I royally screwed up and managed to install some sort of lovely virus on our desktop computer system. It sort of feels like karma is having a laugh at me, I put out an April Fools prank threatening to retire and the next day my computer stops working. Ha. Somehow I’m not laughing.
$50 dollars later (and a two night luxury vacation at the local computer shop) and my computer is back home, presumably fixed. It’s currently sitting in the middle of my kitchen, waiting for my husband to get home in the morning and set it back up (Yes, I could probably do this on my own, but I am so not taking responsibility for messing it up a second time).
Like most people I have a pretty good idea of what you need to do to avoid getting a computer virus; don’t visit questionable websites and don’t download questionable content. I know better then to click “Yes” when some weird pop up appears claiming to fix my computer, and save me from some dread virus.
Or at least I thought I knew better. Monday morning I was up to the usual, fourteen or so tabs open as I hopped around commenting on other people’s blogs, when suddenly some strange looking window popped up claiming it had found a Trojan virus on my computer. Would I like to scan my computer right now? I was distracted, I didn’t stop to really read the text I just clicked “No.”, and then everything went to hell in a handbasket.
Some big window kept popping up asking me to run a scan with something or other Defender. Ok there was a really small percentile chance that my husband had installed some new software earlier that morning, but I seriously doubted it. Every time I attempted to open a program the darn pretend virus software would tell me the file was infected, I kept closing the window, and no matter what I tried to do it just kept popping up. In the space of a few short minutes I went from functioning computer to piece of uselessness. The point I want to make here is I didn’t click “Yes”, and I didn’t knowingly install anything, yet I still managed to pick up a nasty bit of something, regardless of the fact that we were running up to date virus software.
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| Credit: Sujin Jetkasettakorn |
Let this be a warning to you all. if you encounter an unexpected pop up — Do not click “No.” Do not click “Cancel”. Simply put do not click anywhere in the window. Close it, just close it (Alt + F4).
This public service message has been brought to you by some evil virus, and by my pining after my missing PC. Can’t wait until we get it set up tomorrow. Then again, I’m rather dreading the three days worth of unanswered email waiting for me.
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