Invitation to My Pity Party

[SlickTony]

A few nights ago, I found out that my computer had caught two non-cleanable viruses from somewhere, and I had no choice but to format my hard drive. To keep from losing all my data, I backed all my fiction onto a floppy. I thought I had moved everything. However, tonight I found out that somehow two largish pieces had failed to make it to the floppy, and now they're lost forever. Well, not precisely forever. After all, it's all still up in my head. However, now I've got to reconstruct it. It was about 30K +/- words. Waaah!

 

[hiddenself]

Oops. Bummer.

Nasssty little bugses, my precccious (to paraphrase one of my favorite writers).

And to sound like one of those public health zealots... try safe computing...
Antivirus shields are very cheap (and some are even free). Try ZDNET
http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=antivirus&tg=dl-2001

hs

 

[SlickTony]

Thanks, I'll give the site a try. We did have Norton, but for some reason, it didn't work very well--I think it's incompatible with our operating system.

 

[Whispersecret]

God, I feel for you, Tony. What a horrible thing. I've lost big chunks before myself. Last time it happened I STUPIDLY clicked "NO" when it asked if I wanted to save before closing Word.

Did you hear my anguished scream? It was about a month ago.

 

[MathGirl]

. Did you hear my anguished scream? It was about a month ago.

Yes, I heard that. It sounded ..... anguished. We must live close.

 

[Singularity]

Anguished Scream-Aid

It doesn't solve the virus-wiper problem, but setting the Word option to always make a backup copy of the document you are editing can be a life-saver.

I have avoided WS's torment several times by having those backup files around.

Another lifesaver is a product called GoBack. It logs everything you do on the disk (at the expense of some more space) and lets you send the entire PC back to a prior point in time (good for virus cleansing in a dire emergency), or when you hose things up with some new software or something. You can also retrieve older versions of specific files with it.

Highly recommended for those of us who are mere mortals...

Singularity

 

[TheEarl]

I feel your pain.

I wrote some of the best writing that I'd ever done longhand in a notebook. It was something I was really proud of. I'd guessthat that notebook is still in the pocket in front of seat 17D on the Air NZ flight from Queenstown to Auckland.

Hope their reconstruction isn't too painful.

The Earl

 

[SlickTony]

Hope their reconstruction isn't too painful.

Nah, it'll be fun. It's just that I won't feel like I'm making progress, the way I did when I wrote the stuff the first time.

I used to make a lot of handwritten drafts, but I had a few bad experiences with them being perused by the wrong people, so I prefer to keep things where I can password them.