Defender 2009 Total Security for the Virus itself, then in addition I picked up some malware which caused any google question to misdirect to an advertisement on first click. That came out with autorun eater from cnet.
I can't get the screen to LOOK the way I like though, scrappy looking fonts, and may have lost all my carefully organized bookmarks. Plus all those cookies/passwords...
I feel badly for the gal whose email account was sabotaged-- there were so many people on the cc list and I'm sure some of them were just as dumb about it as me.
awful---worse than bad--what is the name of the virus?? was there really no way to remove it?
Weds: How's it going today?
p.s. Did you lose work?
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