Thursday, December 17, 2009

Done by a virus

Chaos at the Seabee computer.

A bloody virus got past the protection and destroyed everything.

Throw it away and buy a new one was my immediate thought but Mrs Seabee called the computer wizard she uses for her office machines. He came round yesterday evening, accessed places I had no idea existed, did whatever it was he did and here I am back in cyberspace.

The next couple of days are going to be taken up trying to put all the stuff back in that was destroyed, like favourites and contacts. I'm having to find all my user names and passwords too so it's taking a while.

Fortunately I back up most of the important stuff with a pen on paper, so I haven't lost it. Being old-fashioned can be a blessing.

I lost all my e-mail folders though, and I hadn't pen&papered all my contact addresses. Idiot! I'll have to wait for friends and family to send me e-mails so that I can get their addresses. This time they go in the book as soon as they arrive.

We, or rather he, managed to retrieve my photograph files. I'd been meaning to back them up for ages, but hadn't got around to it. You know how it is.

By the way, his name is Dilip, he's highly recommended if you have a problem. He forgot to leave his card and I can't raise Mrs Seabee on the phone so I can't give you his contact details at the moment. I'll do that in a follow-up post just in case you ever need him.

Anybody want to join a vigilante group to hunt down and deal with the bastards who create and spread viruses? I'm getting some satisfaction from planning what I'll do with them if we ever catch them.

6 comments:

Mazhar Mohad said...

Its always ideal to have a sync of all your contacts and calendars onto your mac (or pc), phone and google/yahoo accounts. By that way, you have 2 backups.

Seabee said...

Agreed - I did it with some but I hadn't got around to copying all of them. I've learned my lesson.

hut said...

Vigilante group - count me in!

Anonymous said...

TAKE IT EASY: SIMPLY SWITCH OFF TO A MAC (VIRUSPROOF AND WITH 'TIME MACHINE' AUTOMATIC BACKUP YOUR LIFE WILL CHANGE.

Magnus Nystedt said...

You don't say but I think I can safely assume you're using Windows. Of course a Mac is not virus proof but currently there are no wire/worm/trojan problems with Mac OS X and the OS's been out since 2001.

Sorry to hear about your problems. It happens to way too many people.

Cat Russell said...

Sorry to hear about your virus nightmare, glad to see you back online though!

I have 2 external hard-drives that I use for backups, one to mirror the other, which I started doing after a friend's external hard-drive crashed and he lost all his photos.

Please do post Dilip's details when you can (if you haven't already), always useful to know someone like that.

Have a good Christmas. :-)