echodrift

Return of the computer saga

This story begins on a Friday afternoon. Last Friday afternoon. I got home from work and my husband says something like “Your computer is doing something weird.” I sat down to look at it and yes, it was doing something weird. Avast kept deleting the same file over and over and over. I began to have a very bad feeling because that most likely indicated that there was something nasty recreating that file that the antivirus program wasn’t catching.

I tried to start up Malwarebytes Anti-malware. It can usually find and clean things that antivirus programs miss. And I’m not talking a specific antivirus; McAfee, Norton, AVG, Kaspersky, Avast, you name it, they miss things.

It wouldn’t run. Cue more of a bad feeling. I’ve had experience with a certain virus/trojan that does not allow programs like Malwarebytes to run.

The next step was to start Windows in safe mode to try to keep the virus from running, which would hopefully allow me to try to clean it. First attempt was met with the message that I wasn’t allowed to force a safe boot because I wasn’t an administrator, which is entirely false. (Lecture me later on always running as an administrator.) Bad feeling gets even worse.

I already suspected that I had a variation of Vundo. Researching the different process names that my antivirus had tried to delete and/or block proved it. Vundo has a lot of variations, often manifesting itself as “Personal Antivirus” or “Antivirus 2009″ or some other bogus piece of crap. Some versions place “infected” files on a computer and then try to get people to pay money for their “antivirus” program which is guaranteed to remove the “infected” files. Other behaviors of the virus are disabling network cards, replacing screensavers and wallpapers with “warnings” and hiding the options to change them back, disabling antivirus programs, Windows updates, firewalls, and malware sweepers such as Malwarebytes. Often times a machine becomes so corrupted with files that keep recreating themselves that formatting is the only option for completely cleaning it. While researching I had managed to get the computer started in safe mode run Malwarebytes. It found several infected files which it said it fully removed but I still saw some unusual things in the running processes. I decided to reformat it.

Problem was we already had plans to go out of town for the weekend and I wasn’t able to start formatting until Sunday night. I got all of my things backed up then and got started with formatting and reinstalling Windows Monday night. Everything seemed to be going well except that while I was making preparations to back up I wanted to write down the models of my ethernet card, video card, etc so that I could later download any missing drivers. Quickest place to find the part names is usually device manager EXCEPT… the trojan hid every device from device manager. I thought no big deal, we can get it off of the motherboard later.

Except after we took the case off to look at the motherboard (it’s a custom built computer so I couldn’t just look it up on a manufacturer’s site) and then put everything back to start it up again it didn’t start. It typically beeped once if it was going to boot up. This time? No beep. No BIOS start up screen. In fact, nothing showed on the monitor. The fans were running so it was definitely getting power. We’ve tried all sorts of things; even taking all of the RAM out didn’t produce anything different.

Everything points to a dead motherboard. This does not please me in any way. Things started going wrong when the computer got the virus. I don’t even know how that happened, by the way. I keep my antivirus up to date; Avast has never failed me before. I keep Windows updates installed. I keep Java and Adobe reader updated. (Those two are more of a security risk than what they seem to be worth.) I even have Adblock Plus running most of the time so that ads can’t sneak anything malicious on my computer. The motherboard might have failed had we not been looking at it, trying to find out what drivers I needed but that wouldn’t have been necessary if that damn trojan had never wormed its way on my computer.

For now I am left using my 7 year old laptop that I got before I started college. Thankfully I kept all of my photos on a separate hard drive; they should be safe but I have no way to access that drive right now. I don’t know if we can try to fix my computer (I think that motherboard is no longer in production) or try to buy me a new laptop or desktop. See, my husband’s computer was having problems last November so he shipped it to his friend to have some parts replaced. The computer was damaged during shipping and we have been going back and forth ever since trying to get the insurance claim squared away and the check that should come along with it.

I am so disappointed. I had thought that maybe I could get another lens for my camera and/or purchase some needed software but NOPE. Disaster (ok that’s dramatic but ugh) strikes AGAIN. Every time it seems like we have an opportunity to buy something a little “extra” something else breaks. Or an emergency appendectomy is required but hey, that was completely necessary. Considering some of the other things that have been going on (which fall under the category of “I don’t talk about that because it’s work related”) I am just not thrilled about money at all right now. I guess, though, that this is what some people call first world problems? I mean, I do still have this laptop.

**The title is a reference to the series of posts I wrote when I was trying to get my computer fixed the last time the motherboard went *poof* It took at least three months to get the parts to replace it…

My Computer: Part V

My computer has finally come home. I’m a little late posting this because I’ve been busy getting everything I need off of my laptop such as my nearly 4GB of pictures I’ve taken. I’ve also spent a bit of time just staring in awe of my 22″ monitor that has sat unused behind my laptop for 3 months. It is a vast improvement over my laptop’s monitor.

