A request to all aroiders on this forum as well as a warning

I am requesting that all of you that I often correspond with drop a personal note to me and include your current email address. Please don't post it here, just send the note to: Steve@ExoticRainforest.com

I am especially asking that all of the botanists and scientists as well as others on this group that I often ask questions of send me their addresses. Here's why:


For some weeks my computer has been crashing. I have a good anti-virus program and subscribe to a company that fixes any problem with the computer via the internet. I've always found their service to be great..............costly, but excellent. Two days before we went to Fort Worth for the MidAmerica Chapter meeting on October 30 the computer totally shut down I called the company and they were able to fix the problem but the next day it was back with a vengeance. They ended up working on it for 9 hours and could find nothing wrong. The total system began to cascade downwards starting with a disabled keyboard. Dr. Croat was here at the time and heard my moaning and groaning! That was due to the fact I had just worked for days to prepare a new AV program to give at that meeting. Obviously, I had to give another one that was less suitable for the meeting. By the way, I now have that one back!

Since they could find nothing wrong, the company that does the online repair suggested I take the computer to the shop since it was their opinion there was something wrong internally. They suspected a number of things including a bad keyboard but after 5 days in the shop found nothing wrong! Nothing!

What they did find was three viruses and one was the major cause of the problem. I talked with Steve Marak who is a programmer as well as the operator of Aroid l at the meeting in Fort Worth and he told me about a new virus that can hide from almost all anti-virus programs and loads right at startup. Interestingly, my computer had been slow to load up for some weeks.

As a result, the service company had to totally wipe my hard drive to get rid of the problems. I have the computer back and it is working fine now but I spent all day reloading programs and still have some to go. I have all my files backed up on Carbonite and they are now downloading everything back on the computer but it will take another 44 hours to get them all installed again! That after 5 hours today!

I just want to make sure I have all the email addresses I need to stay in touch in my many friends in the aroid world as well as work on the projects for my website. If you will be kind enough to send me a short personal email with your name and address I will appreciate the help a great deal!

Other than that, if you start experiencing your computer beginning to be slow at startup or the keyboard does not want to work, GET HELP!


Thanks!

Steve Lucas
www.ExoticRainforest.com

Steve, do you have any idea where you got this virus from? Was it through an email or a website?

No idea. I do a great deal of research and it could have easily come down from one of the European sources I often check. However, one friend I am aware of had his mother get the same thing and she has no idea where it came from either. I don't think she does a great deal of plant research either!

The person that wrote it is very devious since it loads so early in the startup process it is already running before the antivirus program begins to run. The only clue I could see, which I didn't figure out until after it was fully trying to eat my computer, was the time it took between the first time my computer began to boot up and a one minute or so delay before Windows began to load.

I have contacted the company that created the anti-virus program I use and they are now on the lookout for something brand new.

BTW, I need your address again!

Steve

Sorry to hear about your troubles. Just one reason I stopped using Windows 15+ years ago. Macs and Linux only for me.

Thanks Tommy. I'm considering it!

Hey Steve,

Has your anti-virus program been able to identify the name of the virus?

Is your machine equipped to stop it now?

Hope it can be identified and blocked.

Macs don't get virusus? Wow! I didn't know that.

99% of the time you won't get a virus on a Mac. I made the switch from PC to Mac 2 yrs ago. I haven't had one single virus or problem with my Mac. It is also easier to keep up with updates.
You will spend more money buying a Mac but it is well worth it in my humble opinion. Also, your Mac won't be outdated two months after you buy it ;)

I'm thinking about purchasing a laptop and have decided that I'll go with a MacBook instead of a windows based machine. While my diligence has kept me nearly free of virus, spyware and spam problems on all the windows machines I've used and owned, I tire of the constant antivirus updates and wondering when some new bug is going to get past my multiple defense layers. Besides, if I'm using the Mac for wi-fi internet work, I can't be constantly concerned about viruses coming in through email or websites.

