Taste of Kiwi

October 15th, 2008

I’m going to be offline for a week or so. My computer caught a trojan yesterday and despite my virus checker picking it up, things aren’t good. Luckily I have backups of all my writing stuff, but I’m going to lose photos and some other stuff. Meanwhile I had a new release yesterday and can’t do any promo or update my website. Grrrrr! I’m currently at an Internet cafe to check my email and do a couple of important things that can’t wait.

I’m cranky. I stomped around our block twice yesterday and it didn’t even take the edge off my grumpiness. Neither chocolate or wine helped. Hubby wasn’t here since he’s away playing golf – probably safer for him at the moment.

Anyway – I was just surfing the net, so be careful out there! It’s a big, bad world on the Internet.

I’ll leave you with a couple of questions:

How do you backup all your important stuff? What methods do you use and how often do you backup? What virus checker do you use?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Writing Life with the following tags: backups, computers, viruses. You can feed this entry. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

19 comments to “Offline for a While…”

Oh Shelley, that’s terrible!

I’m still on hiatus but email me offline with links, cover art and blurb and I’ll give you a shout out tomorrow afternoon when I get home from work.
by Maria October 15th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Sorry to hear about your virus. Hope your computer gets better soon.
by Brenda ND October 15th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Oh, Shelley! So sorry to hear that. We spent last night taking our computers down and up because ’something’ was going on. Turned out (thankfully) that it was an attack from outside.

Luckily I’m married to a computer engineer who knows a lot about this stuff. Although unluckily I have two boys who think it’s fine to turn off their virus protection and firewalls in order to play games. Ugh.

I back all my pictures and docs up to both my laptop and an external hard drive regularly. (I have a program that automatically sends data to the external drive.) And Gizmo Guy (DH) backs up his to an online storage site – though it costs him to do that.

But even with the best anti-virus system, trojans can still get through unfortunately. Constant vigilance, as JKR’s Professor Moody used to say.
by Leah Braemel October 16th, 2008 at 4:40 am
Shelley, sorry about the virus. I had one a few months ago too and it scared me so I started to be extra vigilant about backing up my stuff. Besides saving my work on my flashdrive, I also email it to myself at both email addresses so that I know I can get to it from another computer even if something happens to mine.

Take care
by JK Coi October 16th, 2008 at 4:44 am
Congratulations on the new release!
by JK Coi October 16th, 2008 at 4:45 am
So sorry to hear about your trouble, Shelley!

I use Norton Antivirus with spyware blocker on it and do a full scan every day. I backup important docs to a flash stick and also email them to myself. Yesterday I had a weird blip and lost my whole manuscript off the hard drive (a windows bug!) but fortunately was able to get it off the flash drive.

Today I bought an external hard drive…
by Jenyfer Matthews October 16th, 2008 at 5:37 am
Oh hon that sucks! My hubby has all my stuff backed up…like three times. And I put things on a memory stick once the final edit or final draft is completed. Just in case.
by Christine d'Abo October 16th, 2008 at 6:26 am
Sorry to hear about the virus. I backup once a day to a usb thumb drive. I also email my ms to myself.

I use AVG 8-not the free version.

Congrats on the new release.
by LA Day October 16th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Sorry to hear that, Shelley. I’ve been through the same thing and it’s not pleasant. Lost a lot of stuff.

I have an external hard drive and backup everything there. I also store manuscripts online through Google (basically emailing them to myself).

I use McAfee virus & firewall.

Good luck!
by Daisy Dexter Dobbs October 16th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Oh no Shelley that’s terrifying.

We have a backup drive and do regular backups.
by Amy Ruttan October 16th, 2008 at 7:16 am
omg How scary! Our main computer gave us one of those Crash warnings last week. My Husband backed everything up and put it on CD too. Esp. pictures. I keep my writing on CD or memory sticks too. I am clueless about security, we have McAfee. Good luck with everything
by Marissa Alwin October 16th, 2008 at 11:29 am
I have two computers to begin with, plus an external hard drive. All my writing and photo stuff is backed up double, as well as the bookmarks and website code.

For a quick save in between, I send the current NiP to myself per email.

I use Avira AntiVir Professonial since my laptop crashed because that fucking Norton didn’t find the sucker.
by Gabriele October 16th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Ugh! You too? You already know mine went caput last week but ours ended up being the mother board failed. New one came in the mail today and hubby is busily installing it but he’s still getting some error code. Sigh. I have most of my stuff backed up except I hadn’t done my working files (The in-progress stuff in a month or so) so if we can’t get the computer back up I will have lost all of that. We use an EHD for our back ups but even those fail or can be infected. All the best.
-Amy W.
by Amy W. October 16th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
OMG what a nightmare, Shelley. I hope your computer is soon fixed and you don’t lose anything. I email my ms to myself every day and have a stick but haven’t yet backed up the wip on it. Better do that today.

Your interview for Tea for Two is up on my blog today (Friday 17th)
by Christina Phillips October 16th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
UGH. ACK. GROAN. STOMP. GRRRR.

I feel your pain. Hope you get it sorted out soon.
by Wylie Kinson October 17th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Oh boy, Shel, that sucks! I back my wips up on a flash drive. I back whatever I’m working on once a week.
by Sandra October 18th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Ugh! Bad news! I had a trojan virus on my other laptop, wiped out everything. I feel your pain.
by Nancy Henderson October 18th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Sorry to hear your computer got sick. Hope the computer doc can fix it.
by Tempest Knight October 18th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Thanks so much for the good wishes and advice. I have a new laptop now and thankfully I only lost a few photos plus my emails. I’m pretty good about backing up and the new external hard drive should help, along with the flashdrives (or sticks as you guys call them).

Now all I need to do is learn to drive Windows Vista. I know some people hate it but I haven’t found it too bad so far.
by Shelley Munro October 19th, 2008 at 9:23 pm