Crap, I hate computers

[Grumpy]

 Lost a 1.5 terabyte drive a couple days ago, have spent 2 days getting all the blasted software and accounts set back up.  I used to use Goggle Chrome for a browser, but during the last 2 days, I would install it and it would add several search bars from Bing etc. could not get rid of them. Every time i brought it up it would open 4 or 5 search windows. Actually reinstalled windows a couple times because of it. I finally gave up and installed Firefox.  Cripes, glad it is finally done, much rather be riding. 

[MarkT]

Grumpy - here's a tip to prevent so much pain next time:  Get another drive, small one OK.  Install the OS on it.  Have it be the boot drive, don't put much else on it.  Put all your data and Program files on other drives.  When a drive crashes - it's usually the boot drive.  Replacing it involves only reinstalling the OS, not all your other stuff. Oh, do backups of your environment too, so you can restore that without reinstalling everything.  (The registry and the "Documents and settings" folder which is on the boot drive)  I've found Genie Backup works pretty well, among others. Alternatively, some folks "mirror" their main drive so there's always an exact copy of the main drive.  There's a problem with that strategy though - if it's an exact copy, any errors you introduce into your software (or corruption from anywhere) will also be replicated on the mirror - so that should be a partial backup method but only part of a larger strategy, as it protects mainly from a hard drive failure, not logic errors.  

Internally, I have a 500GB drive as my boot drive, and 3 2TB drives for everything else.  Of course I have redundancy between them, and offsite backups (regulaly) on both external hard drives and DVD's of important stuff. And redundancy to this laptop as well.  Yeah, I've lost data.  Not again if I can help it.  

There's 2 kinds of users - those who've lost data and now have backup strategies, and those who will lose data and don't have backups yet.  FYI by profession / credentials I'm a "computer scientist" - was a tech support geek for PC's and other platforms for years until I walked and now do my own thing.  FWIW...

[Dagwood]

Also, always watch when you add or update softwares becase they can add toolbars. Most times we fly through the install or update process and we don't see that little checkbox that we need to uncheck to stop the toolbar from loading.

[Fritz The Cat]

GOOGLE IS AN INFORMATION COMPANY.

The sole reason Chrome exists is to give Google your complete Internet history. Chrome is THE biggest piece of spyware ever. Blows my mind to think that people blissfully use it in ignorance. They need to open their eyes and see where stuff like this is leading humanity. The future is gonna be ugly because the current generation is deaf, dumb and blind.

[TGViper]

You could have also gone and done a restore from one of your restore points prior to the crap showing up.   

[oZ]

GOOGLE IS AN INFORMATION COMPANY.

The sole reason Chrome exists is to give Google your complete Internet history. Chrome is THE biggest piece of spyware ever. Blows my mind to think that people blissfully use it in ignorance. They need to open their eyes and see where stuff like this is leading humanity. The future is gonna be ugly because the current generation is deaf, dumb and blind.

Same for Bing!

[Grumpy]

You could have also gone and done a restore from one of your restore points prior to the crap showing up.   

I tried to restore from backups, but they some how were corrupted. Had to start over from scratch.

[Psychotic Bovine]

My 2 cents:  I use Firefox.  

anyway, the last time my OS got corrupted, I bought a new hard drive, installed it into the pc, and installed the OS on that.
Then I also got a hard drive dock (basically just like a camera or camera card dock, but a lot bigger).  I then docked the "bad os" hard drive and transferred files off of it that I needed.  Now, you can't just transfer a program since those need installed, but your pics, music, email, etc can all be safely transferred.  I then keep the hard drive in the new hard drive box in case I remember something off of it I need, but didn't transfer before.
Hard drives are inexpensive nowadays, so this is one solution.

[Grumpy]

Just got frustrated with it, I have 3 computers on the network and the others were fine, but all my documents, mapping software and stuff for my web site were on the main that went south.  I have got 75% of the files back on it now, just was a real pain to do.  I have it setup to backup to a pair of Blue ray drives now, plus updating every night to another tower that has a couple of 2.5 terabyte drives in it. Just do not want to get caught with my pants at half mast again. I subcontract for my old employer Bombardier and had several hundred blue prints and drawings for parts I make for them, but they are nice enough to mail me DVDs with all the stuff I lost. One thing I learned, I will never use Goggle Chrome again, it caused me too many headaches trying to restore the system, every time I installed it within a few uses it would start installing task bars and search engines, was so bad when I opened it it would have 5 to 10 windows open, for bing, some kind of bargain hunter etc, and it would add the same stuff to  IE. running my old standby Firefox now.