Greetings,
Computer viruses suck. What is even worse is that many freeware programs hawked online that are alleged to 'cure' your virus contain malware (malicious hidden software) or spyware (software that monitors what you do and sends messages to an unauthorized 3rd party) as well!
But after several weeks of battle with both my desktop and laptop PCs, I have reformatted both hard drives, reinstalled Windows and all my old software and am back up online with no more malware or Trojan horses.
For years I had been lulled into security by always using whatever Norton / Symantec's most powerful program was at the time. No longer. I had a healthy reality check when I chatted with a Symantec customer service person who said I would have to fork over $99 for help in manually removing the virus. Isn't that what I forked over $100 for when I bought the software? I asked. He did not have a good answer for me. I also used Yahoo's anti-spyware program that comes with the Yahoo toolbar - which sometimes caught (and removed) Trojan Horses that Symantec missed, not bad for a freeware program!
Computer viruses suck. What is even worse is that many freeware programs hawked online that are alleged to 'cure' your virus contain malware (malicious hidden software) or spyware (software that monitors what you do and sends messages to an unauthorized 3rd party) as well!
But after several weeks of battle with both my desktop and laptop PCs, I have reformatted both hard drives, reinstalled Windows and all my old software and am back up online with no more malware or Trojan horses.
For years I had been lulled into security by always using whatever Norton / Symantec's most powerful program was at the time. No longer. I had a healthy reality check when I chatted with a Symantec customer service person who said I would have to fork over $99 for help in manually removing the virus. Isn't that what I forked over $100 for when I bought the software? I asked. He did not have a good answer for me. I also used Yahoo's anti-spyware program that comes with the Yahoo toolbar - which sometimes caught (and removed) Trojan Horses that Symantec missed, not bad for a freeware program!
Illustration of the Trojan Horse from Virgil's Aeneid
For my desk top I used a Windows program recovery disk and even after doing that, there were still traces of the virus on my PC. I did some fishing around online and discovered a company called Paretologic which sells a number of computer software programs that did a nice job of filling in the gaps and removed everything else. 5 programs cost me about $50. My desktop computer has now regained much of it's old speed and eficiency. All I lost was all my old emails (and address book). I had emails going back to 2005 on my desktop PC - no more!
My laptop is another story, I tried to do a repair on it but I had to do a full reformat and reinstallation of everything from scratch. I had to burn 50 CDs to back up what I wanted to save off of it but that only cost $17 for a pack of 50 CDs at Walmart.
That's all I have to say about this in this very unpolitical post, I'll make the next post more political.
TTFN,
Jim
My laptop is another story, I tried to do a repair on it but I had to do a full reformat and reinstallation of everything from scratch. I had to burn 50 CDs to back up what I wanted to save off of it but that only cost $17 for a pack of 50 CDs at Walmart.
That's all I have to say about this in this very unpolitical post, I'll make the next post more political.
TTFN,
Jim
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