And now my computer has a virus! Just venting.

[James S]

You live in Sydney don't you?

I did too for most of my life.

There's your answer - the city is evil, EEEEEVILLLLL!![}:)]
[]

I tend to be a little more pragmatic when looking at these kind of events  -

Your computer? If you're using an anti-virus program, replace it or check that the virus definitions are up to date, it's possibly not doing you any good. If you don't have one, go to
www.grisoft.com and get AVG 6.0 it's free. Don't get version 7  - you have to register it. They update weekly and it's quite reliable. I downloaded some files through Kazaa Lite the other night and several of them were infected. AVG flagged them before I even touched them, and trashed the files immediately. If you've been hit by a worm virus, you might need to re-load your operating system after removing the virus.

Your car? Sounds like you might need to find a new mechanic!

Your brother in law's accident? You live in Sydney! It's not a curse if you get involved in a traffic accident driving those streets, it's a miracle if you don't!

All the other things - it might just have been their time. Timing sucks though!

The thing to ask yourself if you feel it might be some kind of curse, is why, or who? Curses are usually cast for a reason, and to affect your whole family like this, it would have to be pretty powerful! I'm no expert in curses, but I do believe it would have to be quite deliberate to have that much effect. If you can't put anyone or anything behind such a curse, it could just be a very nasty bunch of coincidences.

Having said all that, I really do hope that this wave of nastiness has now passed you by. Thoughts of peace and light are going your way.

Regards,
James.

[atalanta]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.  I had a chat with a friend before who posed an interesting question.  After having my whinge, she asked me to then list the good things that happened.  I have been so overwhelmed lately, that I was too busy being miserable to notice the good things.  So here is my revised list.  

I know my granduncle died but considering the suffering he endured in the final years, it was a blessing.

My car fell apart but because of it I got to meet some really caring and helpful people and a new mechanic who really knows his stuff. Its next to impossible to find a mechanic who can work on gas cars.

The tv was acting up for months but we were too lazy to fix it, so this forced us to fix it which was a good thing and the guy who fixed it was the father of a teenager who just got the highest highschool marks in NSW and because of that got a free trip to Italy. Really nice person.

My mum did spend time in hospital but what she has is fixable and I got to meet nice, caring people and in turn I gave one of the patients with MS the contact number of a great naturopath.

My computer has a virus but the IT guy at my sister's job has given her a special disc which will fix the problem and which means I will not have to pay for anything and I won't have to take the whole thing into a store.

People have been so encouraging, kind and generous. Its not that I didn't notice, its that I have been seeing them as individual separate events whereas the negative stuff was like one massive overwhelming monster. Now that I think of them in a combined way, I can see that a lot of good things have happened to me recently.

Just thinking that maybe the real curse is when we get into this kind of negative frame of mind rather than seeing the greater whole.  Stuff like this and worse is happening all the time to people but the important thing is not what happens but how we react to it.

[James S]

quote:Originally posted by atalanta
Just thinking that maybe the real curse is when we get into this kind of negative frame of mind rather than seeing the greater whole.  Stuff like this and worse is happening all the time to people but the important thing is not what happens but how we react to it.

Hi Atlanta,

That is a wonderful perspective to top off a lovely post! []

I'm sorry if I came across very materialistic in my reply. I tend to look to earthly explainations before unearthly ones.

It's lovely how you've shown another side to these bad situations, and shown the good things that came as a result of them. You're right! Too often we look past the blessing in order to see the curse.

Take care,
James.

[atalanta]

How embarrassed am I!!!

[)][:I] After all that, my sister and I figured out tonight that it wasn't a computer virus but my 7 year old niece!  She had fooled around with the monitor and skewed the screen to one side.

Consider this my first and last confession to being an idiot![:I]

[Parmenion]

Hi James,

Thank you very much for the link to that excellent free virus software. I have to hold my hands up here and admit that not only do I know precious little about computer security but I have also been quite lazy with what I do know.

18,000 infected files!!!!!!
[?]     [:I]       [xx(]

What is worse is I do not even recognise about 80% of the files. I did a clearout of SYS32 folder a while back and found hundreds if not thousands of files I never saw before. A large portion of them had song/band titles as the name of the file.  I dumped them all, or at least I thought I did. I probably got these infections when I used "p2p sharing" with no firewall ( I know, I know ).

My real problem is that this virus software was only able to remove 6,000 of these infected files. I have not got a clue what to do to clean up my system.

Any advise you could offer would be very much appreciated.

Cheers,

Dave

[James S]

Hi Parmenion,

Yikes!! That's one well infected machine you've got!!![xx(]

For the viruses AVG can't remove, it should have produced some kind of report that it would save as a text file somewhere, probably accessible through the programs own menu bar. That report should give you the exact details of those viruses. Go to either the grisoft, symantec or sophos web sites, and look for info on how to manually remove the viruses. Symantec's site is usually very good for this kind of info. You'll either get a bunch of little executables that will do the job, or instructions on what files or registries to delete.

Nuther sugestion.....download an application called Spybot. This one searches your PC for spyware, keyloggers,and all those other little nasties that either hijack your server or feed personal info back to some spammer. AVG will get rid of the viruses, but not the spyware.

Step three....(you thought this would be easy didn't you [])
Grab yourself a software firewall package - Sygate is a very good one. This'll prevent unautorised access to your machine both from outside sources, and programs that try to sneak information out from your machine.

Armed with all three applications, you will stand a good chance of keeping the garbage and hackers off your machine.

Times like these I envy people who own Macintoshes - they are very hard to crack with viruses because their operating system's are written so well.

Good luck!
James.

[Parmenion]

Thanks a million James!

Armed with this I will enter the dark world of computer Negs to fight the good fight []

Cheers!

Dave

[atalanta]

I am writing to let everyone know that my computer has a virus and will have to be taken in to be fixed so I may not be contactable for several days.

Lets see,

From the week before Christmas, the following have happened.


1. My car broke down on my way to an important meeting.

2. The same day my brother in law had an accident (he is okay but 5 weeks later the car is still in repairs)and we have been using one car between two families.

3. My granduncle dies.

4. My car broke down a few days later, just before Christmas.

5. The TV broke down, believe me, tv in my family is a necessity.

6. My car broke down a third time, New Years eve! and on the way from shopping!

7. A week after New Years, my mum goes into hospital because of her eyes, she's a diabetic.  She got back home yesterday.

8. Yesterday, my computer goes funny and now I have a virus on it.


So in five weeks all these things have happened. Would I be wrong in thinking someone has placed a curse or jinx on my family?  I mean, am I wrong or is this just over the top?  Is there a statistician among you who can tell me the likelihood of all those things happening in such a small space of time?  I don't mean to sound superstitious but if anyone would like to sell me any protective charms, now is the time, I am all ears!  

Prayers, healing thoughts would be very much appreciated.