Ransom ware

[Padgett]

Well if it must be an Apple... Years ago illustrators and journalists liked them because they did what was needed without a dash-1 the size of a phone book.

Guess you need it before scholl starts but Apple always has a once-a-year discount around black Friday.

BTW with a docking station it can be used at home or in a dorm room with real keyboard, mouse, and a couple of big monitors. With a setup like that a UPS is also a good idea.

[momto4girls]

Well, I have better news today. My husband switched from Avast to Emsisoft. It took a few tries because there are many versions of the globe ransomware. Mine was globe3 as it turns out. So we did find a program that worked. My files are free!

Originally Posted by HoMiPa

Wow. That's a shame. Even some of my daughter's profs commented on 'her' smart choice of selecting an Alienware for all the various graphics programs she had to use. Specifically, the 3D lighting design program notoriously crashed even the school's desktops - but never her Alienware.

Sorry about your loss of files.

Alienware sounds great! It would be nice if we had a choice, but I'm sure they have their reasons. I'll tell my daughter about the Alienware--she may already know about it--for future reference.

Originally Posted by Padgett

Well if it must be an Apple... Years ago illustrators and journalists liked them because they did what was needed without a dash-1 the size of a phone book.

Guess you need it before scholl starts but Apple always has a once-a-year discount around black Friday.

BTW with a docking station it can be used at home or in a dorm room with real keyboard, mouse, and a couple of big monitors. With a setup like that a UPS is also a good idea.

Good to know!

[wbmiller3]

The best defense against ransomware is having solid backups of all your files.

Then if you get infected, it becomes a nuisance (having to reload) rather than a disaster (losing all your data).

What should you backup? Only what you care about keeping!

Our house has been a Ubuntu Linux shop for several years now. For the very few things that I can't avoid running Windows for, I use Virtualbox virtual machines of Windows 7 and 10.

For anyone still mourning XP, I suggest you check out Lubuntu (http://lubuntu.me/). The desktop will seem quite familiar and easy to get used to.

[Padgett]

Well if you have to ask a good set of backups is always something to have.

I grew up with mainframes and always partition my devices (even tablets) into two drives: C: (system) and D: (data).

Windows 7 and later provides a way to keep a full system image (is under File History in Windows 10). I keep a system image of the C: drive and a flat file incremental backup (can use XXCOPY) of the D: drive. I also keep backup copies of all license Keys (including ones stored in the BIOS).

That said I feel that the best defense is to keep anything hostile from executing on my computer. To do that I have EMET set "paranoid", the UAC requiring personal acknowledgement before anything unknown can execute or affect system areas, and usually run as a plain user with a separate admin account.

Now that I no longer have to support a major corporation, there is no real reason to keep using Windows, I just understand it better than other OSs and have a number of apps that do not run anywhere else (like an email routine that does not run anything active without permission & warns of anything other than text).

Have some friends who use nothing but Linux and I use Kali for analysis & have both Fedora and Ubuntu, just find linking to my Android phone and such easier in Windoze.

[MarkoPolo]

OK, I have the new laptop.....however, I can't log in to the Trailmanor (or any other forum where I am a member) using the old username, etc. Any idea why and what to do to solve this dilemma? (Using old machine to write this). Thanks

[Padgett]

Any chance you are using the wrong password ? Something is case sensitive ? I login from several machines and while sometimes have to enter my username/password, there is no issue.

[BubbaDad]

I use COMODO protection and recovery. I also have the Geek on line. I do pay for this but anything worth having is worth paying for. I tried all the free stuff and decided I want get premium service. The Geek option is good because they can remotely fix any problems you have including setting up and installing software. It's a real time and sanity saver.

I also use a home cloud server which is also well worth the price. I like to have my own files where I know they are and not have some hacker steal whatever is in my files. Store unlimited, well up to 3 terabytes which for now is a ginormous storage. Of course I remember in around 1980 where Byte magazine said 64K was all anyone needed.

Don't like the way apple feels and works on a computer but love the phones and tablets. But all are computers and susceptible to hackers and viruses. It's just Apple lags behind windows pcs in number so its probably not worth the hackers effort to hack the system. Apple also has a real closed system whereas Winders is more open.