Category: <span>Tech Tips for Artists</span>

Thanks to those of you still here! Have been pounding the heart of my computer for 10 days trying to make it live. Right before Christmas I got spyware from GoComics. (yes, it’s all cartoons, which is shocking enough. What kind of person likes cartoons and also sends spyware out?) Later, when they hired me 2 months later, I found out many other readers also got trojans and spyware from there.? You really have to buy the membership, or watch out….

I used Kaspersky Antivirus once before, and actually bought a copy, which I never activated – and yet the site told me it is already out of commission. So I downloaded the new trial version. Next morning…Kaspersky locked me out. Totally. I thought it was my fault for 3 days, that the password I had written down for Windows XP was wrong. Nope. I couldn’t even get in through safe mode, or any form of safe mode.

Kaspersky didn’t reply to my email, and had no answering service. No one helped on their forum. Took it to Staples, who couldn’t get in (even though he had the same problem with someone else with Kaspersky), and then Fry’s. Always fun carrying a 40lb computer into stores! Fry’s said I had to buy another hard drive, to make that the C drive, and install Windows on it. (DO NOT reinstall Windows on your original drive or it will wipe it clean!! Says so right on the disc!) Make sure the other original C drive is not connected to the motherboard.

Then, after you install XP on the new HD, hook up the old C drive, and Windows will recognize it as the D drive, or other drive. Then I can see the files, and copy them over to my new C drive, and then wipe the original C drive clean. I understand this, but it’s still terrifying. I get dizzy and sick to my stomach everytime I have to open up the computer and do these things.