Attacked!!

I’ve been totally absorbed in fighting off the enemy.   Yes that’s right.  I was innocently typing along, doing I can’t remember what,  when this

monster

flashed upon my screen

I’ve worked in IT long enough to know that no matter how “official” this looks, it’s Malware.  I quick hit the panic button and slammed the laptop shutdown.

But alas not in time.   The bugger had my machine in its grips

and I spent from 6pm to 11pm on Sunday night and from 9am to 4pm on Monday doing little else than investigating all the info on this thing and trying to get rid of it.  Yes that’s a total of 12 FRUSTRATING hours and if felt exactly like some of my

WORK

days in the past.  And that ain’t a good thing.

BEWARE – IS2011  turns off Windows Restore so that’s not a possibility AND it disables Internet Explorer which makes investigating the problem a real inconvenience.   Should have had a 2^nd Browser I know, I know, but Firefox has been even more trouble than IE for me in the past.

Bit by bit and little by little I banished the beast and everything seemed normal until I tried to post this blog.   Blogger.com would not come up….”Internet explorer cannot display the webpage” I was told.

WHAT?

And SO I spent the next 6 hours going through all the security settings, googling for advice and finding that the gmail logon page would also not load.   Everything else I tried

all the blogs I read on blogspot

including my own

would come up

but not blogger.com or gmail.com.

Launching IE without plugins did nothing to help.  Neither did running Microsoft Security Essentials in safe mode.

SO I’m posting this from our friendly library’s computer since I cannot bring up blogger even NOW on my own. 

Am I REALLY going to have to hire someone to fix this for me after working 20 years in IT??

Just How Mad am I?

I wonder if this has the makings of a blockbuster hit….
Attack of the Killer INSEC.

Should I start writing the script while I wait for one of you brilliant folks to send me an idea I haven’t tried yet or do I use the RV Tire money (GASP)  to pay someone?  What do you think?

(with BIG kudos to Nellie for inspiration and helping me see the laughs in this two days ago after I thought I had it fixed.  Not  funny at all just now)