Your Computer History of Illness

[Linkachu]

What's more important than our own personal health? ... The health of our computers of course! (You know it!)

Have you ever had a virus, worm, etc. on your computer before? If you personally haven't, know someone who has and what it did to their computer? Maybe a virus on a work-related computer? Tell us your stories, whether they be happy endings or utter tragedies.

I've dealt a few viruses in my day, but nothing too damaging on my own personal computer/laptop. The worst I can recall is a nasty worm that infected my older PC via MSN/Hotmail, but thankfully Stel aided me in removing it before anything bad happened (had to do some pretty annoying stuff to get it off). Pretty sure a number of us here had the same worm...

Usually my virus checker catches and removes the infections before any harm can be done. Just this morning I removed a number of Trojans from my laptop, but the situation was slightly irking. It proved to me that Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (the checker I was suggested to download in order to remove one of my trojans) is much better than my previous virus checker... which only identified two of the six Trojans inhabiting the lappy. >_>

As for computers not belonging to myself... Recently my mother's laptop was infected by some sort of virus that pretty well took over the entire laptop. It slowed everything down to pretty well nill, blacked out almost the entire screen, and wouldn't let her shutdown properly. The only thing that could fix it up was professionals taking control of the laptop and removing the virus. Cost her a hefty fee, but she was desperate.

My work PC tended to get numerous viruses and stuff on it, too, but it wasn't my fault! ;-; I shared the PC with a few other people, and one of them admitted to being an "obsessive clicker" - including strange links in even stranger emails. She told me afterwards: "I had no idea obsessive clicking could be a bad thing!" ... Could've strangled her. XD

[me=Linkachu]shushes now so that someone else can reply. XP[/me]

 

[Indie]

Re: Your History of Computer Illness

If I have to install Norton again, i'll frellin' murder them. My Dad and I have a feud against the buggers, seeing as despite buying and installing it twice, it says we still haven't. So even though we've got no official security, apart from mozilla's lurvely firewalls, things are going pretty good.

Not too soon after we got the Vista, my friend offered a Warcraft free trial. After using his disc to install, and entering the code for the trial, things went smoothly. Until, one day when we turned on our computer, it asked for our password, and didn't accept it. In the user box, it had the name of my friends youtube account name. Weird. So the Vista went to a shrink, and after a week, it came back all sparkly. My Dad still blames my friends disc, but I just don't know...

 

[Blarg]

Re: Your History of Computer Illness

Let's just say I've had more computers crash than I have fingers.

The scary thing is, I only use a max of 5 websites, so the viruses I get are from one of the websites I use daily. I recently upgraded to windows 7, and I don't want this to crash. I'm now virus paranoid. I rarely download anything, and I run a full virus scan every 3 days. The software I use updates itself, and can scan itself automaticly if you tell it to. Back on the matter of computer crashing, I've had a bunch of computers crash, and only one was able to be recovered. This one cost me a pretty $300, so I hope it decides to stick around.

 

[Teapot]

Norton is the root of all evil. I am convinced of it. I personally use Microsoft Security Essentials, and to my absolute amazement, it works really really well. And it's a good price, too - free. I tend to prod everyone I know into installing it these days - it's free, it's simple, and it doesn't explode every thirty seconds. Works for me.

 

[Doubled]

My computer got so sick it wouldn't play music for me. D8 I started panicking, as I always listened to music, and I did not like listening to scratchy songs.

Another was when I accidently opened a picture on deviantart (and it was a little cute picture of Eevee 83), but unfortunately a virus infected my computer, this one practically slowed it down to dial-up speed, and that's slow compared to normal (14.6kb to something).,Needless to say we gpt it fixed.

Oh, and this I've got to share: Ever had something go so wrong with your computer that it became superheated? I did, at least to the recharger part. The recharge port turned into a welder of suicide. It would melt anything that went in there (even metal), and eventually stopped working because it couldn't be fixed, therefore it couldn't be recharged. That was okay though, as I've now got a Windows 7 laptop 8D

But there is one glitch I'm concerned about, but it doesn't seem to be affecting performance. Everynow and then, my computer screen gets kinda staticy, no biggy because I can stillsee most of the screen, but it just comes a few months and leaves after an hour.

 

[Carmen Lopez]

My current laptop has been relatively free of particularly damaging viruses, trojans, etc as far as I know. There were two instances where I went two weeks at a time without a virus protection program (as it had expired) and it still functioned. Vista ftw! I used to use TrendMicro on my computer which worked reasonably well before I tried a free McAfee trial--I don't recommend it because it slowed my computer more than it should've. I now use AVG and Malwarebytes and I'm good to go. Despite this, my laptop does have its moments: i.e. random crashes, and stuff freezing, but overall it's been solid.

