an ode to a lost weekend

[tinpra]

The evil Antispyware Soft struck again this past Friday. My heart raced, my palms got sweaty, but I remembered the things that cnet taught me, and I already had the needed software uploaded, so I nipped it in the bud fairly quickly.

Or so I thought.

The first clue that something was wrong was when I was suddenly working in a Windows 98-era desktop. You know...right angles, color gradations, big blocky arial-font numbers. Then I couldn't connect to the internet. So I contacted one of my non-sibs, who's also an IT guy. Bless his sweet heart and soul, he paused the D&D game he was playing with his real-sib to help me. Then he enlisted help of same real-sib, who is also an IT guy, to help me. He got my internet working (woot) and suggested that I check out the Microsoft site to re-download themes. (The brother would later help me fix the themes w/o downloading, but we hadn't thought of that yet.) It worked at first, but my 2nd or 3rd time around the heretofore Microsoft site redirected me to...all sorts of things. Seriously.

To which the brother goes, "I'm sorry but you're still infected, sweetheart." Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I'd already run my MalwareBytes and I was in the middle of running Avira's Luke Filewalker. How could I still be infected w/the evil trojan of doom? Apparently I still was. Then the themes re-died on me, quickly followed by the internet, not to be re-restored. So the brother suggested backing everything up and restoring from the partitioned restore-point. He and his real-sib weren't enthused by a partitioned restore, but it was what I had, so there. That was Friday night until about 11/11:30. I had to be up by 5. Saturday was muy long.

I spent Saturday afternoon/evening figuring out (a) how to make my DVD burner work (not through Microsoft!) and (b) backing up 51.8 gbs of music. Again in bed at about 11/11:30, but I didn't have to be up until 7, so I was a much happier camper. I finished backing up Sunday night, got up around 7:30 today. Did some seriously needed shopping. Came up, tried the restore partition.

MAJOR FAILURE!!!

Worse than major failure. IT WIPED MY OPERATING SYSTEM! (Btw, now might be a good time to mention that I was able to communicate w/the non-sib via blackberry, bless its sweet heart and soul.) Contacted the brother, tried not to freak out, went digging for reinstillation disks which I desperately hoped was sure I had. The bro suggested calling in the big guns....Dell Customer Support. I called, got through pretty quickly, and was basically told that while using the reinstillation disks was a good idea, I was speaking to hardware support and I needed software's pay as you go support. The bro had a few choice non-words on that. Anywho, I took the plunge and went for a full reinstall.

I am, at this moment, up to the 3rd of 14 music disks, having already reinstalled Windows XP, Avira Antivirus, Semagic (love you!), Firefox, ImgBurn (my new friend!), Zune, Trillian, Malwarebytes, SUPERAntispyrware, rkill, all my docs, all my downloaded fanfics, all my pics (including 700+ lj icons!!!), all of the Dell drivers/applications (and what a pill that was), Audacity, CutePDF Writer, and downloaded for the first time OpenOffice b/c I lost my Microsoft Office Suite that my old IT guy so kindly gifted me with. I am sure there are dozens of things I've forgotten. I should have saved my favorites, for example, but I didn't think of it/forgot. There are a handful of things I need to load from disks. And...I don't know. I'm just happy to be able to type again.

Quite unexpectedly, I ran into jaguaarx online during all of this, which was a nice sunny spot on the whole ordeal. Other than conversing w/the bro, I've been totally disconnected from the e-world for days. Days!

And that's my tale of woe. And whoa. Off to reboot. Again.

Comments

[klcthebookworm.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain. Sounds like the fun I had when my hard drive crashed. At least that was old age and not virus insanity. No the virus upchucks have been the work computer. :p

Once you get up and running, if you don't have a backup system already, I highly recommend Mozy. You can set it up to run automatically, get 2GB of storage free, and moving files back after they have disappeared is super easy.

[tinpra.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recommend. Acronis, the original partition-backer-upper totally did me wrong. Part of it was my own lack of knowledge (I'm pretty sure something I tried wiped the OS), but even before I went and got creative the frelling backup wouldn't load! So! Mozy sound swell to me. And whatever other admonitions my e-brother is sure to lathe on me for not being a better backer-upper in the first place. :D

[klcthebookworm.livejournal.com]

I haven't messed with partitions because it never made sense to pretend to have another drive when you physically don't have one. I got another hard drive when Dad had a spare and followed that up with 250GB external flash drive.

[tinpra.livejournal.com]

As you remind me to bump buying an external hard drive up on my list

[wrenel.livejournal.com]

Does. Not. Sound. Fun.
Hope this resolves itself for you soon.

[tinpra.livejournal.com]

It was totally lacking in fun! Fun was nowhere to be seen. And it seems pretty resolved at the moment. :) Thank you for the well wishes. I need all I can get.