Friday, July 07, 2006
Computer is toast now what?
On the way to your office you start thinking about the day, think of the email you sent and what you hope to have received. You think of the news websites you're going to check, then your portfolio, and all those other websites that you can't live without. Life is too short to log off each time so all your sites "remember you" and your login information. You think of the comments to blogs, forums and other 'secret' places you automatically log onto before getting busy.
You finally arrive at your office, turn on the lights and jiggle the mouse as you hang up your coat. Turning back to your monitor you see... it's black. Nothing... no problem, just jiggle the mouse a little harder... nothing. Type a few keys on the keyboard... nothing. Looking under your desk you see that it's still there but that little green light that is usually there is off. That's IT!! It got turned off. Pressing the button and hearing it spin up you go for coffee.
Getting back to your desk, expecting the familiar log in box, you are greeted with a black screen with a few words that describe that an operating system cannot be found. HUH? You try everything, turning it on and off; hitting the box, the monitor, even the keyboard and nothing happens. Oh dear, this is bad. And the techno guys don't get in for another hour and hey... how are you supposed to email the help desk without your email account? Do they even have a phone number?
Or worse... you're a small business person with no techno guys, what do you do now? Who do you call? Who do you blame? How on earth are you going to get anything done today?
Oh... but you're prepared! You backed up everything in "my documents" just last week. Yeah, that will work... no it won't. In the end, you learn later that your power supply took and dump all over your CPU, mother board and hard drive. In other words, your beloved computer was put to death by electrocution... it's toast... everything that was on it is gone.
Hey, but you got your back up right? Good, your going to need that after you replace your computer, put all that software back on (hope you saved the license keys) set up all your email accounts, logins and passwords, try to remember all those cool sites and the "special" user name and password combinations for each. Oh... and the instant messenger logins and passwords. Boy, this is going to be difficult.
I don't know how much production time is lost, especially for micro-business people, but the loss of a computer by electrocution, theft or virus infection can cost more than just dollars, it can cost and enormous amount of time. Why do you think the big companies invest so heavily in support staff? But you're a small business person, you've invested in a good computer but it would be silly to hire a help desk staff now wouldn't it.
What brings this to mind for me is not an over compulsive urge to be overly paranoid even if trained for preparedness in the military. No, I'm about to 'reformat' my hard drive. I'm going to intentionally wipe off every single one and zero off of my hard drive and start from scratch. I'm doing it for a number of reasons but one key reason is to have a fresh stating point for disaster recovery. What I mean is, when I'm done cleaning the hard drive and reinstalling all the software I use daily, I'm going to create a system recovery CD(s) so I can plug them in if (when) disaster strikes.
As a web developer, I have hundreds of little scripts, programs, files and applications that I depend on to get my job done. Just like most modern day small business person, I have hundreds, no thousands of files that I would be lost without. (My last whole system virus scan reported more than 170,000 files scanned.)
So think, your computer won't turn on right now... what can you not do without? Now, put it on a CD. No... NOW.
With tens of thousands of new viruses being released and all the little pieces and parts that can go wrong with your computer, you MUST protect that somehow, don't you think?
In the coming weeks, I'll "blog" some of my journey through this process. Follow along if you like but if you never read my blog again, please give some thought to "what if." It could save you a mountain of money. If you don't want to learn what you need to do to recover from disaster on your own, then at least find a local service company who will evaluate your needs and offer a solution to help you prepare.
In the Bowling Green and the entire south central KY area, I could recommend a few, but my new partner, ISTT is by far the most qualified if you use personal computers with Microsoft installed. They are MS certified above all others and have the tools and experience to help you prepare for the worst and recover when it does happen. http://www.isttechnology.com/ and ask for Dave Doran. Tell him I sent you.
Yes, that may seem like a huge set up for my buddy and new partner, but really, if you want your Microsoft based office optimized, safe and prepared, there really is none other than ISTT to help. I'll post an announcement about our partnership when it is finalized, until then rest assured, my recommendation comes from their ability, not our association.
Oh... Dave has a really cool truck too. I'd post the video but don't have permission. (grin)
To set this up properly: I have a year and a half year old Dell Precision Workstation 370 with MS XP Pro installed as well as Microsoft Office. Having recently begun the process of becoming a Microsoft Certified Small Business Specialist, I've invested in a number of the latest and greatest software from Microsoft. My point is, this process will be very pro Microsoft and pro PC. If you're anti MS or a member of the MAC community, I will present little that will interest you.
The next post on this topic will cover the steps I am taking to annotate the software licenses, keys, registration codes and other information including back up settings for each piece of essential software. That said, I will likely not save the settings as much as links to the sites I used to apply patches or add ons. The reason I won't save the settings is I want a clean install of all software at first which will represent my first recovery point.
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