Beware the Borg!
Beware the Borg!
by Connie Schulte
THERE I WAS, finishing up my evening’s work, feeling good that I had actually accomplished most of what I’d set out for myself that day. Never did I suspect that I was about to begin the week from hell!
__ As I was about to shut down, I noticed that my drive was getting a little crowded, so I decided to tidy up a bit. Maybe I could “stuff” a few things I wasn’t going to need for a while? Ah, yes, there were several old files that could stand a little “space-loss program,” so I clicked on my SpaceSaver icon. That was when I noticed that I had the wrong file high-lighted: but I didn’t worry. After all, I had every confidence that it wouldn’t shrink anything important--like maybe my system files.
__ Oh, but it did! Now I’m supposed to know better than to do a dumb thing like that--but at the moment I did it, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. I want to tell you that I sure had a lot of space left over on my drive! The only trouble is that I could no longer find my finder! Some programs opened OK, but I couldn’t save files in them except into their own folder. And I couldn’t unstuff any of the stuff that had gotten compressed, because the Stuffit program had stuffed itself too! (A little like a dragon who chases its own tail and swallows itself whole, I guess.)
__ Well, I went to bed. "No sense in worrying tonight -- I’ll fix it tomorrow!"In the morning I ran Disk Tools, I tried Norton, I fooled around with a lot of stuff, but nothing worked. At their opening hour of 9:00 and again at 9:30, I tried to get hold of Aladdin tech support (By the way, did you ever really THINK about that name?) to see if they could help me get my HardDrive back out of its bottle, but they weren’t answering their phone, so I left my desperate message and tried another tack.
__ I had work I really needed to do, so I decided to call 1-800-SOS-APPL. Big mistake!
__ Their tech support told me that I’d have to reinstall my system and all my applications. Yuck! I did (of course) have a recent back-up of all my data, but the idea of rebuilding my system was really repugnant to me. Oh well, I guessed I have to give in and do it, so I began the tedious job.
__ It was a little later that Aladdin Tech Support returned my call. I explained my humiliating problem to him, and he reassured me that “It happens fairly often.” That’s why later versions than mine make provisions to keep such accidents from happening. AND why they have a marvelous little program to correct the problem when it does occur. AND that if I could wait a day, he’d be delighted to mail his magic disk to me--no charge.
__ Oh, but I wanted it NOW! “No problem,” sez he. “Just download it from AOL, it’s free!” Now, there’s the rub-- I couldn’t. No modem! It seems that it’d been stuffed too!
__ Well, I raced over to Rick’s and he let me logon his computer and download the magic program -- and it really works! The program is called Disk Rejuvenator, and I recommend having it on hand for any sort of accident that renders your hard disk invisible. It has a number of other nice little helpers in it too, and it costs nothing.TO CONTINUE MY STORY: I had to spend a lot of time unstuffing my folders one by one. (Tech Support said that it was dangerous to just issue a blanket “unstuff” order to the hard disk, so I didn’t.) Anyway, since I had already followed the SOS-APPL guy’s advice about reinstalling the system, I really had to go over my whole disk with a fine-tooth comb, so I decided to do some long-needed cleaning up at the same time.
__ Two days ( and a very sore back) later, I finally finished up. Boy, my disk was beautiful! It was optimized, and reorganized, and just gorgeous, so I decided to add a little extra umph to it too. I had a file of “Startrek Sounds” that a friend had downloaded from the net, so I checked them out. They were really cute, so I decided to put one in my start-up folder.
__ That was simple enough. I always run disinfectant on all my new disks when I get them, so I just popped the disk in, moved the file to my startup folder and restarted my computer to enjoy my cleverness.
__ There went the inits flashing across my screen, there came the happy face, and then the start-up screen flashed into view with a great “Enterprize” roar. It was great.
__ Until I noticed that the start up screen flashed by, passed home and finally stopped--with no Macintosh HD in sight!
I’d been taken by the Borg!!!!
OK, OK, I can keep calm. I’ve survived the last two days. I can do all kinds of things before I panic. Calmly, I ran disinfectant. No virus found. Hmmm? What is it then? A new one? Then I decided to restart with the inits off. I said a little prayer as I clicked my mouse.
__ There went the inits flashing across my screen, there came the happy face, and then the start-up screen flashed into view with a great “Enterprize” roar.My HD was back! Oh, thank You, thank You!
I knew when further resistance was futile. I just quietly opened my system and trashed all those cute little Startrek sounds. I’ll never know if it was the Borg Virus, or if someone was just playing a game and if the HD would have transported in all by itself on restart, but I sure wasn’t taking any more chances.
__ The moral of the story? Always back up, beware of strange starships bearing gifts, and never panic till all else fails. And please, God, bless my hardrive!
by Connie Schulte,
Editor ApplePRESS
Diablo Valley Mac/Apple User’s Group
PO Box 5231, Walnut Creek, California
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