New computer/ old one got ate by virus-worm?

[bogydave]

Got some kind of virus & it just went down hill from there.
Was a week + trying to get everything back, but no luck.
Never got email to work again. Had security software Mcafee, but it blew right thru & corrupted it. Bad what ever it is/was. Microsoft & Dell no help, they ,well never mind.

So got a new one. 1st time on site with new machine, it works.
Been too busy to do much computer stuff anyway.
Will try to get (needed/wanted, mostly pictures) info from the old machine to the new one this Fall/Winter.

It was time to update anyway. Better screen & faster.

Workbench has gotten scratched, dinged but holding together so far.
Hope everyone is having a great summer.

[Don]

Glad to see you back. Sorry about the virus - I just battled some kind of glitch myself on the home unit. The wife opens every cutesy thing that is sent to her.

It's hot here, projects have moved into the shop.

dawjr

[aschueler]

Back before there was windows and the world wide web, Mcafee was a good product.

Something has happened along the way and I swear I've worked harder to get that program off friends' computers than anything else.

Try Panda instead; there's even an online scanner that's free. It won't remove anything, but will give you an idea what's going on.

I haven't had a virus in many, may years and I don't even have firewall software. Of course I do have a router (two kinds, eh?) that functions as a hardware firewall. Microsoft and Dell would DEFINITELY be useless in the situation you are describing.

Currently I mostly run Linux (ubutunu), and as far as I have seen there are very few if any threats of virus.

[old_guy]

Time to switch to a MAC

[Don]

I started on a McIntosh in 1983. The box costs $1799 and I had a - then unheard of - internal hard drive installed for another $1899, it was only 10meg. I remember to this day sitting on my seat in the airplane and watching the baggage handler throw it onto the conveyor as I was screaming behind the glass, "Noooooo!" When I got DesMoines for my business meeting and turned it on, only a clattering sound came from within. (turned out to be only a loose cooling fan)

How far we've come, huh. I may go back to Mac one day.

dawjr

[BiscuitSlayer]

The wife opens every cutesy thing that is sent to her.


The last time my wife's computer got infected to the point where it was disfunctional, I made her wait a year before I rebuilt it. Now she is much more careful about her computing habits and her computer is virus/trojan/spyware free.

The key to success is to be very leary of nasty sites, emails from people that have attachments, and a good antivirus program. I prefer the corporate versions of Nortan Antivirus.

Another good thing to do is if you have to blow away a system and reinstall a new OS, buy a similar sized drive (preferably the same exact size). Once you get the OS installed (we are talking Windows here), patched, and all other programs that you plan on using, you can perform a disk-to-disk image using Ghost to the drive that you bought. Once you capture this image, lable it and hold the drive aside in the event the system becomes infected down the road.

If the system becomes infected, you can mount the drive that you captured the image to as the primary drive with the other infected drive as the secondary and then copy your important data off of the infected drive onto the image drive. Once you get everything important and you are sure that you have not copied over infected files, you basically image that drive to the infected drive and then use it as your backup copy.

It will litterally save you hours if not days everytime you have an infection that can't be cleaned.

[thekl0wn]

Time to switch to a MAC

Booo! :p


To keep a MS system up-and-running, reinstalling should occur at least once a year. I do a complete reformat & reinstall every six months, regardless if needed or not. Then again, the nature of my job, the testing can cause some pretty serious system halts if you're not careful... It's like bringing a virus upon yourself! :rolleyes:

[Don]

Hey, klown. Tell us more about the reformat and reinstall. What you are writing seems to ring a bell. I've never had an MS system that continued to run as nice as it ran when first installed. I guess you dedicate a drive just to the OS? Then you have a drive for everything else?

dawjr

[BiscuitSlayer]

Booo! :p


To keep a MS system up-and-running, reinstalling should occur at least once a year. I do a complete reformat & reinstall every six months, regardless if needed or not. Then again, the nature of my job, the testing can cause some pretty serious system halts if you're not careful... It's like bringing a virus upon yourself! :rolleyes:

I run my systems for years without reinstalling on a regular basis. I laugh when my peers at work blow away their laptops or workstations because they are running "slow".

If you are careful in how you do things with your system, you should never have to re-install the OS unless you have a harddrive crap out.

[thekl0wn]

I run my systems for years without reinstalling on a regular basis. I laugh when my peers at work blow away their laptops or workstations because they are running "slow".

If you are careful in how you do things with your system, you should never have to re-install the OS unless you have a harddrive crap out.

There is a difference in running the same applications day-in-day-out, and constantly using new software. Yes, my main systems could go years, but it's just as easy to run my backups on a regular basis and start clean every-so-often. Plus, my systems don't stay the same for years, so I really couldn't keep the exact same setup. But you also have to keep in mind, that my job also allows me a little more freedom and access in this realm.

[thekl0wn]

Hey, klown. Tell us more about the reformat and reinstall. What you are writing seems to ring a bell. I've never had an MS system that continued to run as nice as it ran when first installed. I guess you dedicate a drive just to the OS? Then you have a drive for everything else?

dawjr

I've actually gotten away from partitioning my drives. So much of the newer developer environments requires it be installed on the same drive as the OS, so I simply run one large drive, and use strict foldering and backup frequently, to a file server nightly, and to DVD weekly off of the file server.

But basically on a reformat and reinstall, you should just have to reboot your PC with the Windows CD in the drive (ensure that the CD is high on the boot-order in your BIOS) and it should be able to do everything (format & reinstall) for you, with the exception of turning it on and off.