A very pricey weekend (part 2) - My laptop!

Whilst all of these costs were mounting, I had realised that my beautiful little laptop has a virus. Whoopdy friggin do! I received an MSN message from my best friend saying “Is this really you?” and had a hyperlink underneath. So of course I clicked and waited for it to load, but no, it started to download something which I presumed was just the photo software.
The laptop ended up freezing and started to open and close different windows. However I didn’t think too much of it. I called my best friend, Leah, and asked her what the picture was of. All I could think of was that Dale had possibly put some rather dodgy pictures of me on line. I wouldn’t put it past him.
She was pretty baffled when I started quizzing her about the photo she had tried to send. She knew nothing and then realized that she had been sent an identical message and her (well her boyfriend’s) computer had been playing up and freezing since. So it turned out that she had not sent the message and it was automatically sent to EVERYONE in her contacts list.
I instantly installed my antivirus software which only seemed to take a few minutes to load on. I scanned the system for any kind of virus and the scan came back clear, nothing to be concerned about then I though, so I continued as normal.
A couple of hours later I was getting fed up with how slow my laptop had become and ran another virus check. Again nothing, however a pop up appeared offering me free anti spy ware software which I downloaded. Whether that was a good thing or not, I still don’t know! Once it finished downloading, I ran a check using it. 17 viruses/spy ware/ad ware found. Oh no, hold on, it then updated and found 25! I was able to write down a few of the different names and what they do before that programme froze and crashed the system. There were some which downloaded hardcore porn to your hard-drive, how disappointing, I haven’t seen any! There were also a lot of the “dialler” things which attempt to call high cost numbers through your phone line! Some which slowly wipe your hard drive and a handful of spy ware viruses which record your every move online including keystrokes, this is how they can hack into your bank accounts online. Scary stuff really.
Later I received a message from Paypal saying that some one had been trying to hack into my account and they gave me the IP address and user name of the person who happened to be from Cambridge University. Very bizarre. I ended up phoning Paypal direct to find out if there really had been any suspicious activity on my account. I don’t usually worry about those emails as I know that they are mostly scams, however with the threat of having Spy ware on my laptop watching my every keystroke, I was getting paranoid. They said that nobody had tried to login to my account for weeks and certainly was not suspended. Hmm, scam email then.
As the day went on, it all got worse. I attempted to open the folder in which I keep all of my articles and another copy of my blog (I type it before posting online), however it began to open and then froze. I couldn’t do anything except for powering off and restarting the laptop. I tried again with the same folder only to receive the same crashed status. When I restarted for the third time, I tried opening another folder, crashed. Then I tried to get into the control panel but again CRASHED!
I was getting really edgy by this point as my anti virus still hadn’t alerted me to the virus’ on my system. Mum suggested a trip to PC World, however all I could think about was my mounting costs before I had even begun my life in my new house! So I tried calling their helpline first, I figured that would be cheaper than going down there and having someone look at it and this was I could also find out hwo much it would cost me!
The robot answered the phone “Welcome to PC World help desk please listen carefully to the following options and select using your keypad… Press 1 if you have already purchased a computer from us… Press 2 if you intend on making a purchase” I hit number 1, I hadn’t bought it from them, but it would do! “If you have a PC query press 1, press 2 for internet queries, press 3 for laptops…” 3! Wow, so far so good, I knew I would get through to a person eventually that I could divulge all my laptop woes to so I remained positive and stuck with the robot… “Thank you, press 1 for wireless queries, press 2 for general technical support…” 2, “Press 1 for HP, Press 2 for Dell, Press 3 for Compaq…. Press 7 for Sony Vaio” “Hoorah! Finally I hit the 7, “If you have a query regarding your Sony Vaio laptop please call Sony’s support desk on….” I felt like screaming and threw the phone down in a rage. I glimpsed up at mum and simply said “lets go then.” I was fuming!
We got into the store just before their closing time and joined the long queue for “The Tech Guys”. I had some lanky, geeky guy serve me and he looked at my laptop. He switched it on and tried to open a folder as I suggested. I panicked when I saw that he was trying to open my blogging folder, Christ, knowing my luck it would open and before you know it my somewhat sexually explicit writing would be in full view of everyone, including my MOTHER! Eek! Thankfully, the virus got to work and froze the laptop. He ran a virus check on it whilst it was in safe mode. He explained that it would help to wipe the main virus off but wouldn’t actually show as having a virus due to being in safe mode. Right-o mate, that would be why it has just flagged up 2 viruses then?!
I wanted them to do a complete system restore for me, as I am not exactly technologically minded and would more than likely cock it up and lose everything including the book which I have nearly finished writing! However if I was to give it to them, I would be without my pride and joy for 4 days! Four days people! Do you know what that would do to someone who has nothing to do, other than computer work all day?! I do and believe me, it would not be pretty!
He told me how to restore it and save my work safely (ie without the virus attaching itself to my disks) which I got onto back at home. Shame his idea of saving to disk whilst being in safe mode didn’t work. It turns out that you can use the CD drive, however any additional functions, such as CD writers, will not work! So I decided to take the plunge and risk infecting it all over again by saving whilst out of safe mode.
Once all of my work and photos (that I could think of) had been saved, I hit F10, the factory reset switch. I held my breath as it all clunked and whirred back into life. I was doing the dreaded laptop CPR. I felt as if my baby was dying, and I certainly wasn’t going to let it go without a damn good fight!
I left it re-installing Windows for the afternoon whilst I went over to my new house to meet up with my shiny new housemate!
I explained to her what was happening with my laptop and told her that it would be fine and clean again before I brought it over to the house to join her network and risk infecting her computer too. I just hoped and prayed that I was telling the truth. She took the news well and wished me luck with restoring the system. We seemed to hit it off and seemed more like old friends than two people meeting properly for the first time. All in all it was a rather pleasant afternoon sat in the local coffee house.
On arriving back at my mum’s house, I checked my laptop to see that Window’s had restored it self with no major issues and that it was back to how it was when I first bought it. So I happily started to download all of the necessary bits and bobs that I used to have on there. It took me all of Sunday to save all my favorite web pages again! And that was after missing half of them off!