I hope you will be as happy with yours as I am mine LariAnn. It's a mild learning curve but not bad at all.

I subscribe to a service called CyberDefender. They have all sorts of anti-virus programs on my computer but this thing got past them all. They have now spent well over 20 hours searching the computer to find the thing and think they may have finally traced it down. A friend who does ;programming at IBM says he is aware of it and it hides very effectively.

Here is a big problem to consider if you back up your files on Carbonite. Any virus that gets on the computer is also backed up to Carbonite. When we totally wipe the hard drive and reinstalled all the programs I then reloaded all data from Carobinite and down camer the viurs...............again!

The guys at CyberDefender had me send them a copy of every single file that was reinstalled by Carbonite and they are now checking every name on the list to see what may potentially be a virus. They found a few and I allowed them to get on my Carbonite backup file so they could erase them there as well. They then erased all my backed up files from C'bonite and we are now reloading everything again...........about a 36 hour process! Obviously, I have a lot of saved files.

Tomorrow they will then again run the several dozen programs they use to detect any virus infected file and all I can do is hope for the best. The good thing is they guarantee their work and will continue to work on the machine until everything is properly fixed. They have also installed a program on my machine that tells them if any changes are made tot he registry so they can trace the event back to the source.

As for the name of the virus, I don't know yet.

I have considered a MAC but I run quite a few very expensive programs (Photoshop, QuarkXpress and others) and the cost of buying all new MAC programs would exceed the cost of the machine. All I can do now is hope for the best but at least the computer now appears to be running fine but these guys have assigned one of their top guys to work on my system until they are assured they have found the problem and have destroyed it. They have been spending 4 hours per day checking the machine for several days and all I do is turn over the machine to them so they can check it via a remote server. It costs $300 per year but I'm finding that to be cheap when compared to the hourly cost of our local computer service.

Steve



This message was edited Nov 17, 2010 10:27 PM

Be careful what you click on, on facebook. My dd clicked on a link and she got several trojans in my computer. Luckily, my son is in college for computer programming and was able to fix it right away. She also had some in her computer as well from the same thing they were the same trojans from the same link so we know for sure that is where they came from. Hers was fixed as well but she isn't clicking on anymore links LOL.

I tried Facebook for 3 months a last year. Got off of it, big timer waster IMHO. People rather talk over Facebook than call or visit. Pathetic.

I'm on my 2nd Mac in 10 years and love, love, love it!!!! Also have an Ipad.

My accounting software is still PC and I have a software called Infusion that allows me to run the PC stuff also on the Mac, so I have the best of both worlds. I do have to have a virus software on the PC side of the computer.

This machine I'm typing on is a 7 year old PPC Mac Mini. It runs 24/7. Never lets me down. I also have a 3 year old Macbook. The HD went bad on it (known issue) they replaced the HD free and also replaced several other slight issues I didn't even ask for or even know about. THAT is excellent customer service. I got a box to ship it in the day after I called them. It was back to me in a week.

Apple rules.

Just a recommendation for those that do not feel like changing to a Mac: I am not a computer wiz: I am a nurse, so I am not trying to sell anything. I have used a combination of Zone Alarm Extreme and System Mechanic for quite some time. The first to keep my "stuff" secure and the second to keep the system running smoothly. I have never had problems since I have been using these programs. ZoneAlarm has caught and isolated every virus so far. The whole system runs much better using the System Mechanic tools....I am impressed. I also run the free program "Spybot" on occasion. It cannot be beat when it comes to spyware. ZA costs about $50 and SM is about $30. These must be renewed (at a lesser cost) each year. I have used many systems over the years (including CyberDefender) which do not come close to to ZoneAlarm. As for Symantec (aka Norton) I uninstall it first thing with any new PC I get. Anyway, thats my two cents on security for those of you that might be interested.

You will find me in my garden rather than on my computer any day, weather permitting. Have a good day.

boru