nfb: yeeow! craaaaaaashhhhhh

[wolfdogs]

sat down last night to check my wolfdog emails and lists... got that little innocent blinking msn/windows update icon in the lower right tool bar.. clicked on it... "update available".."do you want to update now"... sure. "update completed...you need to restart your computer would you like to do that now"...sure......

computer came back up..... five icons on the left....thats all i had... internet wouldnt work... clicked on my computer icon.. no files would show... my computer was empty as a beer can on fri night... nada..... clicked on "start" and the menu wouldnt even come up..so i couldnt even restore to earlier date..... frozen in the water....dead in the sea..... crashed.

half hour on hold..dell tech gets on with me... rebooted while clicking "delete" key took me the the "inter sanctum section" of the computer... pretty scary.. he walked me thru everything.. restored the whole system . had to uninstall norton internet security and reinstall that last. took almost 2 hrs.....

he said the "update" did it. nice........ real nice..... thanks msn........ you bastages........

on wit da show.....

and joe da ho.

[Aaron4TAMU]

Any idea on which update this was? That's very strange.

[Formulaboy95]

MSN, aka: "The Evil Butterfly"

[hotwhip9]

Thats the reason I never update. Last update I had wouldn't let me connect to secure internet sites. I deleted ALL my updates, every last one of them. Computer works like a charm, but that little update window comes up every 3 days, and on those days its clicking the remind me later in 3 days. Windows updates are evil.

[WICKED LT1]

While I do not subscribe to the 'auto-update', let MS rule my comp deal; I would be a little cautious about completely avoiding updates. It is a stat that an unpactched Windows computer will only survive about 1 minute connected to the net before being infected with a number a virus/worms. If you have a hardware router/firewall you are better off, but you are still vulnerable to some of the more nasty variants.

Wolfman -

There is usually a way to get back to a previous state w/o completely reloading the pc. It is a popular tactic with support reps, because it is a sure fix unless you have a hardware issue. If you have Windows XP/2000 you can boot and press F8 right when it says windows, and you will get a menu that contains some options to help get you back rightious again. Particularly handy, is safe mode. This lets you boot without most drivers and software and run utilities like Restore my computer to a previous time.


-Paul

[02Z28]

i'm assuming that since you're using MSN software, that you have a dialup connection? if so, if i were you, i'd just get the access number written down and make a dialup connection using windows, instead of installing that crap MSN software. if i ever have to resort to using dialup again, that is what i will do....i do not trust ANY isp's connection software. a lot of the time, they will install things that will prevent other software from working (especially other isp's software if you decide to change providers).

in the case of AOSmell, they dig roots so deep in your computer that it takes a reformat/reinstall of the OS to get things to work again, which is just one of the many reasons i have not used them since 4.0 eight years ago.

as far as the windows updates go, i will never, ever allow windows to update itself, just because of things like this. you don't have the chance to backup everything before you do an update if you let windows update itself, and what's worse is that it will usually update itself whenever you're not even using it (if you leave it turned on all the time) and you have even less information about what was downloaded, which means you have even less of a chance of recovery.

and as for Dell (or any other PC maker for that matter), they usually don't give a crap about anything that you lost on your system in the event of a crash, they won't even make an attempt to rescue anything. they just tell you, "Yeah, just throw in your recovery disc and reboot, and your system will be operational again." What they fail to tell you is that when you do that, it automatically reformats the hard drive and restores everything to the way it came from the store/factory, leaving you to reinstall any other software that you put on afterwards, not to mention, having to re-create any documents/files that were made with the programs on the system that were not backed up.

that is why i always build my own computers. on top of that, i have seperate partitions for the OS, my installed programs, and my storage space. one partition contains absolutely nothing except the OS, so that in the event that i need to reformat, nothing else is lost. another partition contains my installed programs, including any configuration/data files for those programs, so when i reinstall the OS, those files are still there, and all i need to do is reinstall the program to create the registry entries, and i'm right back to where i was.