Carleen

In the wee small hours of the morning on Monday, I somehow managed to find a very unfriendly blog -- one that left a trojan on my laptop. Thankfully, my anti-virus software caught it quickly; unfortunately, it wasn't quick enough to prevent the trojan from making a change to the computer's registry so that about an hour later, a message pops up on my screen alerting me to the fact that another computer, with the same name as mine, has joined our household network. Thinking it was some kind of mistake, I hesitated a minute before figuring out that it may have something to do with the trojan.


I launched AdAware just in case there was some kind of malware on the machine and kept on working on my Monday Musings post. All of a sudden, I start hearing Chinese coming from my iPhone speaker which is always hooked up to the laptop. Freaking out completely now, I knew there was a problem as I began to connect the dots. . .there was a phantom hacker /user / a$$hole on our network, with access to my computer and clearly enjoying him/herself!

Try as I might, I couldn't get the registry change fixed and ended up having to reinstall Windows yesterday. I've never done it before, so that was quite an adventure in and of itself. Once I got all the drivers and whatnot reinstalled, everything worked fine except that I couldn't access the internet network. Thanks to my cousin, whose Microsoft certification comes in really handy, the problem was diagnosed by phone and fixed in no time. But that was at 7:30 last night!

I am still trying to get everything reinstalled on my computer so that I can get caught up with the work I was supposed to have done for the business on Monday. I hope to have that done sometime tonight, and then I will return to my regularly scheduled blogging.
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5 Responses
  1. That is awful someone hacked your computer, glad that you are OK again. Horrible when you have to reload windows. Best to be safe though.


  2. The Bumbles Says:

    Oh dear - that is truly annoying. I'm glad it is all better now.

    Is it wrong that I didn't think computer virus when I skimmed your post on my Reader and saw key words wee hours, Trojan, lap(top) and popping up?


  3. Anonymous Says:

    It is a true learning experience. Once you get it reformatted, then it's getting your data and programs all back on. It's a pain in the ass. I'm sort of amazed your antivirus etc, didn't clean up everything for you. But sometimes it doesn't...I hope also that you password protect your network as well. Those frickin' hakcers just piss me off


  4. Anonymous Says:

    Sometimes no matter what you do to protect the system, a hacker can find a way in. I've got three security programs on mine and they can't always keep up with the newest threats. Glad you caught it! Keep an eye out on your personal stuff on the computer (banking and such) in case passwords or whatnot were stolen. In fact I'd change all passwords and logins on banking and any other secure sites you visit that may have a cc# stored on the site.

    Also do you have a good file back up system? I highly recommend carbonite. I've used it for two years now and it's a breeze replacing files when a computer crashes (or you buy a new one or whatever). It's worth every penny and more of the $50 per year for the carbonite service.

    Good luck getting everything back up and running all the way!


  5. RA Says:

    I'm sorry to read about your computer problem. I hope you can recover all soon without any damage, Carleen.


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