My computer is dead in the water (I am at the library). It has been taken over by some website (in spite of Norton and Spybot) that wants to sell me "anti-virus software"

We were going to go a "dummy purchase" just to see if it would clear it out but decided against it when we saw (thru phone #)that it came from a foreign country.

Happened on MLK day. I had to come to the library the next day to send in my Avon order.
I try to get here every day to check e-mail and facebook but am limited to just one hour so I don't get on here much.

Hope to get that one fixed or will have to buy a new one. I don't want a package deal that includes monitor and keyboard, just the PC.

Also, I have been seeing ads the past few days about a company called "Carbonite" (think I spelled that correctly) that advertises off-site backup. Might have to look into that. Anyone ever heard of it?

Have you decided what to do about your computer yet?

Recently, the web site of my local newspaper had some malware on it, but it appears that Norton/IE8/Vista blocked it.

Jeez, you would think that reputable web sites would have better security practices.

That reminds me, I should check out Windows Live SkyDrive someday. I understand that you can manually upload up to 25GB of files for free.

Sheltie is right - at very worst, your hard drive can be erased and the operating software reinstalled.

I back up to an external hard drive and we keep the drive in dh's office so if lord forbid the house ever burned down, the hard drive is off site.

Try e-mailing Norton/Symantec from the library, to see if they have any ideas. (Perhaps reinstalling Norton would do the trick.)

If that doesn't work, I suspect that a computer repair shop could fix the problem, short of buying a new computer. If they can't get an antivirus program to remove the problem, I think (?) they just format the hard drive, and reinstall the operating system.

I think this kind of attack is referred to as "scareware", because the attacker trys to scare people into buying a phoney antivirus product.

My best data backup is a simple (regular) full copy/paste to a portable external hard drive. When not in use, I keep the hard drive disconnected. That way, in the event of a power surge or virus attack, that drive is unaffected.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sheltieguy,

Judy that happened to me a few months ago, and the new version of Norton (Norton 360) took care of it. I did not have to buy a new computer.

Dawn

I've always done my own "offsite" back up. I burn everything on my computer onto 2 or 3 dvds so that if my laptop ever decides to have problems, I can re-add everything without any fuss. And it's free....

Carbonite is highly recommended by the tech shows that my SO listens to.

Good luck with your computer that's no fun at all.

I haven't heard of Carbonite, but Dell does provide an off-site (online) backup if you buy one of their computers. It's called Dell DataSafe and I have found it to work pretty well.