A World of MicroSoft Pain

Credit card notification on a Friday afternoon it was being used. Okay, try and get hold of any help on the weekend, not happening. It's through my bank so I stopped in Monday morning to see what they could find out. Dozens of ten dollars charges were being constantly added to it constantly. Why ten dollars? The date and the security code isn't required if the purchase is under ten dollars. Same reason for the Friday afternoon beginning of the hits. They had the card number but not the security numbers or the date. Had to be a card scanner that hit me as the security numbers and date aren't scanned when the card is scanned. Those MUST be manually entered.

Back up two days to Wed when I had issues with my computer. I had tried going back on "restore" older and older times and it was failing to fix the errors. I had several of them and none were curing the problems. Not a problem but it will take a lot longer to reinstall it all with "recovery drive disk" I had built via MS click and make a recovery drive. Oh YEAH! this is supper rich. I trusted MS to make a recovery drive. Just how gullible and stupid can one be?
In my case really stupid and gullible. It recovered alright, wiping all my personal files, all the extra non MS programs and reinstalling the latest and greatest MS nightmare.

Instead of an hour of my computer doing a recovery it took two hours for it to quit loading extra MS nightmare I didn't want and I spent eight hours scrubbing all the s^%$ off and adding new update blockers to every MS program. There are a bunch of them. With the new Win I am greeted with MS announcements on my initial boot about MS Edge, MS Cloud and several other MS programs and how good they are for me. They are NOT running on my computer as they share too much of my life with MS.

Why this diatribe. Because after several attempts to reload several of my programs on Windows 10 again, MS Support answers was to upgrade to MS latest and greatest rent by the year programs. My response was I wasn't updating, I didn't need or want their latest. It has been over sixteen years since I stopped building computers from the MB up and writing programs. I had no idea what MS Whiz Kids had managed to write into MS Windows but if I had to, I'd bite the bullet and go back MS DOS to force an install. This was never going to happen again. When I got MY COMPUTER back to where I wanted it, I was going to make a clone of my drive. I would never depend on MS Recovery to get my computer back after a glitch. I have over twenty thousand dollars worth of programs that run on windows and if I had to I was going back to Windows XP

It became extra quiet on their end. I guess that was the end of MS Support? If you are depending on Recovery to get YOUR computer back after a serious fault or it has been compromise you are as dumb as me. Do yourself a favor and "clone" your HD. If you have a crash or lose your computer to a virus, all you need to do is wipe the HD with a "deep format" check for a virus with a root virus killer from a jump drive or disk so you don't have one in your bios boot sector and recover. It not as easy as clicking on MS Recovery but it will still be your computer and your personal data and your programs. I also urge you to write all your passwords down in a notebook (physical not electronic) because if you use MS Recovery and sometimes even MS Restore all those can be wiped clean. If you thought it was HELL getting your computer back, wait until your start trying to get all your contacts and places where you have posted a couple dozen different passwords when they are no longer on your computer files.

It's been over a week since I used MS Recovery. I'm still working to get my life back. By this time next summer I may have reclaimed most of it. It will never be what it was.

I beg all of you to NOT be as stupid as me and to clone your HD.
Hugs Nunan, Erin, Joyce, Piper and everyone who came to my rescue. All the ladies and lads on BCTS are awesome.
Barb
Life is a challenge. No need to do stupid things to make it even more of a challenge.