Viruses Suck
Last week I took off Monday and Tuesday using some leftover vacation days so that I could spend a considerable amount of time working on a new product review blog I would be launching. This is my most ambitious project yet specifically because of how much time it will take daily to maintain it. So at the beginning of my four day weekend on Saturday morning I decided to download a few fonts for my video game fonts website before really getting into the heavy work…
Blam! Literally the very first font I tried to download gave me an extra present – a Trojan Virus! Moments after I clicked the download link my AVG Free popped up numerous virus notifications and then my computer shut down. I tried to restart the computer regularly to no avail. Instead I had to get on through safe mode and then I tried using a system restore point. I was relieved to see that the system restore point worked and I was at least able to boot my computer regularly; however, after the restore was finished I ran an AVG Free complete scan on my computer and the virus was still there. (perhaps that serves me right for being cheap on my AV solution).
So after numerous sessions of going back and forth between trying various strategies I read about online about how to remove this virus, I concluded it was impossible, or rather that I was too stupid to complete this task. After deeming this “super” virus the victor in the battle over my computer’s fate I decided to drop the proverbial bomb – reformat the hard drive and start fresh. Brushing aside concerns over the viruses ability to hop onto my external hard drive, I proceeded to pull all of my documents off the computer in preparation for the purge. No one could tell me what type of virus I had or it’s ability to hop onto my external hard drive so I just decided to go with it. After I had everything transferred I decided that now would be a good time to give Vista a shot again. I originally built my computer back in August 2007 and used Vista as my OS but dropped it in favor of Win XP after I received numerous inexplicable blue screen of death errors.
This time I decided to go with Vista 64 bit and after running it for about 3 days now everything has worked fine. Looks like the various patches and fixes to the OS are working for my system. I’m sure there are many of you out there that still don’t trust Vista, but so far so good *fingers crossed*
In any case, the weekend ended up being a huge waste of time because not only did I not get any work done on my new product review blog I also spent a ton of time playing Fable 2 on my last day off.
What horror stories have you had with viruses?
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I know man how it can be a waste of time and really frustrating! Fortunately, I never had such horror stories with viruses. I’ve heard a lot from other people, but nothing very bad ever happened to me…And I don’t run an AV! Shame on me I guess… hehe
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I feel your pain! The last virus attack I got from a peer to peer file sharing site and it ate my entire hard drive! I was not able to recover anything at all and it took me days to re-install everything on a new PC.
I now, make sure I update my Virus protection daily. No more clicking the I will update latter button.
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Chris! Get A Mac! LOL
Nah, I’m not a freak that runs around hating on Windows, but since I switched (2 years ago), I’ve had about 800% less computer problems (add that up – it’s a lot of productivity time!).
A computer is a computer, and you’ll get problems, but lets’ face it, Vista sucks and Windows is annoying.
I have Windows installed on my Mac and also use XP, but I open Windows as little as possible. lol
I was always having to “clean out crap, scan for more crap, and download / install patches, fixes, and service packs”. That’s about 98.8% gone now (I occasionally have to install Mac OS updates).
Anyway, if you ever think you need convincing, hit me up on Skype, and I’ll have you running to the Mac store that day
Good luck with the fix.
Cheers!
Jay
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Hey Jay,
I hear ya. One of my best friends – the same guy that is my Critic is a hardcore Mac fan. I’m definitely going to look at moving Mac next time time around but because my current machine is only 1.5 years old I need to wait a little longer before I do an upgrade.
Yah, I also would just run parralels or VMware fusion so that I could have Windows running on my Mac.
Chris Guthrie´s last blog post..Viruses Suck
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Am I the ony one with no Vista issues? LOL Oh and my free AVG runs daily.
Dennis Edell´s last blog post..Oct.’08 Post Round-Up for Direct Sales Web Marketing
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People spam me all the time and I run Anti-Virus all the time. I don’t know what the thought process is behind launching viruses, but I despise them.
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