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Computer dead, lost only a couple pages of a new rewrite.

SeverinR

Vala
Watching a Youtube trailer
Virus alert popped up,
Clicked delete virus,
Computer shut down and only has a cursor blinking on a black screen, keyboard locked.

SInce lightning killed my last computer, I have made a point to save most work to my email account.
So only a few pages of a rewrite from a early story I wrote, was lost.

Will be a while before I can get a new one. Would have really been upset to loose everything.

Invest in a quality virus scan. AVG and Norton missed this one.
 

Butterfly

Auror
Those random virus popups are usually trojan viruses, don't trust them and don't click them... use your own scanner installed on your comp instead to check. I say this from learning the hard way.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
A couple of things that might help:

1) If you use Dropbox and write in a program that autosaves often, you can help yourself out even after something like this; and

2) If you use Linux for writing, you'll find that the number of viruses that affect it is extremely low.

Also, if you need to access files on that hard drive, you might burn a linux LiveCD (linux mint for example) if you have a computer you can use to download and burn it. Then, when you boot the liveCD you can pull up the hard drive with your Windows installation on it and access all of the files saved there. I don't know how many times I've recovered files for people using a linux liveCD when Windows went kaboom.
 

Butterfly

Auror
Some cheeky monkey stole my brand new laptop in a break in once, and I lost a lot. Now I have several regularly backed up flashdrives hidden in various places, just in case, like.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
I have some backup drives as well, but Dropbox has been awesome for me, particularly as I write on three different computers.
 

Sheilawisz

Queen of Titania
Moderator
I am so sorry that this happened to you, Severin =(

What I do is that I burn all the important stuff into CDs, and I also email my Fantasy novels to myself and I keep them safe inside my email account. I am happy that you did not lose too much information...

So, are viruses like that very common in Youtube?
 

Amanita

Maester
I'm suffering from a similar problem. After getting the last windows updates, my laptop doesn't work anymore. I hope it can be repaired, but if not, all my planning will be lost. (I've sent the actual stories to a friend who can send them back.) Was feeling too secure because it has been working without problems for three years now and didn't make back-up copies of anything. Now there are many things I'm missing, including the materials and learning plan for my chemistry exam. So I didn't remember what I had planned for today. The plan is lost but I could regain the materials because their accessible online, but my netbook is so awfully slow, I'll only do it if I don't get the laptop back tomorrow. Earlier this evening, it needed three hours for new windows updates. Really annoying this is.
Maybe Windows found out that I encouraged Sheila to get an Apple and now they want to destroy me. ;)

More seriously, maybe I did get the same virus from You Tube, I'm using it quite often myself. If this is the case, it might actually be good that my netbook doesn't manage to display videos.
 
Last edited:

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
Steerpike said:
I have some backup drives as well, but Dropbox has been awesome for me, particularly as I write on three different computers.

Another vote for Dropbox..... Simple, effective, and accessible from any computer.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Amanita - burn a linux liveCD and you can at least access the files on your Windows hard drive, before you have to format or reinstall or anything.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Computer hardware may not be ruined. Could be just your operating system corrupted. Files may still be there. Take it to someone who can pop the hard drive and retrieve files and reinstall the OS. Hopefully you have a friend that can do this.

Some cheeky monkey stole my brand new laptop in a break in once, and I lost a lot. Now I have several regularly backed up flashdrives hidden in various places, just in case, like.

A little tip I learned. If you have an old broken laptop, leave that out in the open as bait and stash your newer one. Laptops are easy smash and grabs. Don't leave them in plain site.
 
A little tip I learned. If you have an old broken laptop, leave that out in the open as bait and stash your newer one. Laptops are easy smash and grabs. Don't leave them in plain site.

I solve this problem by not owning a laptop. It's very convenient! :)

For my part, I have a daily cron at 04:00 that backs up an encrypted tar.bz2 of my entire document repository (svn repo) to a remote host, and I go and prune old copies once a month. There are more automated solutions but none of them have the transparency that I really wanted.
 
Colloquially, "cron job" just means any recurring scheduled automated task on a computer. More precisely, crond is the "cron daemon" which is a system-level service usually found on Unix variants and their ilk, including Linux. (Which is what I'm using.)

Most OSes have some sort of task scheduling system, of course.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Ah...ok, thanks. I use linux as well, and had never heard of cron jobs until I starting using it.
 

Graylorne

Archmage
Not Dropbox, Sugar Sync here. First 3 gb free, that's plenty. I use 2 pc's and a laptop and it's perfect. Ofc I also have a external hd with a back-up copy for you-never-know.
 

Butterfly

Auror
A little tip I learned. If you have an old broken laptop, leave that out in the open as bait and stash your newer one. Laptops are easy smash and grabs. Don't leave them in plain site.


Now the main question that pops to mind is... Am I allowed to electrify it via the mains, or not, I mean just as an alarm like?

Luckily though, it was covered on insurance so was replaced pretty quickly.
 

SeverinR

Vala
Thanks,
I email documents to myself, and this is where my world is.
Until I get a new computer, I can only access at work.
My daughters computer doesn't have MS word of any kind, I can access them, but can't open them.

Funny, I started writing at work, when I decided to teach myself to type faster. I did the typing test, then decided to start writing stories, and then I decided that I liked my books, and that I might want to publish, so writing the book at work became unethical.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Why don't you just use Google Docs? You can access from anywhere as long as you have internet and a web browser.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Errr.... All you Dropbox users might want to read this, and double check that you're covered.

Magical Words

Interesting. I've been using Dropbox for years now, across Windows and Linux computers, and never had an issue where it failed to backup. It wouldn't surprise me if the user did something inadvertently, like turn off the program (it runs in the background and that's how it knows when to sync). It is a good cautionary tale, though. Whenever you move a file to Dropbox, the little icon on your computer will show that it is syncing and give you a check mark when it is done. I always glance at it. You can also log directly into the Dropbox web site and make sure your files are there if you're really worried that they didn't sync.

There are a couple of alternative programs that basically do the same thing, and I've thought about looking into those if they have linux support. Google Docs is a good idea as well, except that I dislike writing in Google docs so I don't use it unless I'm just importing files I wrote in another program.
 
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