Virus / Spyware Experience - Virtual Assistant Forums

zuprodva · #1 (**permalink**) 07-23-2008

Hi everybody.

Last weekend I had an exciting experience with viruses and spywares.

I spare you from the whole story, but I had to format my hard drive and take everything all over: more than 2 years of work and much more gone. Hopefully, I had time to back up more than 75% of my documents.

This made me want to ask you about your experience with virus/spyware attacks. What were the measures you took and what are the lessons you learnt from your experience?

NDZULO

Tess · #2 (**permalink**) 07-23-2008

Yikes, I can relate! We ended up buying an external hard drive AND backing things up on two different servers.

I was so grateful to my husband who was able to reformat my old laptop a few years ago when it suffered nothing less than a fatal error resulting in 100% death (it wouldn't even turn ON at that point). He was able to save my data, all of it - but when he reformatted he had to partition the bad sectors so we lost 14 out of the 20 sectors - I limped along with 6 good sectors for another year until we came back to the States and I could buy a new computer.

Good to hear you were able to rescue most of your info - that can be SO stressful!!

zuprodva · #3 (**permalink**) 07-24-2008

Hi Tess!

Thank you for sharing your experience. As you say it,

Originally Posted by Tess

- that can be SO stressful!!

.

I had the bad impression that weekend will never end. On the other hand, I'm happy that it happened this early in my begining career as VA, because it shows to ba a challenge that can be overcome with experience, care and calm.

Have a nice day.

NDZULO

Robin_Holstein · #4 (**permalink**) 07-24-2008

I've had to reformat twice in the last month. I'm going nuts because of it. Never really found out if it was a bad download or bug. A friend of mine said she picked up a bug from a MySpace app she loaded. I save my stuff on another drive. I need to do some archiving actually. If I ever get straightened out.

I keep McAfee virus protection, and have for several years. This is the first severe issue I've had since I installed Windows M.E. [yikes!] That makes me think it was a bad download, not a virus.