What are some time when your hard drive failed or had a virus that took everything over on your computer? Once I had a boot virus that totally took over my PC.
Fortunately I recovered all of the important files cautiously on to my new PC.

I've had a boot virus (I think that's what it was) as well on my previous PC. I was able too quickly run a system restore after several attempts, and it fixed it for a few days before it was totally wasted. So it wasn't something I was able to fix, and not too important to take it in for repair so just bought a new one. Which reminds me, my anti-virus just expired yesterday... need to get around to renewing it. When I don't have so many things going on hopefully I'll get to it .

Yeah, it's happened to me like, 3 times. I like downloading music and movies illegally, and, unfortunately, lots of the files have viruses.

the_casualty : In some ways it serves you right not to download illegally pirated movies.

Clayton 2 : You probably have a point. But the movie and music industry is already swimming in it, how much more money do they need?

Haven't gotten one that killed off my HDD, but have formatted a few times just because of a virus. If you don't really care about a lot of the files it's the easiest thing to do taha. Grab your pictures and music first though.

I had a virus that appeared to be a Windows Antispyware Program. It almost looked legit, except the Windows shield had a different color. It was also impossible to get it to close:

1. It said Task Manager was corrupted every time I tried to open it.
2. It said all of my antivirus/antispyware/antimalware programs were corrupted and were unsafe to open.
3. When I closed the window, I noticed that the oddly colored shield appeared among the icons in the bottom right corner next to the clock. That indicated to me that it was still running.

When I shut it down and rebooted, the program instantly restarted before I could stop it. I never got around to trying Safe Mode. I forgot about it so I paid a computer expert to get rid of the virus and all of the regenerative files.

I'll attach a picture of the fake antispyware window that the virus generated. I found this picture online, but it is the same as what I had gotten.







Image upload: 320x242 totaling 128 KB's.

I got a virus off of Google before that shut down everything on my computer. I tried to restart the computer, but this window came up that said "You have a virus, but we'll get rid of it if you pay us $99.00." Or something along those lines. So yeah. I had to take it to the tech guys at my college and have them fix it because I didn't know how. But they put an awesome FREE security system on my computer so every time a virus tries to attack my computer, that security system kills it.

XxChaosxX : Never fall for those "we'll clean you computer for $$" stunts. They are most likely to put more viruses on you computer.