Windows new security update...

[russ010]

well.. after 4 hours of antagonizing work, I finally revived my laptop.

When I got home to check my email, my computer was starting and restarting itself every 5 seconds... I just knew I had got a virus. I couldn't read the blue screen fast enough to see what it was saying before it restarted, so I got my cell phone camera out and finally (after 20 minutes trying to time it just right) got a decent pic

I have no idea what "dismounted" or any of that jargon was, so I looked on my wife's laptop to see what all those error codes were. It said I needed to put the Windows XP "original" disk in to try and correct the problem. Well, I don't know about many of you guys, but I get a lot of pirated copies from the computer geeks at my military base, so I've got the full blown verison of XP Pro - Corporate Edition. I finally found one of the copies (I've got tons, but I could only find one) and put it in.. after 2 hours of watching it go thru it's BS (I swear there is a little guy over in India sitting on a 5 gal bucket in the middle of the desert with a Mother of a computer going through all the crap on my computer when it takes so long...)

Anyways, **** thing works again... when it restarted, I got a nice little message from Microsoft saying that an IMPORTANT security update was installed and required the computer to restart. Their little important update **** near gave me a headache and the next time I see hadji at work I'm going to give him a piece of my mind. The funny thing about all this is, I have automatic updates disabled, then I go through and pick out the ones I actually need...

 

[Waterwings]

Glad you got that fixed! I know how it can be a pain to get things going again, especially when I'm not so techno-smart to begin with.


We had a computer die on us here at home 2-3 yrs ago, and this past December the hard drive on my computer at work crashed hard. The backup disc I had wouldn't work, so the IT guy at school tried some kind of program to recover data by "ghosting" it over to another hard drive. he recovered very, very little. All of my inventory information ($165k worth of stuff) for our program was lost. I had a paper copy (33 pages) of the inventory and ended-up manually typing the inventory into a new hard drive. Not a fun time to say the least, plus I only type using 2 fingers, lol :shock:

 

[russ010]

OUCH!!!

Well, I've pretty much taught myself everything to do with computer, not to mention I had to take a few classes in the military for what my career field is now. I've had to reformat atleast 3 times in one year, and lost a lot of stuff. I couldn't image any of the hard drives (I can do them now pretty easily - you just have to have a desktop to make it work right).

The best investment I ever made was a 320gig external hard drive. It was $75 at Sam's Club and worth every penny!

 

[Waterwings]

The best investment I ever made was a 320gig external hard drive. It was $75 at Sam's Club and worth every penny!

That sounds like a good idea! I breifly saw some of the external hard drives at Walmart tonight, but didn't pay much attention to them. I may have to revisit them and look closer. I now use a 2gb thumb drive as a backup for my work (inventory program) computer.

 

[russ010]

thumb drives are good until...
1 - you lose it
2 - someone steals it
3 - it gets some kind of data block and won't let you get into your files (this happened to me overseas with some of my station logs that I had to keep)... never did get that data back

If you do get an external, I would back up on the thumb drive and the external... then you have 2 backups

 

[Popeye]

The Navy in it's infinate wisdom was using one of those "thumb' drives to store all of the data collected at the Pass and Tag office, that's where you go to get a temporary visitor vehicle pass or permanent one if stationed there. One day the thumb drive was gone. That wasn't even the back up, that was the original data. The program was on the hard drive on their desktop but all data was stored on the thumb drive so they could lock it up at night for safe keeping. Data stored on there includes: Name, rank, SSN, driver's license #, addresses, insurance policy #, vehicle plate # (not sure if VIN was included). They never told anyone about it. I only found out when I went to renew my base sticker and had to provide all the information again. When I asked if they kept it on file the girl told me what had happened. Everyone that worked there when it got lost was eventually fired too.

 

[Jim]

Remember the free thumb drive I got for buying an external drive? It was a little bigger than a dime.

Click on the first picture:

https://tinboats.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3426

 

[Waterwings]

Everyone that worked there when it got lost was eventually fired too.

:shock: Where the heck do you get transfered to from the Pass Office, especially after losing some data!? Checking ID's at the chow hall maybe, lol? :-k


Jim,
That 1gig drive sure was small!

 

[ShadowWalker]

I <3 Apple. I made the switch a couple years ago since I got to know them inside and out when working in the tech department of the school district. We were forced to use them throughout school, but couldn't really mess with them and get to know the operating system well, so I favored windows until I got the tech job.

While it isn't true that Mac OS X isn't "virus proof", if you were writing a virus, would you write it for windows who holds 90-95% of the market, or for a Mac which holds 5-10% of the market.

I will admit I can't play a couple games I used to. But to me the upsides are more than worth giving up a game.

 

[DocWatson]

The best investment I ever made was a 320gig external hard drive. It was $75 at Sam's Club and worth every penny!

That sounds like a good idea! I breifly saw some of the external hard drives at Walmart tonight, but didn't pay much attention to them. I may have to revisit them and look closer. I now use a 2gb thumb drive as a backup for my work (inventory program) computer.

Thumb drives are fine for transporting data and sharing data. But for backups they flat out suck. Aside from all the other problems noted, they have a nasty habit of just failing for no apparent reason and without warning. While there are lots of inexpensive or free data recovery programs out there that do an OK job, the best choice for a critical backup is to burn it to a CD or DVD periodically. External hard drives are mechanical and can fail. Portable hard drives are nothing more than large thumb drives and they also can fail. Unless you want to do it over, the best policy for critical data backups is redundancy and a hard copy written to removable media and updated periodically.

IMHO, of course.

 

[Jim]

I agree with mutiple copies....After i lost a years worth of my kids pictures

 

[Popeye]

Everyone that worked there when it got lost was eventually fired too.

:shock: Where the heck do you get transfered to from the Pass Office, especially after losing some data!? Checking ID's at the chow hall maybe, lol? :-k


Jim,
That 1gig drive sure was small!

Everyone at the Pass Office are civilians.

 

[Waterwings]

Everyone that worked there when it got lost was eventually fired too.

:shock: Where the heck do you get transfered to from the Pass Office, especially after losing some data!? Checking ID's at the chow hall maybe, lol? :-k


Jim,
That 1gig drive sure was small!

Everyone at the Pass Office are civilians.

Ah, forgot about that. It was usually sailors in the pass office when I was active duty, lol.