I'm sure I'm hardly the only person on the planet much less on forums who has had this sort of occurrence. Something happens to your computer in the multiple possibilities

ie:
- Power out gets through your surge protector and hoses your registry (moi)
- A virus runs rampant and eats a .dll file and crashes Windows
- Spyware and malware multiply faster than rats and overrun your system
- etc

and your computer chokes, gags and dies a slow and painful death whose ultimate result is reformatting and reinstalling the whole damn operating system and all your software.

D< It's one of the most evil, time consuming pains in the arse there is. So, my fair Menewshans, discuss without the need to be spoon fed and give me some company as I go through the process of reinstalling everything. :woe:

Oh my god, that sucks. That happened to my old computer, and it involved my charger literally EXPLODING. I'm like, what the fuck is this.

EDIT: I rike your avatar :-d

heh, doesn't happen to my computer luckily.. xD
I've only had one virus, once. had to reinstall everything.. -.- but it's okay, didn't lost anything important.

I have a good protection on my computer, and I don't use IE..

Birdy: Yes, yes it does. I've had all of those things happen to me before. The last one was my own stupidity and I learned fast. I've had a virus get through the school network and crash my computer and now the damn power out hosed my registry and made lots of weird shit happen.

My Adobe programs kept saying that my Name, Organization and Serial Number were missing and the program had to shut down immediately when they had been there before. I couldn't uninstall and reinstall them as all of a sudden that function on my pc was completely gone. My Wacom driver disappeared, but was still on as I couldn't install my new Intuos3 tablet that I'd bought. And lots of other random crashes. Just installing over the top of the corrupted OS didn't seem like such a good idea as it wasn't just a Windows problem. Not to mention, it just doesn't seem smart to me to do in the first place. I'd prefer the security of a full-fledged OS running properly, even if it means I have to relocate everything on that drive and reinstall everything. It's just time consuming and redundant ==;;;

So here I am, sitting like an ass waiting for over a year's worth of Adobe updates, re-downloading Avast! for my virus protection and finishing the XP updates. I probably have to go out and get Service Pack2 as well. Bleh.

Aw, thanks. It's kind of a simple one for me oo; I need some new items soon to play. Been a little absent and had to spend on the CIs I missed.

Sagitar: I refuse to use IE anymore, it's evil. As soon as I reinstalled Windows I got Firefox again. It's so much better.

>.> Beware the random power outs. I think I'll have to buy a new power strip. A few hits like that and the surge protectors are pretty useless, as I found out here -_-;

My old computer was a Windows 2000 I believe. Basically the computer's memory was so horrible just installing the latest IE killed it. O_o; But that was before version 6. o: That and I'm pretty sure spywares were eating it alive. D:
But now I have my lovely flat panel 17" Dell desktop. <3

A lot of my older computers (hand me downs xD; ) had technical difficulties on that front. But this one is only a year old and I've never had any problems up until now. I'm a little peeved since I've taken good care of it and something as stupid as a power out killed Windows and some of my software.

Luckily my computer hasn't crashed nor have been a victim of viruses, yet O:
But sorry about your computer D:

Keep it that way xD It's so much nicer not to have to do this.

I run a Mac, so nothing's going to be eating any .dll files and crashing my Windows.
I'm very conservative with my internet use and only do things I know won't get my lovely little computer in trouble.
And when the weather gets questionable, I unplug my computer. It's a laptop, so I can use it, but I have limited time.
I'm generally really careful because I have very, very valuable files on this computer (including, but not limited to: all my school notes, my music, etc.), and if they were all to disappear, I don't know what I'd do. D:

I learned early to keep back ups of everything already and archives of my music.

I had no idea the weather was going to be so questionable that night, though. It was nice when I went to bed, I think it started to rain somewhere around three or four in the morning, I woke up to a house with no power for a few hours.

yes, IE is very evil. D: I haven't used it in many years..

power outs are also evil, but usually they just shut down my computer.. :3

I tend not to plug my laptop in at night to be safe. The weather isn't at all predictable here, and I keep plugged in when the weather's fine and generally, I don't run out of power.

The power supply for my Wii got fried that way, though. xP Luckily, it was the power supply and not the Wii itself.

my old computer was full of spyware and one day it just died. i was so sad, too. see, at that time i had a really good art shop on gaia and all my files for that shop were gone.

;~;

Sagitar: Same here D8 As soon as I started using Firefox I never looked back.

Oh, it shut it down alright >_>; When I booted it up, all Hell broke loose x.X;

Bubblegum: Ah. I tend to sleep to music on my pc, so I like to set it on a timer and let it shut down on its own sometimes. Others I just get too tired and forget to shut it off.

Tracy: Ahh. Yes, I've lost a ton of my art files as well. But those I always keep a hard copy (the drawing/painting itself xD) and a back-up re-writable disc of all my scans.

The title of this reminds me of Rice Crispies. :'D

My sister went on a naughty site once and it gave us a big virus. I spent two days trying to get rid of the darn thing. :'0 And I'm pretty good with computers and I could not get rid of it. So we had to reinstall everything back to how it was when we first got it. I lost hundreds of pictures and two stories that I had saved. o.o; [Each at least 100+ pages]

My computer is fine. It's had a virus, spyware, adware. I dunno where any of it came from but frankly I couldn't care. xD I don't visit any 'bad' sites so it was probably just something from pop-ups or whatever. I managed to use AVG Free to get rid of them.

Allthough; this computer has been through A LOT.

First it was a Dell, the motherboard fried.
Second, we took it to the shop and they put the Dell guts into a Compaq and took the Compaq's guts elsewhere.
Thirdly, it turned into a Compaq with a dell screen and speakers.

So yeah. x_x I went to turn it on one day (in Dell form) and it just wouldn't go on. So it turns out that since it was getting NO ventilation, the motherboard sizzled itself. x_x

This has never ever happened to me. And I've been ALL over the net. x__X I use Internet Explorer too. But it's more so probably the fact that I have alot of antivirus software and they are always up to date. Or maybe I just didn't go to the really bad sites or something. Iunno.

My computer is almost 6 years old, and likes to reject my USB ports at least 5 times a day...and since my internet AND my mouse are hooked up to the only two USB ports...yeah...

I don't think I've experienced a total crash since I was still sharing a computer with my brothers, though. X.x;

I just had to reload my AOL software since it was corrupted and messing up my computer! I was so upset and it literally took forever to unload all the software and reload it all. And now I just have to hope that this version isn't corrupted as well (though it seems to be working fine.)

However all my favorites are now gone!!!! *cries*

I worked the call center at my school's IT department and also did actual cleaning. So I've seen most of it what can happen to a computer short of actual hardware frying out.

I just keep an antivirus running all the time (two=/= better) and scan every so often with Spybot S&D and Ad-aware. SO long as you're not downloading stuff from like.. Limewire and not clicking every link on every site, it should be fine.

Power surges on the other hand.... those just suck. Use a surge protector, that will help most incidents.

My parent's computer on the other hand... oh the number of times I've had to fix that thing. x_x;;

Best solution? Keep back-ups of everything you need or want... just in case.

:chuckles: I did indeed have a surge protector. However this power out must have shot right through it. I'm probably going to replace it, just in case. Thankfully most of my important things are not kept on the main drive, I move it to the slave drive so it has a much smaller chance of being fried. Mainly programs and Windows are allocated to my C drive. It wasn't too much work to remove everything to their back ups.

I'm quite familiar with Spybot and AdAware. I've got them both plus Avast! running at all times. Been nice and safe for years up 'til this damn power out ><