I'm back.

[vagreys]

For the past three weeks, I've been borrowing a few minutes here and there on another computer in order to keep tabs on this fine forum. It has taken me three weeks to recover my own computer from the worst PC virus bundle I've ever encountered in 30 years of PC computing. In the end, I only lost about 3 days of work on one of my books, but it was a full three weeks of work to do that, and still a lot less expensive for me than rebuilding would have been. What a nightmare!

I am now very familiar with the ZeroAccess rootkit, Cloud AV 2012 fake antivirus infection, ping.exe virus, browser redirect viruses, sirefef variants, backdoor variants, and some other choice things that got pulled onto my machine when Cloud AV 2012 infected my machine. No thanks to McAfee.

I have also learned about Java and Adobe vulnerabilities, and the relative merits of anti-virus, anti-malware, and anti-spyware applications, including how disappointingly poor McAfee has become at protecting PC's relative to other packages available, including some free antivirus applications. I've also learned some important mods to MS Internet Explorer and Firefox, to make them more secure. Thanking my lucky stars that I practiced a regular and tested routine of backing up my hard drives.

[ssorllih]

I came late to computers but have been much pleased with Nortons and with the regular updates from microsoft. So far I have escaped the infections but I know that i am not immune. I am glad to know that you didn't lose too many hours of creative labor. I hate it when I write a post like this and it disappears into cyber space.

[Chuckwagon]

Good goin' Tom. Nice to have you back in the swing of things. How are you feeling these days?

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon