Hi guys,

Been MIA lately as I've been conducting repairs to my pc due to a nasty virus attack. It got past McAfee and then proceeded to attack it directly. Once it was done killing McAfee it then took aim at my Windows registry files and system files. After spending 4 plus hours on the phone will Dell tech support the only recourse I had was to wipe the pc clean and start over. I lost every thing, all my works, custom materials etc.....
All gone. I couldn't even copy them over to a CD because they might have been infected as well. Murphy's law I guess.

So as of tonight I went and downloaded every thing that I purchased from Renderosity and Daz3D. WOW, I spent a crap load of money on this stuff!!! Do yourself a favor, never look at your purchase history, it will make you sick!!! I also just reinstalled Vue 4 Pro and V5I so now I'm back in business. I just have to reinstall Poser 4 and all the figures and stuff I bought for it which will take a while. Then browse through the free stuff section here and download all the other stuff I got from this site. Man this is going to be a pain in the butt!!!

Start looking for some new images in about a week from me. Hopefully by then after some long nights I will be fully operational.

Jim

"All gone. I couldn't even copy them over to a CD because they might have been infected as well." I don' think so... Only executable files could be infected, data files could be not. Install a GOOD AntiVirus program then scan your CDs (after you have burned the stuff you need), maybe not all is lost... Good luck! ;)

I feel for ya, but look at it this way. Fresh start. Crap you never used cleaned out. But it is suuuuch a pain.

I have been there, not a virus but a fire inside the cpu. I know how you feel. I still have not gotten everything back in right. I may just start over again, although I did make backups. Sharen

One thing I've always done is keep Windows and programs like virus protection in a separate partition. My Vue programs and data are on another hard drive (and backed up elsewhere). I've had to wipe Windows for several reasons, but my apps were untouched. Had to reinstall a few (for registry settings), but loss was minimal. Sorry for the mess you're in - it's no fun. Take heart that you're not alone - most of us have been there.

Oh man! What a nightmare! It's happened to me too. What made it worse for me was the wasted hours on the phone with Dell "tech support". :P What a joke. On the bright side I learned a lot from my mistakes. Plus it's a good chance to get a nice clean install of Windows. As Ms Outlaw said, "Fresh start. Clean out the crap you never used." Persevere... Looking forward to your next render! :)

I bought myself an external 250GByte harddrive. Makes backup much easier. I can feel your pain. Had a disk crash on my notebook last year. That was bad...

Well now I've learned. I have all my Vue/Poser stuff on one drive and the rest on another. I'm also making sure I back up any thing that is important. And yes it is a chance to start over, that's the way I'm looking at it. Thanks!!! Jim

I hope you've learned a lesson and tossed out McAffee. ;) Seriously though, I've certainly been through that and it's awful. :( There's definitely a potential bright side in strarting over though. It's easy to get stuck in a rut stylistically if you have a lot of source files saved. It's good to start over sometimes. Just annoying when it's not your choice to do so. But I'm sure that, like a phoenix from the ashes, you'll rise again. - Oshyan

I know How you feel, my friend. I have two things that I rely on and have gotten me out of some very sticky situations. The first is a 300GB Maxtor USB2 Hard drive and the second is Norton Ghost (2004 I think). With Norton Ghost, I create a ghost backup (an exact copy of my system including Windows itself, Ghost runs in DOS so Windows is also backed up) of both my C and D drive, which is saved directly to my 300Gb Maxtor. I try to do this once a month. The cool thing with Norton Ghost, is the fact that I can then totally format both my C and D drive, install Windows, install ghost and nothing else. I then only have to run Ghost and tell it to reload the backup I created... It asks me if I wish to overwrite windows, I click yes because I really cant be bothered to reinstall all my windows updates and programs, then sit back and watch it do its magic. About an hour later (my backup is about 50Gb in size) Windows, my Apps and even my desktop image are back to where they were when I created the backup. You might want to consider this route as the time saved is considerable compared to all the downloading and installing you have to do now. (I am talking hours if not days worth of saved time) I got burned too many time and I wont let it happen again... Take care, my friend... Gareth:)

Oh, one more thing, make sure you are not infected with a virus when you create the back up, or all you'll do is reinstall it with everything else...lol Gareth:)

Yeah, that's a real calamity!

As a PC consultant i really try to get my clients to backup thoroughly and often.

I myself always build my own PCs with 2 identical hard drives. Then i make Norton Ghost full drive images (clones the whole drive, but you can't retreive individual files) from the boot drive to the backup drive.

But i also bought a WD "Media Center" external drive that backs up my most important folders/files every night. And i copy my most important projects to CDs as well.

The anti-virus i recommend is Trend Micro's PC-cillin (now "Internet Security 2005"). I've used it for 4 years and had zero infections.

None of my clients has had an infection while using it (correctly) either. One client's college student son never updated the virus patterns when requested to and did get 1 virus.

Sorry to push commercial products here, but might save someone from such a disaster.

Message edited on: 07/01/2005 16:11

Trend Micro's PC-cillin is actually what detected the virus. Since the attack I have a second 250G hard drive and back my system up to it. I'm also going to be getting rid of McAfee and investing in a new virus protection program. My other pc has Norton on it and I've had zero problems. My pc was getting cluttered with junk files any way so this is an involuntary spring cleaning if you will. All is good now, everything is re-installed and operational. Thanks!!!

Norton is bloatware if you ask me. It's decent with virus detection, but it sure hogs your system while doing it. :p Trend Micro is nice though IMO, and I do recommend it.

Ghost is also recommended. I would recommend Powerquest's Disk Image product as an easier alternative, but apparently Symantec has gone and bought them. Bastards. :p Anyway, if your version of Ghost includes Ghost Explorer, you can retrieve individual files. Quite handy. Also you should be able to make a bootable CD with Ghost on it that will completely restore from a DOS prompt. No need to bother installing Windows.

• Oshyan

Message edited on: 07/02/2005 04:55

Hi, I been there too,,,,,It's hard at first,,,,now I use another program to backup than those mentioned here so I will add yet another alternative. I too use another 250 meg external drive that connects via USB. I keep this drive in a cabnet till I am ready to use it. If I get a virus or have a major HD failure. I just put in a new drive or boot the old one with a backup CD and tell the program to repartition the HD and and reinstall my backup. Then an hour or so later I have everything back exactly as it was. This includes XP with serial number (no calls to MS) All my software fully functional,activations included,right where they were. The Program that makes this possibe is Acronis True Image at Acronis.com It works! Glenn Grace

BTW, the new Norton Ghost does allow individual file retreival from an image file (file-by-file backup not required). And it runs entirely in Windows. Works great on my XP Pro and it doesn't have to drop into DOS or do a Windows restart anymore. Like magic!

Hmm, seems I'll be investing in Norton Ghost as well. Thanks for all the tips and suggestions!!! Now all I have to do is find the time to re-create all my lost material files. Hopefully I can make them better than before.