Site Closed for Repairs.

[Dave Grubb]

But it was secure wasn't it?...Even from you......Ben

Exactly!

It annoys me that they have such a cavalier attitude about these problems and in the current environment of leased software you are captive to that.

[UTAH]

Windows 11 isn't even available yet. I can't imagine how not having it is affecting your programs.

Yeah, more coincidental than anything else. But, that's what's changed - the coming Windows 11 release - and the failure of my music programs (e.g., Youtube to MP3).

Hunter

[Sandman]

Yeah, more coincidental than anything else. But, that's what's changed - the coming Windows 11 release - and the failure of my music programs (e.g., Youtube to MP3).

Hunter

I have been forced to use two PCs to go from YouTube to mp3.. very inefficient but it gets it done.. getting old helps prevent me from hearing the poor recording quality..

[UTAH]

Yeah - YT traditionally had many quality issues. Now, it's more of an issue to take the time to find a good quality song I want to save. Believe it or not, I've got a "favorites chip" with my top 1,000 songs on it.

Hunter

[Sandman]

Spousal Unit has been running the book & CD “table at a large charitable yard sale for a few years.. (COVID has stopped it for at least two years) we have had as many as 1000 CD in our garage before the sale.. many “best of” CD were “ripped” to a 32G thumb drive.. it just happened..

[UTAH]

Yeah, the neat thing is, with proper work and preparation - it's still possible to find good music free on the web.

Hunter

[TriGuy]

My wifes company got hacked. They lost most of their data which was in the cloud which was not backed up in a timely manner. Ruth never trusted the cloud and had copied the North American Tax data files to a local backup on a daily basis. And since she has to keep track of intra company product transfers and inventory for tax purposes, she had that too.

The IT guys love her now. they were able to reconstruct most of the files from her data.

[Truckman]

I haven't figured out terms like "the cloud" even though I have a basic idea of what it means...I'm just resistant to accepting new terminology for new methods, and therefore I ignore it...

When I owned Shooter's Station, I wrote two applications to run our business, both of which were accepted by letter after examination by the ATF...One was written on an antiquated database called Key Database...It was hopelessly slow and I bought a copy of Microsoft Access which turned out to do everything I wanted when I wrote a new application on it...I kept the ATF required "bound book" plus I started tracking our layaways, range records and other business functions as I found time to write additional functions...Every night at closing I ran a fresh copy of the entire database onto a disc which I took home, and transferred to my own computer...About five minutes additional work every day which came in really handy at the time of the infrequent hardware crashes, or when my ham-handed operating partner (who resented the fact that I could get something like that ATF approved) pounded the keyboard hard enough to cause Bill Gates to raise the white flag...

Eventually I added enough functions to handle invoicing, taxes and bill paying to my system, all of which worked flawlessly...However that was the time my personal life took a sudden left turn into traffic, and the best I could do with it was maintain the daily backup which still proved useful over the following year...But at the end when I sold the business to my two partners, one of the first events was to trash any trace of my handiwork, and return to a handwritten bound book, and customer invoices written on receipt pads...

But the backup to the files on disc, just as Ruth had done at her company, proved its worth many times over......Ben

[UTAH]

TG's wife, Ruth, seems to have this issue nailed down.

Hunter

[Dave Grubb]

My own hacking a few years ago, while a major inconvenience, was not a game changer due to my use of two remote back-ups. My "in-office" back-up was useless. The biggest cost was the replacement of all my drives---which could have been overkill on my part.

I lost one day's data. My remote back-ups are automatic and occur throughout the day.

The ransom hackers got all of my drives and also my remote back-ups----but only that day's data. All other data was stored behind another wall which they could not get to. I was unaware that both those companies retained multiple days of data behind that wall. It took some time for them to retrieve them--but they did.

Now--for the bad news---the ransom hackers have moved beyond the struggle with that wall. They now embed a kernel in your day's data, which is benign and unseen. It is also a time bomb. It is stored with all your old data and at a predetermined date opens and encrypts everything there as well.

I am now in discussions with Crowdstrike, plus with another vendor coming in this week, to provide what I hope is a safe wall. In reality this is a little like getting away from a bear---you only have to run faster than the other guy to avoid being eaten. If you look closely at the recent ransom hacks that have made the news---those boys weren't up to speed---they can keep me out of trouble. With an abundance of easy hacks why spend endless hours on one that might not succeed for you?

[UTAH]

May this mission for you go well, Dave. And, may all these security problems we're facing online cause our systems to exponentially improve.

Frankly, it concerns me a person like Dave, who is technologically advanced, is struggling with this issue. Our government leaders need to be fully behind improving our systems. We can do this.

Hunter

[TriGuy]

Utah. it probably did not help matters that the previous occupant of the Oval Office fired the head of DHS Cybersecurity because he did not like a particular conclusion

[UTAH]

Yep - and here we are.

Hunter

[Mike]

Backups were not a problem for the site restoration. I have plenty of them stored in different locations. The problem was restoring the backups. Every time I tried to do a restore it failed. So, I tried a new installation from scratch with the intention of attaching the database after the fact. The new installation failed. Every time. I even got a new server to move to, but had the same problems.

I consulted with support from vBulletin which turned out to be worthless - I'm glad I don't pay for it. Then I tried with GoDaddy thinking they might have made some changes that caused the problem. Again, no help.

At the time, I was using a Dell laptop running Windows 10 and using Filezilla for my FTP client. I downloaded the software from vBulletin several times to no avail and no joy.

When I came to my other house where my Win7 desktop now resides I decided to try it again since it was this machine that loaded the last restoration and update. Bingo! The first attempt worked flawlessly! That tells me it must have something to do with the way Windows 10 interacts with process. I think I have a disk from the laptop that still has Win7 loaded. I might swap disks and see what happens if I try to load it on the new server.

[Honda]

Man that sounds frustrating. I hope you get it worked out but guess what we're back so that's the good news.