I got a Trojan....OK here is a long RANT..

I haven't posted for a while, as a couple of weeks ago I picked up a Trojan on my main PC. I took me about a week to get rid of it fully. It was a real nasty one and wouldn't go away. Anyone who knows me, will confirm that I am a computer security freak.I have hardware and software firewalls, anti-spyware, antivirus, everything always kept updated, you name it I've got it...all protecting our PCs at all times. I didn't download anything and didn't let anything in...
BUT...

I didn't like the way my post preview works on blogger, it didn't (and still doesn't) show the page correctly on preview, so I went Googling for an answer, I was clicking on links from Google, being taken to other blogs that give how to's on blogger, don't know which blog sent the Trojan but it was definitely from a blog. My firewall popped up asking if an exe file could have access to the Internet, I was immediately suspicious and said NO. I thought I stopped it in it's tracks, the exe file was in my temp folder, I blocked all Internet and networks and deleted the contents of the temp folder and cleaned out everything else. Ran a virus check, and a spyware check using spybot,adaware and A2, they all found the Trojan and couple of other things it had added and deleted them, but on every reboot it was back again, I didn't get the popups etc but on every scan it was back again. I keep searching for answers on how to get rid of it, finally I read on a antispyware forum about a program called SUPERAntiSpyware free edition, I was a bit wary of downloading it, but I bit the bullet and installed it. Glad I did, it removed the Trojans. It's free and I can recommend it. I have a clean PC again. I've been using the net since the early 90's and have never been infected before..AND I DON'T WANT TO BE AGAIN...

What bothers me though is, being new to blogging, was it just a malicious blog or did someone put a Trojan on an innocent blog, if so, how I can prevent someone hijacking my blog, can't see why they would pick mine though don't get enough traffic, guess I'm back to Googling to try and find some answers, but I've gone back to prompt for active x controls and plug-ins which is a pain in the *** and only let it run on blogs and sites that I trust.

Just like to add, what SCUMBAGS these idiots are that write Viruses and Trojans, who hijack peoples blogs and websites, and waste my time when I could be crafting..what kicks they get from it is beyond me..and A BIG THANK YOU to all the clever people who write software to combat them (especially the free ones) and the forums that give help to remove them.

OK had my rant, back to crafting now....

I had a bit of a disaster on my PC

Well I've had fun and games this week with my main PC.
It all started when I downloaded the new version of Picasa. I got a message pop up in Picasa up saying one of my hard drives didn't have enough space on it.. funny I thought, so I had a look in my computer, and noticed that my C drive only had 500 MB left on it, strange as I had over 2 gigs free on it earlier. Nothing is ever installed onto C, it is kept purely for Windows. I delved a bit deeper into it and found out that the Picasa database lives on the C drive, and mine was over 2 gigs in size, I thought no problem, I'll just move the database to another drive but apparently Picasa doesn't have an option to put the data base anywhere other than the C Drive.

I decided rather than fiddling too much, I would repartition the drive I moved 5 gig over to C from another drive, and had no problem at all. Then I noticed that on my second hard drive, one of the partitions with all my avi files was running short of space, so I decided to give it some more space too. It seemed to be taking a long time so I left it going and went to bed. I started the PC the next day, went to my computer and my drive with all the videos had disappeared. Disk management, showed the partition but had no drive letter assigned to it, I gave it a drive letter, then... I noticed all 70gig on that partition was free, all my video files on it had gone......

Oh dear, I hadn't backed it up since July.. I bet you can guess I was not happy...I remembered a program that I had used years ago, to recover lost data, I found a newer version of it, and let it scan the drive, it was taking hours, so I went to bed and left it running. When I got up this morning, I opened up the program and it had found all the deleted data on the drive, even things that I had deleted years ago. I restored the videos I hadn't backed up, and I was a happy bunny again.
I have always backed up files, in fact I have backups of backups, but I got lazy,....and left it too long...I've promised myself that I will back up more regularly, and definitely backup before I re-size any more partitions.... I was lucky it wasn't my windows drive that got wiped.
For anyone that interest in the program it's freeware and it works.. I've added a link in Nothing To Do With Crafting.. the program is PC Inspector File Recovery, they also have a program Smart Recovery that they say will recover deleted data from camera cards, have a look on their site for it.