Jordan asked me last night if he could do something on my computer because whatever it was he wanted to do, he was unable to do on his computer. I assumed it was for the same reason that Webkinz doesn’t work. Something with the adobe flash plug in isn’t compatible.
I said yes, went off to do something than after a bit heard mom! mom! mom!
I come back out here and see my anti-virus program going crazy. He’d shut the browser. AVG is popping up over and over again about a trojan. He was looking for a game that he wanted to play, clicked on a link, and it went nuts.
That should be a reminder that I need to put parental controls on my own desktop. I’ve got them on Jordan’s and on my laptop because that is where Kat plays, but not on my own because I know I’m not going to go look up porn and obviously there is a reason I don’t let anyone touch my work computer. No more being generous I’ll tell you that now.
I tried to start malwarebytes which gets rid of everything. This virus deleted it. (It installed Internet security something or other that was also giving me tons of warnings.) I went and redownloaded malwarebytes, and while that was downloading I opened up Spybot. That froze up. Just running Adaware. It wouldn’t open. I installed malwarebytes and it needed to restart my computer to finish the installation. Restarted, get a window about a worm installed on my computer, and it is recommended to completely scan the system. At this point, I didn’t know if these were coming from my computer or from the worm/trojan. Windows explorer wouldn’t start. So I’m sitting there just looking at Bella and Edward on my desktop with no folders, no icons, everything gone. I tried to restart in safe mode. Everything came up in safe mode, but I was still got errors. Tried to run malwarebytes again. It deleted it as soon as I restarted. I was crying at this point. I haven’t backed up my computer in 2 months, all the pictures I took in January and February, my newest scrap pages, all I could think was I’m going to have reformat and I’m going to lose it all. In safe mode I tried to turn on my external hard drive to back up my pictures at least. All of a sudden my recycle bin is full with like 10,000 items. It was everything off my EHD, well, I’m not sure if it came from my EHD or if it came from my computer I just glanced at the files and then hit restore for all of them.
Though, speaking of restore, let’s do a system restore. Tried that. Nope, it said that the administrator had disabled that option. WTH? I am the administrator.
I’m starting to promise God anything and everything if he would just fix my computer.
Tried starting MSCONFIG to see what was starting up. That would shut down in regular mode, in safe mode I could start it up but every time I deselected these extra things that were starting up on my computer, they’d recheck themselves when I restarted. I was flipping out. Tried to get to the task manager by CTRL + ALT + Delete. That wasn’t even an option showing anymore.
The final time I hit F8 when I rebooted I decided to try repair computer instead of safe mode. Bingo. I had the option of system restore there. I was able to restore to Feb 13. Everything was back. All of my much loved folders. All my pretty little icons. There was my beloved From Drive K folder with all of my pictures and scrapbook pages in it. Yeah, I should rename my folder to something else. I just named it that when I moved everything from my partitioned hard drive in my old computer to this one, because they were all on, you guessed, drive K.
I just about fell off my chair in relief. Jordan heard me yell I FIXED IT! from the shower with the water running.
Needless to say, no one will be touching my computer again.
And now I have a whole spreadsheet of things I can and cannot do re: my promises to God if it got fixed. I really need to think more before I promise things to someone who can strike me down with lightening.
Guess what I did immediately after I got it back up and running again? Backed up my pictures to my EHD.
Here’s your handy dandy tip of the day: Back up more than 1 every 2 months.
That’s what I was freaking over. I have all my disks to reinstall my programs if I had to reformat, I might have to reup some of my CDs to my computer which would be a total PITA if I wanted them on there for my iPod again, all of my digital stuff is saved on Amazon, I can redownload everything I’ve bought there, but I didn’t have the important stuff backed up.
There really is not excuse, I have 1 – 500 GB EHD and 2 – 250 GB EHDs, you know, back up and then back up your back up.
After all that I decided that it was time to defrag. I use defraggler because the defrag in my system tools freezes half way through every time. I started it at 2 AM and then went to bed. At 7 this morning it was only 70% done. It was just finally finished at 9 AM. My computer had better run better after that long of a defrag.
So, class, let’s recap Heather’s favorite programs, all of them free, none which helped me out with this problem, but I still will use them because they are the best I have found for what I need (plus a few others):
(I’m not sure which works better between the cleaning programs, so I alternate.)
Those are the ones I use at least on a weekly basis if not more often.
While I’m linking to free awesome programs, I’ve had a few emails lately asking me how I do my digital scrapbooking. Introducing new mom’s all over to this fantabulous way of preserving your memories. I use the program Paint Shop Pro (I actually use X1, but they just released X3, I am trying to decide if it’s worth the cost of upgrading or is it like X2, a few bells and whistles added, nothing I really need?) A lot of scrappers use photoshop products – including elements. But, if you’re brand new to scrapping, don’t have a photo program and don’t want to put out a lot of money until you know if you like it or not, Gimp is a program that is free, similar to Photoshop and those who use it love it.
I personally have been using PSP since version 7 and I can make it do just about anything that Photoshop can do, some in less steps, some in more, it’s way lower priced than PS. I have photoshop elements 5 installed on my computer that I got with my Wacom tablet, and I’ve downloaded the free trial of Photoshop CS2 (they are past 2 now. 
) but when I open it, I look at it, close it, and open up my PSP. I might just have a mind block because I have used PSP for so long, but I just don’t get it.
That’s linked to the pic.
I think I’m going to take a picture of what I’d be laying in if I got myself in that position and twitpic it to Ricky Martin. It’d be my toes turning blue in snow. I want to be on a beach.
I’m going to go play with Nano a bit! Have a great day!
Popularity: 1% [?]
Link to this page
I use ELements and got it 1/2 off because i got the educational discount (if you have a kid in K-12 you get one!)
And I learned to never, ever let Emily use my computer the hard way.
.-= Laura´s last blog ..Thank You Aunt Becky! =-.