can anyone identify a problem i had a couple of years ago?

adam3112

Baseband Member
Messages
49
Reason i'm asking this is because i want to avoid this problem/virus as much as i can on my new computer that I'm currently using as i don't want to lose any files or have to put up with buying a windows xp/vista installation disc and start everything from scratch.

Anyway a couple of years ago, i was using our family computer and one day what seemed the most serious, deadly computer virus destroyed it. i do not visit dodgy websites, click popups, banners etc as i understand about the potential risks in doing so. The problem i had was one day booting up my pc and logging on to my windows, i noticed every single icon on my PC and i mean everything for every program/software/function/file had the
unknownicon.jpg
symbol by its name. Thought of a system restore and that had the same icon too. And yes when i tried clicking the programs, software etc the open with box came up.

So then it seemed like everything on my hard drive had been deleted and i was unable to use any function with my PC but the shutdown/restart buttons.

After being left with no option but to shutdown or restart my com, i thought it would be a good idea just to restart my PC in panic hoping that this was just some temporary bug that would fix itself on the next bootup. And then the restart got no further than the black/blue dos screens. It seemed even windows itself had been deleted. After being totally gutted and unable to start up windows xp, i had to get a neighbor to come round and reinstall his copy of xp some how.

Does anyone know what this problem was??, how i may of got it?? or the name of the virus and smart ways to avoid it?? Or have had a similar problem?? I would also like to say i had norton 2005 installed and had the latest definitions of that time and some how didn't detect any problems or viruses.

Any tips would be great

Adam
 
Firstly did you have a good and up to date firewall installed?, second are you on XP or VISTA now, if your on XP then get hold of Norton ghost and copy your hard drive to either another partition or burn it to a disc so you have a back up should anything ever go pair shaped again.
If you are on VISTA then use ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE to back up your HDD the same as mentioned above, (NORTON GHOST is not compatible with VISTA yet or at least it wasn't last time I checked but they are working on a version now.)
I cant say what caused you computer to mess up but it does sound like a virus, if you do make a back up like mentioned before then you will be able to restore back as many times as you wish provided your HDD does not fail or you don't make to many hardware changes e.g change of graphics card as in some cases you back up does not work so you have to make a new back up as soon as the new hardware has been installed.
 
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