That's more than I could say for my ancient desktop. I got it on my 13th birthday and I was so excited. Unfortunately I was a n00b back then and didn't know how bad viruses were. The virus protection expired and I didn't renew it. Let's just say it got ugly. By the time lightning struck it and finally killed it, it had hundreds of viruses that would slow the computer to a crawl and send and endless wave of pop-ups. We eventually got it fixed a while later, but it was just getting on in years so it was still relatively slow.

[me=Lady Carmen]is grateful for her laptop ♥[/me]

 

[Rayn_Shyu]

Hmmm, we've had some bad ones on our compies.

Our very first compy (Windows 97) got a worm from an email that looked like the virus cleaner dude's address. Pretty much killed that poor beast.
(The rest of these are XP) Another time we've had a pretty bad one that got the whole compy reset and cleaned. Actually this has happened like three times or so. One time there was a virus that was hiding in a font so it was impossible to get off with any virus software, so we had to get a computer guy to fix it...

Also, my brother pretty much always blames me if the compy goes down. This fortunately is not true, because one time his compy went down while I was at Girl's Camp so yeah.

 

[Shocari]

I use Microsoft Security Essentials, too, Data :3

Well, I've had a few trojans shut down my lappy to the point of extreme anger from me, but we usually get rid of those by our computer friend Actually, just about two days ago, there was some anti-malware(? don't remember ) thing popped up, and kept popping up every few minutes, what with its "SCANNING FOR VIRUSES", "REMOVE THREATS NOW? OH I'M SORRY, YOU MUST PURCHASE OUR PRODUCT TO STOP VIRUSES " and "UNLESS YOU REMOVE THESE THREATS, YOUR COMPUTER WILL BE SUBJECT TO HACKING IN 3, 2, 1". We just did a system restore back a few days, and everything was fine after that.

 

[Kerauno]

Well, the last time I got a virus, I died a lot inside. Why, you ask. Well, ALL MY IMPORTANT FILES WERE LOST! My dad was able to get the virus out, and the files were lost, like they always are, but I forgot to save them to something. And I lost them. I've re-made them by now, but yeah. It was the most agonizing week EVER. The other times weren't so bad, because I saved the files. And yet, I have no idea where the virus came from!

 

[Magpie]

My Mac is the pinnacle of all creation and has never crashed or been infected by anything as far as I know ♥

The PC downstairs is a different matter. That thing has more problems than I can shake my fist at. It doesn't help that my parents, whom it belongs to, don't really know much about computers - although my dad is FAR worse than my mum. He's like... oh! What's this do? What's this interesting looking pop up on my screen? And what's this - an attachment from a dodgy email account?! I must find out what it is :'D

Needless to say, I remove viruses and other such nasties from it all the time. I had in fact just spent half and hour removing one before coming upstairs and seeing this topic XD

My extended family tend to call me when they also have problems, because out of the lot of us I'm easily the most computer literate. I have a nice self taught knowledge of the inner working of the computer, so usually I can fix the problems they encounter - be it a sudden lack of internet or the computer deciding it is no longer compatible with the printer/any device ever made. I remember once removing a very nasty Trojan from my Auntie's computer. Every time she deleted it it made copies of itself and hid all over. It got to the point where the computer would only display a black screen with some text or other floating around. That thing took some murdering :V

So yes~
Mac = ♥
PC = OMGIWANTTODESTROYYOUANDALLYOUSTANDFOR! D:<

 

[Doctor Oak]

Ewwww, Mac.

 

[KoL]

Honestly, I think half the reason Macs never get viruses is simply because no-one bothers making viruses to infect them - too few people own them for it to be worthwhile, compared to the amount of PC users there are.

I've only ever suffered the presence of two viruses, and both were eradicated pretty quickly. I generally keep multiple copies of every file I own in case of emergencies, so no virus is likely to slow me down for long.

 

[Pokecomic Central]

Well i HAD(now i have a toshiba) a Compaq computer that got a virus from a music program called Limewire(Limewire's known to cause viruses).So my Uncle fixed it and it still had a problem!!! > Everytime I tried to save a picture,it said "ACCESS DENIED" so i just decided to sell it on ebay for a few hundred dollars. Then i used that money to get me the Toshiba I'm using now.

