Friday, September 19, 2008

Thank You, Geeks

What a mess. I spent all of last night trying to fix it and no luck.

What mess you ask? Last night I decided to download Darius Rucker's new country song, Don't Think I Don't Think About It. And of course that led to more songs and suddenly this virus warning pop-up appeared. It looked official. It said it was Antivirus XP 2008 and I needed to run it. I clicked Ok and not long after realized my mistake. It wasn't official and created a mess of my computer.

I tried to go to some tech forums to figure out what to do and this program had blocked the ability to get to those web sites. Somewhere in my search I saw there were youtube videos on the subject. Score, the hackers hadn't thought to block that. Yup, I had a problem according to youtube users. Of course, the solutions they offered involved downloaded spyware which I couldn't access. Kind of a catch 22. What to do? I gave up at midnight.

But lying in bed I realized D's computer still worked and I could access some help forums. So this morning I got on his computer and found a forum that discussed this program and how to fix it. The best part it didn't involve downloading programs I couldn't access. Just follow this guy's detailed instructions and all should be well. I did and believe me it makes me nervous when I am deleting files that I don't understand. But it worked and I am back in business. Thank you, Microsoft. It was in one of your forums I found the information I needed. The geeks do run the world.

So beware of Antivirus XP 2008 or variations which also exist. Don't click on it. It looks official but it isn't. Take it from one who knows.

6 comments....porters always have something to say!:

jporterGOP said...

ahhhh...the beauty of owning a Mac

: )

Unknown said...

If you think Mac is immune from viruses you are in for a rude awakening. These idiots out there that start this stuff will find a way sooner or later.

Try SpyBot search and destroy. It's free and seems to work pretty good for me.

megawatt miler said...

NEVER click on those!!

Anonymous said...

I love that song too and it's on my download list.

carriegel said...

i downloaded a lot of songs last night so there is no way knowing where it came from.

i thought i had things cleaned out but didn't. d came home from being home all week and helped me fix it. stopzilla seemed to do the trick. so far now so good.

i have learned my lesson.

Anonymous said...

At least you have until the next time and i KNOW there will be a next time. so does d.

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