Virus Nightmare – Lessons Learned
I got a virus the other day Thursday I believe and since then I have been making FRANTIC efforts to save all my info.
The most important thing for me to save are my Outlook Express emails and my Roboform passwords. That way I can at least access all the places I need to download and reinstall all the software I use.
Thankfully I was able to still access my Laptop and very very slowly the system was painfully slow because of the damge done by the virus start a process of trying to save my system without having to reformat the whole disk. I say thankfully because after a virus attack not everyone is able to even access the system.
I tried antivirus software I attempted to fix things using the various “malicious advertising” expulsion applications Adaware Spybot etc.. All to no avail. After almost three days I resigned myself to the fact that it would have to be a reformat which means restoring my Laptop to factory settings. What a nightmare!
First of all I made a backup of my Outlook express email software emails account settings etc. For this I downloaded a great little free trial software application called Outlook Express Back Up Wizard. This software met by needs better than others I tried.
If you don’t use Outlook Express then you can download others by searching here:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient38;ie=UTF838;rls=RNWERNWE:200435RNWE:en38;q=emailbackupfreedownloads
The I did a search for some backup software to back up the files that I could and also to use for future occasions. After trying a few that either wouldn’t work on my system or didn’t back up to the medium that I wantedCD Rom Discs I found a great tool that just did the trick and in fact I plan to buy as soon as the free trial is up. The software is called “NTI Backup Now 4 Deluxe Suite” and it is so straightforward that even a tech dummy like me found it simple.
I added my Roboform passwords my Internet Explorer favourites my Outlook Express backup my Microsoft Money backup filesFor accounting purposes as many software installation files as I had and most of the files and folders that I have used recently.
Of course what I also ralised is that I have not kept the Install files of loads of the software that I have on my Laptop. Bad mistake! This means that I will have to go search for these again to download to my reformatted system.
What I will do in future is save every Install file in it’s own folder with passwords serial numbers and any other useful info in a notepad file alongside them.
The hard lesson I have learned is to make sure in future I do frequent backups of my system. I have been online since 1998 and never had any major problems. This is the first and I foolishly underestimated the damage a virus could do.
My next step is to get an external drive to use as a backup and as I mentioned to use it frequently.
I hope this has given you some food for thought. As I sign off here I am going to insert my Toshiba Product Recovery CDRom.
If I had taken the necessary precautions I wouldn’t have just lost three days of my time. Three days I could have been putting to better use.
Ah well there is positive in every bad situation. Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself:.
About the writer: Zai Zhu is a watch collector and a watch dealer. Shop over 800 fine watches including Citizen watches Invicta watches Croton watches Mido watches Luminox watches and many more at http://www.discountwatchstore.com Read reviews and watch articles.
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