Malware

Warning #1 - This post is unrelated to vegetable gardening.

Warning #2 - I am not very computer savvy.

I use the internet to post to this blog and my website.  I also "surf" at garden forums, other garden blogs, and do a little shopping at popular sites like Ebay, Craigslist and Amazon.  I don't play games or go to questionable websites.  Yet both of my computers were infected with the same "System Tool" malware.  So it was at one of these mainstream sites that I picked up this malicious thing.

This malware makes it look like your computer is about to crash (I learned here that it's not).  It also cripples your computer.  Unskilled folks like me are unable to do anything except unplug all the cords and take it to the professionals.    

At least that's what I thought.

Our computer professional used this software to clean up the malware, and installed the software on my computer so that I can scan and clean future malware attacks.  (I learned that virus protection software doesn't protect from these types of invasions.) 

We have seperate user desktops on our computers (this is probably not the correct term).  This malware software is installed on both user's desktops.  This malware only affects one of the users, so we can log in as the other user and run the malware software fix to clean the malware.

So even though our other computer seemed to be crippled after it too was infected, we were able to fix that computer ourselves.  We logged in as the other user, downloaded the software, ran a scan, and were able to remove the malware from that computer. 

Another $76 bill from the professional was avoided.

My advice is to download this software, or something like it, before you too become infected.  And to have seperate users on your computer so you can log in and run the malware fix if you do become infected. 

Having this software will allow you to do periodic scans to check for malware that's not quite as obvious.  (I have no financial interest in this software.)

To those of you who are a bit more technically savvy than I - Please let me know if any of the above advice is inaccurate.  Thanks

I hope this helps somebody.

I also recommed the site BleepingComputer.com for computer information.  Maybe next winter I will study it in depth.