Sunday, May 31, 2009

A computer story

Long time no blog! I have kept myself a little busy with scrapbooking, photography and work! I have been without my laptop for about 3 weeks. I just got it back and as I typed the first couple of sentences, IE stopped responding. I logged back in using FireFox instead.

May 14, 2009

On May 10, I had woke up early that morning and was using facebook. I was in one of the apps when I saw how my friends had played this game and to try to beat their scores. Well, it was a trick. I clicked on it and started downloading this game. My antivirus program came up saying it was unsafe so I stopped the download. I had downloaded a virus to my computer!!!!! Trend Micro quarantined it, and then I deleted it. Ever since my computer had been running slow and would just freeze up on me. I was going out of town the next weekend and wanted my laptop. I would get it to work but then it would eventually freeze up.

I took it to Eureka Springs with me and I did get it to work on Saturday but it was the last time. It wouldn't let me back up files are anything. I took it to the Geek Squad on Monday. I have a service plan with them and wanted my DVD drive looked at also as it wants to work all the time!!! Plus I had the new problem with my system freezing up. I was very unhappy with them as they told me that it was going to be $130 just for them to figure out what was wrong with it. I wasn't happy with the new policies they had but if the DVD drive was something my service plan would cover, I went ahead and had them service it.

I waited, waited and waited some more for a phone call. I had stopped in the store a few days after dropping my laptop off and wanted them to also remove some programs I don't use anymore. I found out that my laptop was in the middle of the diagnosis program and that I should be getting a phone call in a day or two. After about 3 days and no phone call, I decided to call. I got told that they were running virus/spyware programs and they would call me in a day to let me know what the outcome was. After 9 days of being told a couple of days each time I was getting frustrated!! I called last Friday and they said my computer was actually ready the day before BUT they couldn't get anything done with it as it kept freezing up on them. I wanted to tell them THAT IS WHY I BROUGHT MY COMPUTER TO YOU FOR!!! The Geek Squad has my laptop for about 2 weeks and I was getting it back in the same state it was in when I dropped it off. So frustrating!!!!!!

The next day I called the Computer Hospital actually to price a backup. Geek Squad wanted $160 for anything over 9GB. My pictures alone are 12GB and I refused to pay that much money for a backup. A couple years before that it was $99 for a backup and I had my whole computer backed up! The other place I called said a back up would be $25 for the first DVD and $5 for each additional DVD. Much better pricing!!

I took it to the Computer Hospital and they were asking me about what my problems were. I ended up letting the repair it. I dropped it off on Saturday and on Sunday got a phone call of the repairs it needed and what it would cost. Very nice people and it only took them 2 hours!! They had found some various virus and spyware that my programs for some reason didn't pick up. They removed them and my laptop wasn't freezing up for them. Awesome!!!!

I actually started this blog post on Sunday and finishing it up on Monday night. My laptop did good for a while but started freezing up again. It was doing much better than before. I attempted to copy files to my desktop but my picture file is so big it eventually would freeze up. I finally gave up and called the Computer Hospital back and they told me to bring it in and it wouldn't cost me anything else since it was repaired just recently. He said that they stand behind there work and want to get it right. I am hoping to get a phone call with some good news Tuesday! I was planning to get a backup of the files I wanted and restore it. If it doesn't work this time, that is what I will do.

I have had a rough last 3 weeks with my laptop! This computer story is still in progress and hope the ending is good!


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