A lot of people are keeping me very busy these days. I have had at least 4 that I can remember whose machines have been attacked by what are now called "rogue" programs, rendering the machines unusable. These rogue programs, and the ones I have seen all seem to have a name in common (somewhat), have names which are variants of ANTISPYWARE2008 or 2009, ANTIVIRUS2008 or 2009, and ANTIVIRUSXPxxxx.
The first sign of these is a pop-up (the fact that you have pop-ups blocked on your system should be a clue that this is something radically wrong) asking you if you would like a free scan of your system, or words to that effect, and then after the FAKE scan they tell you that you have many serious problems with your machine. In fact the only real problem is that you are "listening" to them and doing what they say, some even going so far as to pay good money for their "solution".
Okay, it's bad enough that your system is rendered unusable and that you have to do a complete reinstall of the operating system or at least a REPAIR installation. You'll probably also have to reinstall all of the extra programs you have installed on your machine over the years. Where is the Microsoft Office CD and, even more basic, where is the Operating System CD set?
What keeps me in business is that so many of you are coming forward asking me to try to salvage your data on your hard drive because you have NO backups!
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE back up your data, usually everything contained within your MY DOCUMENTS folder, but sometimes more, like your e-mail if you use Outlook or Outlook Express, or your Firefox Bookmarks or IE Favorites, and even, for some of you who keep data folders on your desktop, your desktop contents itself.
If you are a pro at burning CDs or DVDs, back up to them. If not, get yourself a large capacity thumb drive (I have an 8GB and a 4GB but will soon get a 16GB or even bigger) and use it.
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