Time Lost Due To Viruses
What a pain computer viruses are. I am still rebuilding (as in re-setting-up my software) after a nasty misshap shortly after my last post here.
It was bad, very bad. Norton Antivirus, my previously trusted anti viral application, failed to cope. It spotted it after the virus had taken hold. Norton gave me the Virus Found warning dialog box and reported, rather lamely I think, that it could not delete the virus. Great.
Then all hell broke loose. While Norton sat there doing nothing, trojan after trojan seemed to appear from nowhere and I was overrun. Goodness knows what was sent from my machine to whoever and wherever, but data was pouring out, and I mean fast!
Norton called it some variant of a Bloodhound virus, but I think that's what Norton defaults to when it doesn't have much of a clue. I certainly ended up very quickly with a raft of other nasties all over the place. In the meantime, I was seriously distracted by never-ending spawning of internet explorer windows that filled my screen and generally hampered all of my effors to deal with the problem.
In the end I arrested the problem just enough to transfer my critical data to safety and then bit the bullet, so to speak, and went for a complete disk reformat and rebuild. It has taken three days of my life! That's a significant assault by the perpetrators so suffice to say, they are not in my good books!!
Now I did learn some things from this. Namely:
Of course, it helps to recall where the problem came from, if you even know, so you can definitely avoid that source or site again.
It was bad, very bad. Norton Antivirus, my previously trusted anti viral application, failed to cope. It spotted it after the virus had taken hold. Norton gave me the Virus Found warning dialog box and reported, rather lamely I think, that it could not delete the virus. Great.
Then all hell broke loose. While Norton sat there doing nothing, trojan after trojan seemed to appear from nowhere and I was overrun. Goodness knows what was sent from my machine to whoever and wherever, but data was pouring out, and I mean fast!
Norton called it some variant of a Bloodhound virus, but I think that's what Norton defaults to when it doesn't have much of a clue. I certainly ended up very quickly with a raft of other nasties all over the place. In the meantime, I was seriously distracted by never-ending spawning of internet explorer windows that filled my screen and generally hampered all of my effors to deal with the problem.
In the end I arrested the problem just enough to transfer my critical data to safety and then bit the bullet, so to speak, and went for a complete disk reformat and rebuild. It has taken three days of my life! That's a significant assault by the perpetrators so suffice to say, they are not in my good books!!
Now I did learn some things from this. Namely:
- no matter how much due care is practiced, one can still become a victim;
- no matter how good Norton claims to be, their software can still fail;
- I am much better off using AVG FREE antivirus software than expensive and processor burdensome Norton (good riddance Norton); and
- it is very important to maintain an up to date backup disk image for rapid recovery.
Of course, it helps to recall where the problem came from, if you even know, so you can definitely avoid that source or site again.
posted by Dr Peter Tylee at
1:06 pm
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