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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 5 of 5. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Larry Hoover on August 1, 2008, at 18:46:20
My teenage son downloaded a virus that wiped everything off my hard-drives. Not only my C: drive, but my backups too. What a pain in the a**. My contacts. My links. It took me three days just to update my Windows software from the version I had on CD. I thought my files were safe, being backed up, but those drives were connected (bus and USB). Virus authors totally suck.
Sigh.
Lar
Posted by Dinah on August 1, 2008, at 19:14:55
In reply to lost everything, posted by Larry Hoover on August 1, 2008, at 18:46:20
Sigh. I can't fathom finding that amusing.
Might I ask a question?
I do worry about this happening, and perhaps am a bit more cautious about it than I need to be, in terms of clicking on links, etc.
I have a few different backups. Some are attached to my computer, but others are rotated to an external location.
Was it time delayed? Or did it just destroy the files on the drives that were currently attached?
I'm really sorry you had that experience. Even having my operating system crash in a way that could not be restored caused me no end of trouble.
Posted by Larry Hoover on August 1, 2008, at 19:41:10
In reply to Re: lost everything » Larry Hoover, posted by Dinah on August 1, 2008, at 19:14:55
I went to bed, and my son decided to check on some "cheats" for some Nintendo games. A pop-up came up that asked him to accept or deny some question, and that's all it took for the virus to bypass the firewall and anti-virus softare.....he'd unwittingly accepted something that was really a lie. All hard-drives that were visible to the directory were wiped. If one had happened to be off-line/disconnected it would have been spared, but that wasn't my luck/situation.
The next morning, I booted to an error message something like "Error loading OS". I loaded my Windows recovery disk, but it did not detect an existing Windows installation (i.e. it was preparing only for a new intallation). I took it to my computer repair expert, and he showed me that DIR C;, DIR D;, etc. etc. were empty. With no registry files, nothing was recoverable. I suppose I could have tried to restore files using those file recovery programs, but I wasn't willing to spend money on something like that, without any assurance that it would be worth the trouble.
Lar
Posted by Larry Hoover on August 1, 2008, at 20:02:34
In reply to Re: lost everything » Dinah, posted by Larry Hoover on August 1, 2008, at 19:41:10
> I went to bed, and my son decided to check on some "cheats" for some Nintendo games. A pop-up came up that asked him to accept or deny some question, and that's all it took for the virus to bypass the firewall and anti-virus softare.....he'd unwittingly accepted something that was really a lie.
BTW, the thing to do with one of these malicious pop-ups is to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up Windows Task Manager, and kill the window. Or, just restart.....without accepting or denying whatever the pop-up asks you to do. Before you accept/deny, nothing has happened. Afterwards, it's too late.
Lar
Posted by Dinah on August 1, 2008, at 22:23:59
In reply to Re: lost everything, posted by Larry Hoover on August 1, 2008, at 20:02:34
That's very good to know. Thank you.
I confess I'd probably panic and try to close it in some totally foolish way.
I hope you didn't lose anything like photos or other things you didn't have stored offline.
This is the end of the thread.
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