What a Weekend!

Wow! What an excruciating couple of days I’ve had (in a purely technological way). Saturday afternoon, as I sat down to upload some pictures, post a new entry and the like here on beaustilescreative.com, all hell broke loose within my computer.

Startup programs refused to work, google was taking me to various sundry websites with every search (you can only imagine the content that popped up), and I came to a scary realization… I don’t have ANYTHING on this computer backed up (first mistake). At about that same time, I remembered something else I had been meaning to get to for quite some time; I needed desperately to renew my virus protection software. I had let it expire for roughly the past 4 months (second mistake). Knucklehead.

Ordinarily, I am an overly cautious computer user, never visiting strange websites, never downloading anything I don’t know, and ALWAYS having the best virus protection a home consumer’s money can buy. However my not-so-recent lapse in judgment had placed my computer, photographs, and iTunes in great jeopardy. Headache.

I immediately downloaded the most recent version of KAV, and it found nearly 100 issues right off the bat, the most serious being a virus that couldn’t be removed. I also started having more programs shut down, wanting windows to search and find a solution. There is no piece of mind that comes with THAT. Panic.

Long story short, here I am 2 days later, 3 additional software downloads and custom scripts later, and I believe my computer is finally virus free. I also have a new external HD and have back-ups of all things important from my computer. Learn from my mistake. Back-up and keep protected!