Viruses and Giveaways

It seems lately many bloggers are getting infected with these nasty viruses. Within the past month my personal computer has been infected twice, this is due to me entering giveaways, and landing on the blogs infected. This second time around it looks like I may have to do a full system restore. If you are entering giveaways be careful cleaning your computer up after being infected can be pricey.

For those that are unsure how to remove viruses from their system, or for those that are not aware on how to back up their information on their computers, and restore to factory settings, this can be a major problem. Having your information backed-up and viruses removed from your system can cost several hundred dollars.

Last night as I was entering giveaways my browser crashed, shortly after that is when I got a “Window Restore” virus. These viruses are no fun, in order to remove them, you have to do all sorts of fun things, and once you get them, they hide a lot of your programs. Currently my start menu has a bunch of my program folders, and once clicked on they show (empty). I tried to unhide them with a program, however, that is not working. Thus the need to restore completely.

After messing with the computer last night for several hours, I did get the virus removed, I tried to do a restore to a previous date, but the virus beat me to my restore points, and deleted them. So I currently have no restore points.

If you are experienced then this is not that big of a deal, it is just a pain in the ass… Now I will have to go through and reinstall all my programs I use, such as Microsoft Office, Thunderbird, Photoshop, my daughter’s schooling… Technology can be so darn annoying. I am going to try and hold off for a few days before I do the wipe, see if I can bring back the hidden files.

If not then I will wipe the computer which like I said isn’t a very big deal to me personally, because it is getting a bit bogged down, and needs a good cleaning anyways. Computers are like cars if you do not take care of them they will break, it really doesn’t hurt to back up your data and do a clean install every so often to keep your computer running good.