Expert: Carolyn Meinel - 1/2/2006

Question
Hi Carolyn,

I am having a problem on my home computer. It is a pentuim 3(10gig hd/192mb ram) running win98. The problem is that it seems to have reset to about 2 years ago.

My sister called me the other day saying the computer said it had recognised a new printer. The printer in question had been installed for months. When i got home and switched it on, there was a wallpaper i hadn't used for almost 2 years! Programs were running at startup that have been switched off for a long time... my bluetooth software didnt appear to be there etc.

Plenty of other things seem to be wrong too, but basically it seems to have forgotten the last 2 years!

I have done a few searches and asked all my friends but can't find any answer. I use Mcaffee and it comes up clean.

Any advice would be greatly appriciated,

Regards,
       Roger.


Answer
Your problem might be that someone played a System Backup Restore prank on you. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q187526/ for the Windows 98 version of this feature. If you havd a backup from two years ago, someone could have used this feature to set your computer back.  I don't think a Trojan, worm or virus could have done this because it requires insertion of the Windows 98 starup disk and use of your old backup files.

If this is what happened, that answers your questions except for -- who would play such an obnoxious prank? Did you have any holiday visitors who think they are great practical jokers? A friend who considers himself to be a hacker? A New Year's Eve party where someone got drunk and decided to prove how funny he is?

If the prankster doesn't confess and give back any missing files, you may need to recover lost files. Many of the lost files might still be there, but in fragments that need to be stitched together. You could take your computer to a repair shop where they specialize in data recovery. They chould charge less than $150. You can do this yourself with something like Norton System Works, but a professional will probably find more files.