 

[Shiny Motley]

There was this one trojan that keeps coming up on my computer, no matter how I reformat my computer, that's also been attacking my parents' computers at home. It pretends to be an antivirus software and "scans" for viruses once you get it. After it "scans", all these things pop up and it makes your computer look like it's been infected with a bunch of different viruses. I think it's something like Antivirus Soft or something like that... and it's a nightmare to get rid of. It even asks you to pay to get the "full access" of its whatevers, but even if you pay for this thing the trojan's STILL THERE. ZOMG.

Apparently you get it from certain video websites...

Well, I've had a few trojans shut down my lappy to the point of extreme anger from me, but we usually get rid of those by our computer friend Actually, just about two days ago, there was some anti-malware(? don't remember ) thing popped up, and kept popping up every few minutes, what with its "SCANNING FOR VIRUSES", "REMOVE THREATS NOW? OH I'M SORRY, YOU MUST PURCHASE OUR PRODUCT TO STOP VIRUSES " and "UNLESS YOU REMOVE THESE THREATS, YOUR COMPUTER WILL BE SUBJECT TO HACKING IN 3, 2, 1". We just did a system restore back a few days, and everything was fine after that.

Sounds like I had the same trojan as you

But that's really the only big one I've had. A few tracking cookies here and there, but no biggy~ (this is why I hate my refurbished vista that costed less than $200...)

 

[Pokecomic Central]

Yeah,actually I remember now the virus on my Compaq was a Trojan Virus! I bet It's still on that computer....wherever it may be in this World..

 

[Tatile]

I use Microsoft Security Essentials, too, Data :3

Well, I've had a few trojans shut down my lappy to the point of extreme anger from me, but we usually get rid of those by our computer friend Actually, just about two days ago, there was some anti-malware(? don't remember ) thing popped up, and kept popping up every few minutes, what with its "SCANNING FOR VIRUSES", "REMOVE THREATS NOW? OH I'M SORRY, YOU MUST PURCHASE OUR PRODUCT TO STOP VIRUSES " and "UNLESS YOU REMOVE THESE THREATS, YOUR COMPUTER WILL BE SUBJECT TO HACKING IN 3, 2, 1". We just did a system restore back a few days, and everything was fine after that.

I hate those things. My father and I had, essentially, the same piece of malware which pretended to be an anti-virus. Queue several boots in Safemode and me cursing out every Black Hat programmer on the planet, but my box is now safe again. I also got a 1.5TB external as a "just in case". I actually have no idea where the infection came from so it's not like I can do anymore than I already am to avoid it.

And Pokecomic, that is simply the cruelest thing I have ever heard, that Compaq could've been sold for spare parts rather than you selling an infected machine. Meanie.

 

[Pokecomic Central]

I needed money to get a Toshiba...So I sold my Compaq on E-bay! *back when I sold my computer: Must have (cough) a Toshiba (cough) before...it's to late...*

 

[Blarg]

There was this one trojan that keeps coming up on my computer, no matter how I reformat my computer, that's also been attacking my parents' computers at home. It pretends to be an antivirus software and "scans" for viruses once you get it. After it "scans", all these things pop up and it makes your computer look like it's been infected with a bunch of different viruses. I think it's something like Antivirus Soft or something like that... and it's a nightmare to get rid of. It even asks you to pay to get the "full access" of its whatevers, but even if you pay for this thing the trojan's STILL THERE. ZOMG.

I had the same problem on my ancient, hamster-powered Toshiba . I eventually got rid of it by wiping out the hard drive though...

And I now realize Norton = shit. But I recently tried out Security Essentials, and it works a helluva lot better than Norton ever did.

 

[Pokecomic Central]

great,my toshiba's been acting wierd. I think that Trojan is back to haunt me....

 

[Korora]

This Toshiba really has bugged me for more than I can remember.
My first 2 Computers crashed because of some random worm/trojan, and that cost us money, and LOTS of it.
Then, on this Toshiba (Laptop) I found something called a Rogue. I will list basic functions on 3 types of viruses.

Worm- Generally comes by self-sent viruses, that tend to Spam many. It was common on IBM in the Old Days,
and usually comes as a result of checking a certain message on E-Mail.

Rogue- A new type of virus. It pretends to be a free antivirus program, however, once it gets access into your hard-drive...
That was hell for me, I managed to get it out. This IS a kind of scam, since they will remove the virus if you pay high.
An example is GreenAV.

Trojan- Ah, old times. The ancient Greek/Roman story, in which they were disguised as a present, however, this was to invade and destroy it from this inside of the capital. This does helpful things at-first, however, allowing it to stay as it is would be horrible.