Last week my computer caught a cold. Not the sniffles mind you but a full-fledged meltdown. The kind that brings your world to a screeching
halt, leads to panic attacks and hours on the phone with techy people throwing words at you that would require spellcheck to repeat, but since spell check wasn't working…well you get the idea. Three days later and $0 later, yes that is Zero dollars (I am a cheap chick) my paperweight, ahem... computer is fully restored. Here is what I learned to save you some headaches...
halt, leads to panic attacks and hours on the phone with techy people throwing words at you that would require spellcheck to repeat, but since spell check wasn't working…well you get the idea. Three days later and $0 later, yes that is Zero dollars (I am a cheap chick) my paperweight, ahem... computer is fully restored. Here is what I learned to save you some headaches...
1)
Backup? Yeah yeah yeah, you say... we hear it all the time. But DO you have all your eggs in one basket? I use Dropbox, recommended to me by a friend. Worked great, except for one thing.
Somehow when I was moving files, I missed a folder. A pretty dang important folder, the bio pics I PAID to have professionally done last year. GRRRRR…..
Well, as luck would have it, I had backed up all my pics on a memory stick a couple months ago. AWESOME! Praise be and thank the lord! Doing a dance. Note to self (and you)…backup in 2 places on separate occasions, just in case you miss
something.
2)
If you had to restore your computer to “out of the box” condition, would you lose all your bookmarked
websites and/or favorites? I did. DO yourself a favor and on the first of the month, or whatever works for you, take a snap shot of your favorites and save it
with your backup. I had far too many too remember them all. And yeah, if I can’t remember maybe it wasn’t worth saving. But, how often does that turn out to be the case. I just know one of these days I am going want to look something up and not remember the great source of information I knew I once had. :(
3)
Geek squad to the rescue? NOT! When the melt down initially happened, I call Geek squad because
according to the commercials they can fix anything. HA! My laptop came with everything loaded. No rescue disks. The Geeks told me it would be min $130 to restore and if the virus was deep enough (meaning they could not restore to previous date), I would have to contact Toshiba MYSELF get the restoration disks FOR THEM and they could wipe my computer clean. Hummm…well, since I had already commanded my laptop to restore to a previous date but the virus was not letting it, there was no need to pay them just to figure that out. So, a bit deflated, I took my broken laptop home and used the hubby’s computer to look up the Toshiba website. After I entered my model and serial number, they gave me the secret squirrel code to reset my computer to out of the box condition. Alarms went off, warning signs popped up, but I did it. Woo HOO! No waiting for rescue disk, no virus…happy dance comes to a halt as I realize no office suite
on my computer? What? No! That was not the plan…Hello 1-800-Microsoft.
4)
We had our Microsoft Office disk, but I couldn’t get it to load. Two hours on the phone with a tech
guy got my systems restored. A lack of “updates” was keeping my Office Suite from loading. But, running updates once wasn’t enough. Apparently they build on one another, so I had to “check for updates” 3 times before they all loaded. Who knew. You would think once was enough, but it’s not. Be patient and be through.
5)
FREE VIRUS PROTECTION! Yes,
after fixing my computer, the tech walked me through downloading “Microsoft Essentials”, which is better protection than just using the firewall. Go to
www.support.microsoft.com. Click “support”,then download “Essentials” for the latest free microsoft antivirus ware.
The Lessons here boil down to being assertive and unafraid of your own computer. There are people being paid to sit on a phone and wait for your call. Call them. Ask questions. And most of all, be prepared. Knowledge is Armor.
