Long Day With LOTS of Blue Air!

Last night -Thursday night that is -I had an experience I never, never, ever want to go through again.

I thought my computer was dead!

Well, in so many ways, it was pretty much dead to my being able to use it, to do anything -other than run my spyware programs and oh yes, I could use my e-mail. But anything else -stuff that involved using the internet and either Firefox or IE -it may as well have been ready for the burial ground, for sure -or so I thought, anyway.

I mistook a pop-up on my computer for a security alert, clicked it on and there's were my problems began.

Seems that little icon I clicked that look so much like the icon for Windows Security actually belonged to a very nasty piece of crap type of virus or malware -not sure which, really. But if you get a message on your computer that looks very much like the Windows Security thing-a-ma-jig -a little kind of misshaped triangle with an X across it, do not, please for the preservation of your sanity, do not click that sucker or you will spend a whole lot of time and possibly a whole lot of money, lose files too in the process of trying to get rid of this thing!

It's called AntivirusGT and it is a nasty, really, really, nasty thing!

Thankfully, for me -for my sanity, for my pocketbook too, my next-door neighbor's son is very -make that VERY VERY -knowledgeable about computers and a darned nice kid too and I called him early Friday morning to see if he could tell me anything about what to do to get rid of this thing.

He spend about 3 hours, at least, Friday afternoon, trying to remove this thing and just when he thought he had gotten rid of it, he realized it had morphed itself into looking like it was a new piece of hardware that I had just added to my computer and so then, he began to back up my files on flash drives and such and finally got rid of it before he went to work.

However, by that time, it was also necessary then to reformat and then, reload stuff so when he came home from work around 10 p.m., he came over and began to reload the computer. Finished most of that and got it so I could use it again then shortly before 1 a.m.!

Still some stuff left to put on here on Saturday now but at least I am up and running once again.

But last night -when all this happened and I couldn't do anything -there sure was a whole lot of cursing going on here -under my breath as well as out loud too!

I can thank my lucky stars, for sure, that my neighbor is so smart as well as being a nice young man too and he did this for me for a VERY nominal fee! He wasn't going to charge me anything but he's fixed a whole lot of stuff on my computer for Mandy and me in the past and today -well, spending a good 6 hours so far working on this to get me up and running again -and better, way better, than before, well I insisted he give me a price and I'll square up with him after I get my SS check next week!

If I had taken my computer to one of the repair shops in our area, I would have lost a whole lot more than I did -which amounts to e-mail addresses in my e-mail address book, ya know and they would have charged me about 5 times what Daniel said he would accept for payment!

I'm thinking now that I'm gonna have to also bake something to take over to him as well for being so great about getting me on the road again to cyberspace!

Maybe some raspberry-oatmeal bars or Rocky Road Fudge Bars would hit his fancy too.

What do you think?

Peace and safe computing!