Thursday I came home a little early for lunch to find that we had missed the UPS delivery by about 20 minutes. The notice they left said that they would attempt another delivery on Friday. No one would be home then either. None of their automated menu options offered the choice to change the address a package was to be shipped to. Thanks to GetHuman I was able to bypass the automated system to get to an actual person who was able to change the address to my workplace. Once I got back from lunch on Friday I was told that I had a package at the campus post office. Since my computer was the only package I was expecting I knew it was it. Friday’s can be a little slow but this one (I was going to say yesterday but it’s technically Sunday since it is after midnight) seemed to drag just a little more. Once Michael picked me up from work it was back to the apartment to set everything up. Thankfully it arrived in one piece with no damage.

Michael helped me get it out of the box and connect all of the cables. I wasn’t too picky then about getting them as neat as computer cables can be so I spent a bit of time this morning straightening things up. So far it worked like a dream. I am still in awe of my monitor; I have room for all sorts of things. Whatever I’m working on in Photoshop won’t be half hidden by my toolbars anymore! I’m glad to have my music back as well as the rest of my files. I’ve spent a bit of time transferring things over from my laptop so that I don’t always have it booted and running as well. There’s still a bit to get transferred over but I’ve made a good dent in it. I think it’s going to take another day or so for my excitement to die down any.

My Computer: Part IV

I have no updates on my desktop to speak of. Last Monday (August 11) I was told that the power supply was the source of all my problems. A replacement was supposed to have been ordered but that’s all I know. Oh, regarding the missing fan mount. Apparently the case for my computer was basically destroyed in shipping. Michael told me this soon after it arrived. What he didn’t tell me was that my CD-ROM drive was also destroyed and that there was no insurance on it. HMMM. He told me this after he made a deal with the guy who is fixing it to trade my mount-less fan for a new case and a DVD-RW drive. That was about 3 1/2 weeks ago.

Last week I decided that if I am going to be using my laptop for a much longer period that I had originally thought that I should upgrade the memory in it. I wanted to upgrade the memory a long time ago but I always convinced myself not to. It originally came with only 512MB. On Monday I finally ordered 2 sticks of 512MB ram. My laptop model will only support up to 1GB so this was fine. Once I received my tracking number I eagerly watched its status. Yesterday I saw that it was due to be delivered today. This was my first time ordering something from NewEgg but I only have positive things to say. The memory arrived today. I snapped it in on my lunch break and it works wonderfully. I have noticed a huge increase in performance so I’m very glad that I decided to upgrade. We’ll see how long it is before I get my desktop back but until then I’m happier about using my laptop.

I know in my last post regarding my computer situation I mentioned that I wanted to avoid reformatting my computer. Since then I’ve changed my mind. It’s been quite a while since I have reformatted it. There are several programs installed that I no longer use. Instead of burning all of my junk to CD I asked Michael to make a folder for me on his computer and share it so that I could just transfer everything over. This is the folder name he came up with. Apparently “laptop” became “lap” because the name was too long. I’ve just finished a double check of my files and programs and I believe I’m ready to format it. I have other reasons for wanting my computer to be in really good shape but I’m not quite ready to talk about it. I hope to get some things done this weekend so keep an eye out.

My Computer: Part III

On July 13th I found out that my replacement motherboard was faulty. Yes, the one that was sent as a replacement for the first one.

While my other computer is ‘in the shop’ I’ve been trying to work on my laptop some. I really want to avoid formatting it because that just seems like too much of a hassle, particularly without my other computer there for easy file transfer or even an external hard drive. So far I’ve defragmented it and used the Disk Cleanup utility. I remember a while back it seemed like my hard drive had filled up overnight. Mind you, the thing has a 40GB hard drive. I didn’t have many large files on it or anything. I got rid of some things but could never figure out where all the extra stuff was coming from. I found out when I ran disk defragmenter. It had found 2 files that it couldn’t process. Both were in \WINDOWS\Temp and both had to do with Lord of the Rings Online. When that game first came out I signed up to be a beta player and actually got in. Sadly my poor little laptop didn’t have the hardware to run in. Anyway, both of these files were ridiculously large: over 400MB each though I can’t remember exactly. So I took a little snoop through the Temp file and found similar files. Since I’ve had the game uninstalled for ages I decided to delete all of them. In doing so I freed up over 4GB of space. These weren’t game files, mind you. These were files that had been left sitting in the Temp folder. I really don’t get it. Shouldn’t Windows periodically clean out the temporary folder if the files stored there are, well, temporary?

Today I finally heard some news. The second replacement motherboard arrived. However, it arrived without a mount for the cooling fan for the CPU. Michael’s friend has since contacted the company and a mount is supposedly on its way. I don’t suppose if he knows if this new motherboard will resolve the issues or not because, well… it’s missing pieces. Such is the story of my life.

My Computer: Part II

Michael’s friend called a few days ago to let us know that the computer had arrived and he expected to get the processor in soon. However, the were a few things mentioned at the beginning of the phone call that made me worried when I overheard it. I hadn’t been super excited about shipping my computer off so I wasn’t really happy to hear some “Oh noes” and “What happened.” Turns out that the case got smashed in where my power supply sits. I’ve been assured that nothing other than the case was damaged. I think I’ll remain skeptical until I have it sitting here and powered on at my own desk.

I haven’t received any updates since then so I really don’t know when it will be back on its way. I really hope that it’s soon because I’m trying to work on some new designs/themes and it’s a bit of a challenge with a smaller screen.