Virus! Arrgh!

Well, more a serious malware program to be accurate. I came across something like it before at work. It stops anti-virus and malware programs from running so they can’t remove it from your system.  The one I experienced before didn’t stop web browsers so I could go online with information about it and find a way to remove it. The one that recently infected my machine was worse: I couldn’t reboot the machine successfully, or even load Windows in Safe Mode.

Norton Ghost came to the rescue. I slapped in the disk and loaded it up, less than an hour later my computer was in the state it was five days previous. It does automatic backups every Sunday and am I glad of those? Yes I am.

I checked the programs I have on the computer – some of them are dependent on activation – and they all ran fine. A little weird in that the Windows update history is completely gone. My computer says it is up to date but there is no list of all the updates that have been installed over the years.

And as I store all documents on my U3 disk I don’t have to worry about losing any recent files.

I never found out what the malware/virus was. I have malwarebytes on the system which I run every now and then. I’ll get a couple more as a precaution, maybe try and find one that works in real time. I’ll also see about getting a different firewall and not relying on the one that comes from Microsoft. Although it’s good it’s sort of anonymous and so a little unnerving as I’m unsure of what it’s blocking and what it’s letting through.