A nightmare of two Trojans attacking my computer happened recently. I lost many days to the effort to track the problem that had the computer in a flickering to locked state. I’m certainly no computer whiz but this experience made me use every resource on board to track, contain, and correct. A trip to the repair guru got rid of the Trojans I found but couldn’t delete. Then, like a cancer that blooms after treatment, the problems started again. This time I was determined to do it myself. Days of scrubbing and cleaning finally resulted in the computer working well enough to connect to the manufacturer’s website.

I use Dell computers. They are tough reliable machines. They also come with great backup from the company. When I connected to tech support and typed in my service number, a scan was performed. I was hoping to correct the problems on line. I was horrified to see the results of the scan. The hard drive was corrupted beyond repair. The computer is still in warranty so I will receive a new hard drive in about 10 working days. I will return the corrupt drive via prepaid shipping container from Dell.

Several years ago, being inexperienced with computers, I did not back up my information and lost most of the first draft of Slant Well when the hard drive in that computer crashed. It was an expensive lesson. I paid dearly to have it retrieved. Ever since then I have backed up to several devices and now to the cloud. When the new hard drive arrives and is installed, I will retrieve my work from the cloud and continue writing novels, short stories, and tiny poems.