Huzzah! One Lunched Laptop Now Fixed

I was able to reinstall Microsoft Office 2010, so my critical programs are back on my second laptop.  You can download the Microsoft Office software from the Microsoft website.  However, you must have your original activation key, a 25 digit number, in order to install it.

Fortunately, wifey had these numbers in a file, and saved my butt.

Today I will attempt to retrieve critical files from the hard drive of my first laptop.

More Computer Problems: Trojan Horse Attacks the Stogiemeister

Sheee-it, I have had two laptops lunched in three days.  This morning my backup laptop acquired a nasty Trojan.  I was sitting at the patio table when my computer displayed a message that I had a serious virus and would have to call a certain number, and to have my credit card ready.  A robotic voice repeated this over and over in a monotone.  I knew then that I did have a serious virus, and it was talking to me, trying to convince me that it was a legitimate utility built into Windows. Of course, I am not that stupid.  Yeah, I'm going to give my debit/credit card number to computer criminals and watch them drain my bank account.

I couldn't stop the voice and display by the usual means -- couldn't halt it, couldn't reboot -- so I held down my on/off button to force the computer to shut down.  Then I turned it back on and ran a malware removal program (Spyhunter 4).  Spyhunter quickly deleted the Trojan, but when I rebooted my partition had been damaged, and Windows could not start the computer.

There was nothing left to do but reinstall the operating system from scratch.  This caused all files and installed programs to be lost.  Word, Excel, Outlook, Photoshop, Chrome, everything.

I must have contracted the Trojan during the short time I fired up the laptop and before I reinstalled McAfee virus checker.  Where and how, I do not know.

This is not my week.

Computer Problems

Late yesterday my 4 year old Dell Inspiron Laptop started getting blue screens.  The situation deteriorated, and this morning while in Safe Mode, the computer went completely dark.  Now it no longer powers up at all.  Fortunately, I have a backup laptop, which I am now using.  I've spent the whole morning updating the McAfee virus checker, Windows 7, Acrobat, and RegCure.

I think I can recover my critical files by taking the hard drive out and using it as a portable hard drive -- this is not hard to do.  I'll attend to that later.