Nathan Bransford - The Forums

While revising Waltzing in preparation for publishing it on Kindle, Nook and lulu.com, I tried to find a picture from the cult that I remembered. It was a stylized angel with a ring of seven stars above its head.

Well, in my search, I came across a website that the search engine indicated had pictures of the cult I sought. My anti-virus software indicated the site was safe. So, I clicked on the link and found the site blazing with a fiery icon claimed it had been hacked!!! I instantly backed out and went on to try another. Why worry? I had Windows Defender on, the Windows firewall was enabled and my ISP had provided me with an anti-virus program that was updated on an almost daily basis. What could possibly happen?

"Warning! Your computer has been infected with a virus!"

It gave me a link to software that would instantly disinfect my computer - for only $60-some. But, because the virus infected my browser, I couldn't get out or even get to my Control Panel to do anything about it.

My computer crashed!

Where was my backup disk?
How could I get it cleaned up?

Well, the backup disk was several months old but I hoped it had kept me from losing a lot. I knew a couple who ran a business selling and repairing PCs. Luckily, they were able to save most of my data files and even sold me a flash drive with a complete backup loaded.

I lost some stuff but managed - thank goodness - to keep all my novels, stories and works-in-progress,

So, back to work.

Wait! What about the status of the novel I had a contract for? Where was that?

I sent an email to my editor and - lo and behold! - he responded and it appeared almost promising. The cover had been assigned to someone and he was awaiting another board review. And, yes, he wanted to see the sequel - after I did a bit of work on it. [Taking a look at it now, it appears to need more than a "bit of work".] And yes, he'd love to see what I've done on my Father Serra trilogy.

So, after an oops - PLEASE KEEP YOUR FILES BACKED UP AND UP-TO-DATE - I managed to get a yeah. Sometimes things happen that get your spirits up. So, keep at it.

Whew! Crisis averted. Way to go, and thanks for the reminder - backing up my stuff right now. :)

As an IT Tech, when you get those pop ups:

NEVER CLICK ON THEM ANYWHERE.

The number one thing users do wrong is click on the X. NO. NO NO.

You hit Ctrl + Alt + Del.

Task Manager.

Then you go to Processes.

KILL ALL IEXPLORE.EXE PROCESSES.

End them. END THEM NOW.

And that should keep you safe.

Also. McAfee? Windows Defender? Those are jokes and easily gotten through because these are Russian programers. They are much more intelligent than those software packages and can spoof them. They can look just like your screen. If that stuff pops up, never touch it. Do above and then run this:

Malware Bytes.

AVG Free.

Those two have saved many PCs.

Then as soon as you can, back up to CD only. Viruses have a hard time propigating to that. They will propigate to flash drives and copy right back to your newly repaired PC.

And yes, you will want to reimage\rebuild your PC with full formatting. Because it hides in the free space of your drive and your registry. It will come back. It's a trojan and will download things like keyloggers to get your information, all without you knowing it.

Yup. They're smart.