Half a roll of paper towels later, I began running a full virus scan and reading online about browser hijacking, on another computer of course. Scary stuff, these browser hijacking programs can create backdoors to your computer. Some techies recommend the nuclear option; reformat the hard drive and start from scratch. Bare minimum, if you can fix the problem, then change every password you have entered into your computer because the hackers may know it all by now. In the end, everything may appear alright, but you will never know for certain.
This was too risky for me, I can’t take a chance with my online banking, my IRA, 401K, my emails and what if something happened to my iTunes? I nuked the system. I already had a 200GB hard drive sitting around, so I yanked out my old hard drive and started from scratch. It was brutal, it took me nearly 36 hours to reload all my programs, set them all up, reload my data files, and test it all out again.
I went to sleep at 3:30am and woke up at 6:30am to start again and did not finish until 9pm. The truth is that it could have been done in probably half that time, but the usual hiccups occurred. Setting up hardware that required tricks, network printers that did not want to allow wireless laptops access, etc. Pain, nothing but pain. While pulling my hair out, my kids are telling me that they need to print something for school!!!
Last night, functioning technology was restored to my household. Truth be told, my system is running faster then ever since it got a good cleaning and a few valuable lessons were learned since much of my time was wasted finding where software was located or how to property install and set things up. So here is what I learned:
- I was so happy that I keep all data files on a separate hard drive.
- Not all software purchased and downloaded online is available for more reloads. So, save the installation files and back them up.
- Keeping a well organized, hardcopy list of all IDs and passwords is critical. I create this list and maintain it on an old laptop that never touches the internet. Both the list and the flash memory for the file are kept in a locked safe – really!
- As I fixed things correctly, I used software to take screen shots what of what the set up windows looked like with all the input boxes accurately filled out and printed these. I created a binder where I keep all this information for future reference.
- Keep Guantanamo open and send all hackers there where I will personally volunteer to water-board each and everyone of them.
May your computer be safe! |
