Saturday morning I was working on my Mission Tuesday blog post for the week on my laptop, and was searching for images of “hope” on the internet. After opening a couple of them, I experienced something I had never experienced before…everything left my screen. In a matter of seconds, icons on my desktop disappeared and a bunch of warning screens began to appear.
A feeling of fear and panic ran through me. I shut my computer down, then started it back up. Nothing familiar reappeared…just more warnings and an authentic looking windows screen came up asking if I wanted to run a recovery program. I thought it was strange when it wouldn’t let me click the little red box at the top right to close out of it.
I did what any panicked person would do…I prayed. 🙂
Then I began to think of all the things that I would lose if my computer crashed…things that are irreplaceable, such as all of our pictures we took over the summer that I hadn’t backed up yet.
Then our friend Bruce came to mind. He is my friend Marcia’s husband. I called Marcia, exchanged a couple pleasantries, and told her what was happening with my computer. Bruce knows computers. She put Bruce on the phone and I did my best to explain what I was seeing on my screen. He said he wouldn’t be able to help much not seeing it personally. I was willing to do anything at this point…I offered to bring it to him if he had the time. So in a matter of minutes, I fluffed my hair, changed my clothes (I was still in my p.j.’s at the time), put on minimal amount of makeup and headed off to Marcia & Bruce’s, laptop in tow.
Bruce saw the same stuff I had seen earlier…warning screens and this pop up window asking to run a recovery program. Bruce “googled” the code that was with this window, and sure enough, this was a very nasty computer virus.
My McAfee didn’t catch it, and evidently I had 145 threats/infections on this poor laptop. He said my laptop was “pretty sick.” It sure acted like it! I had just scanned my computer that morning and no treats showed up! So much for great virus protection software!
This virus had hidden most everything on my computer, including any internet access. Bruce had his laptop to search and find how to get rid of this nasty thing. He downloaded a malware protection software, and either that or another site he was on walked him through how to remove it. He did a couple more scans after it was uploaded, and it seemed to have worked. My icons were back and the virus seemed to be gone!
Thank God! Bruce also cleaned up my laptop, deleting things I really didn’t need. He also added an ad blocker and another personal info blocker. I’m feeling pretty safe now. 🙂
A couple hours later I headed home, thankful that Bruce restored everything on my laptop. I don’t know what I would have done without him!
And as I write, I’m backing up my summer pictures on Shutterfly, and I’ll soon be making our Summer Photo Book from them.
I will never take my computer, my pictures, my laptop, or our friend Bruce for granted again!! 🙂
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