I haven’t blogged recently because my computer locked up. When I say locked up, I mean the entire disk was encrypted by BitLocker. Naturally, I assumed that I had been hacked by rasnsomware, but several reputable computer geeks told me that they had seen more than a few cases in which BitLocker was launched without any action by anyone. The word is that Microsoft officially denies this, but the auto-BitLocker story has supposedly leaked, In any case, experts are confident that this happens.
In an attempt to recover everything, the routine is that the computer manufacturer said to talk to Microsoft, Microsoft said to talk to the computer manufacturer, and the anti-virus people said to talk to either Microsoft or the manufacturer. Apparently none of them are speaking to one another, like a family fight where Dad says, “Tell your mother . . . .” even though his wife is sitting at the same table.
I figured the easiest fix was to just replace the SDD (software disk drive–which has replaced the hard disk drive). I ordered one, which arrived a few days later, and immediately tried to format it, which I thought would be no big deal. Naturally, it wouldn’t format. In fact, on the occasions in which Disk Manager saw the disk, it reported, “No media”, which, when you think about it makes no sense. Apparently the manufacturer of the computer or the SDD manufacturer requires a technique that is normally used with multiple disks. In any case, a friend helped me past that problem.
When I tried to reinstall the software, I hit the next problem. Now I’ve been through 24 inch disks (yes, that’s correct, but back in the 1970s), 5 1/4 inch floppy drives, 3 1/2 inch floppy drives, CDs, DVDs, and BluRay disks. Floppy drives disappeared years ago and a few years back, notebook computers stopped including optical (CD/DVD/BluRay) drives.
I used a thumb drive to reload the operating system, but for some reason the computer could not connect to my WIFI. No problem, I naively thought, I’ll just take it upstairs and connect it to the router via cable. Unfortunately (you know what’s coming), newer notebooks no longer can be connected to a cable.
In any case, after going through a variety of backup plans, I finally got the computer up and running. My data was mainly backed up, so it has been returning a piece at a time and I’m more or less back and will be trying to blog more often.
sfnowak 