I Thought My Computer Broke

Last week my company's IT department installed some new software on my work laptop. This week it has been causing countless problems. I actually thought my laptop broke and needed to be replaced. Then I remembered the new software install and did some digging around. It isn't broke but sure feels like it.

Today the offending program is backing up my laptop to an Internet cloud without warning me. As it progresses, my computer keeps freezing up to the point that not even the cursor moves. If I wait a bit, it becomes unstuck and I can use my machine for a moment or two. Then it gets stuck again. When I put the machine to sleep, I can't wake it up again until I plug the laptop back in. I need a word stronger than "annoying."

For someone that stays put in the same office day after day, this wouldn't be a problem but right now I am on a mid-week business trip and am waiting for a late-night flight to San Francisco. I am at the airport using less-than-reliable WiFi. I would hope that the backup software would ask me if I wanted to delay the large file transfer. Nope. No matter what I do, I can't get the automatic backup to stop. I even opened the application and tried to pause all backups for 4 hours. That didn't work.

I must have started the backup before I even left on this trip. My dashboard says it is transferring 58 gigabytes of data. Some of that has been at the hotel, some at the offices I have visited, and some at the airport. I'm just glad I discovered this before connecting my computer and using my phone as a WiFi hot-spot. I think I would have burned through my monthly data plan in a matter of hours.

Interestingly enough, I discovered this problem during one of my meetings when I really needed to get into my laptop. When I couldn't get in, I thought I was going to have to have the company get me a new computer. Then I thought back to the last backup I performed (Tuesday of last week) and wondered how much work I would need to redo. Hopefully you see the irony of a backup causing me to think about my last backup and whether or not I did it recently enough.

Problems with my Mac Laptop

Yesterday I went to turn on my Mac laptop computer and it wouldn't boot correctly. I have an encrypted hard drive in the event that someone steals my computer. When I turn on the machine, it asks for my password. I was making it that far and it was even working enough to know if the password entered was correct or not. After a few seconds, it would bring the login screen back up but not allow any input from the mouse or keyboard.

My hope was that once I got the laptop back to my office and on the network, the problem would fix itself. My flight from Salt Lake to the Bay Area was plenty early and I was in the office at 8:30 giving my hypothesis a try. Unfortunately it didn't work. Next was a call to our IT department. They asked if I had tried resetting the NVRAM and I had. There wasn't anything they could help me with over the phone and so I brought it to our IT department's walk-in office. Most of the company uses Windows laptops and I am one of the few with a Mac. That means I had to make another trip with the laptop to another office where the Mac specialists reside. I dropped the computer off and headed to a meeting.

It was a distraction to be without my computer and very difficult to concentrate during my meeting so I was very happy to get a call from the IT department telling me they figured out what was wrong with my Mac. It seems that the hard drive had somehow had permissions changed. They had to boot my laptop from another hard disk, change the permissions on my drive, and all was fixed. Unfortunately I wasn't there to watch how they did it so I can't give step-by-step instructions. It was a great relief to have everything fixed though and they didn't have to reinstall anything. Naturally the first thing I did when I got back to my office was to take a backup of the computer. Now should something go wrong again, I don't have to worry if they have to erase my hard drive to fix it. I have a backup. I should probably do that with all of my computers now. Furthermore, I should probably take backups on a regular basis. OS X includes Time Machine which is perfect for such a task and I plan to take advantage of it from now on.

Ransomware and Backups

I few days ago I was watching TV and saw an ad for a local computer store in Utah. The owner of the store talked about a new kind of computer virus called Ransomware. As I use only Mac or Linux and not Windows, I really don't worry about computer viruses. While a protected operating system doesn't guaranty you won't get a virus, it makes writing viruses really difficult and so most hackers don't even bother. Besides Windows has the majority of the market and so if you are going to extort money from unsuspecting computer users, that is where you will make the most.

Today I discovered that most of the antivirus software vendors have been able to lock out the majority of ransomware. That doesn't stop would-be extortionists from trying though. There is another class of ransomware that lacks any real ability to harm your computer. Basically you go to a web page that claims you have done something criminal like downloaded music illegally, or worse. You are then told you have several hours to pay a "forgiveness" fine. When you try to leave the web page, you are unable to do so. When you try to close your browser, you can't. For the unsuspecting user, this can be very frustrating. The trick is to kill your browser from the operating system. PC Magazine has an article outlining the steps if you need help.

The best thing you can do to keep yourself safe from any computer virus is to back up your hard disk frequently. I like to keep my computers backed up locally. That means I use a portable hard drive, Burnable DVD's, or some other form of backup media and keep the data myself. There are a number of online backup companies that also work well. It doesn't matter what you do, just make sure you back up the important stuff. Then when some website tells you to send them money or you will never see your stupid cat videos again, you can rest assured knowing you've got a nice copy of your important data.

Professional Computer Problems

This morning I met with a major computer company with an online service that anyone can use to back up their home computer. My meeting took a back seat to a problem they were having. It seems that one of their servers was experiencing a hardware problem. It was a non-critical system but had a ripple effect on the rest of the service. It got me thinking about what happens when even the professionals have problems.

Previously I wrote about how I don't trust computers to help me keep my daily journal. However you can't always print everything and so you have to rely on some way of keeping your computer data safe.

There are many different options. You could back it up to CD or DVD disks. However I have used them in the past only to try to retrieve data and discover that the files were corrupted and the important information was lost.

You could use one of those flash drives that are becoming more popular at the same time they are increasing in size. So far I have yet to lose any data on one of those. However there is always a first time and I am sure they have a finite shelf life.

Then there are the online services like the one I was visiting this morning. However they are not imune from problems either. While they provide money-back guarantees, can you really put a price on your family vacation photos?

I still maintain that paper is the best way to go. If that isn't possible, then might I suggest a multi-prong approach. The online services really are fairly reliable and so would definitely try to incorporate one into your backup strategy. I would just be sure to include another medium as well. Then hope you never have to use it.