Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   Sandypjn
   Member

   ...week of time trying to scan and repair and restore and hours of work all to find out it will never go away and keeps moving through your system making its very own partition and setting its own admin and admin password w/full rights to your world.....had to do a full reset/factory defaut restore and wiped all my data which it conveniently refused to let me backup from the day it was installed. Love it love it love it. Any changes I made to the system were gone on my next boot, since it replaces all your hard work to trick it with a snapshot of the time it was given permission to board......damnit. Anyone else know what how this thing got to be given away here and also if there is a antivirus or any scan it can be caught with? I passed Norton McAfee and MS security essentials...(not loaded at same time on my one system, don't worry....) and is not covered by any of the extremely expensive all-inclusive extended insurance//warranties I purchased to cover anything from a virus to my deciding the color was out of style and tossing it out the window......(the laptop), because it technically isn't listed as a virus, malware, spyware or anything ele....

   Doesn't Giveway have a responsibility to avoid distributing this kind of malicious crap? Not necessarily that it's responsible for my being stupid enough to trust the site, but damn.....anyone else have something like this happen?

   SandyPJN, Stupid, Stymied and Seriously Pis--- off in Seattle

   Posted 12 years ago #
2. 

   BuBBy
   Teh adnim

   I think the real issue is knowing your own limitations.

   To one user it is a valuable utility / tool that serves an important purpose. To another it is a confusing, destructive software that should be banned.

   If GOTD handed out a pair of scissors to every user - there would still be a subset of users who manage to amputate both their legs, and poke themselves in the eye - and scream that something should be done about handing out scissors that can cause so much damage.

   Some software does carry an element of risk when used by new users - and the best information that should always be followed before installing new software - back up all data (that you cannot afford to lose) to external media.

   Just like users, software is not perfect - but to have not made a backup and blame the software for destroying your hard disk, really seems you are missing the point of some very simple and basic precautions when using a computer.

   I understand your frustration. It's a tough way to learn an important lesson.

   Posted 12 years ago #
3. 

   Whiterabbit-uk
   Games Guru

   All giveaways are tested for malware before allowing the community to download them. Thousands of users download these programs every day and only a few have cause to complain due to not reading the instructions first. The giveaway project has introduced many to programs they never even knew existed that have proven to be gems, but only by using them correctly

   Ay Recovery is no exception. Used correctly it's a brilliant program.

   I totally agree with what BuBBy says above. I also learned the hard way many years ago by losing a whole hard drives worth of data including some irreplaceable images and other programs and data when I first used CCleaner shortly after it was first released.

   Instead of reading the instructions first, I blindly went ahead and used the program, and consequently lost a lot of data. I blamed CCleaner for many years and always advised others not to use it, but after reading so many glowing reports realized that it was my own stupidity that caused the problem in the first place. It's not easy to eat humble pie, but sometimes you have to. It's so easy to blame the program (as I did), but, as with most computer woes, it's usually the user that's at fault.

   Now I always try to back up important data as and when needed (I have five external drives totalling around 7.5TB for the purpose). Plus I make hard copies of some of the data onto DVD’s; (for example photos, videos and copies of purchased programs). I'd use Blue Ray discs but they are still too expensive. I’m now also considering using some of the many cloud based back up facilities that are freely available in a limited fashion. Many of them offer a certain amount of free space before you have to subscribe.

   I used the original form of Ay Recovery, which was called Eaz Fix, and after losing the Giveaway version to a format bought the program because it had become so invaluable. The program saved my bacon several times when I was still using XP. I love the fact that you can restore previously saved restore points during boot up. One of the problems I found with the traditional Windows restore was that it required you to be able to actually boot up into Windows to work, which sometimes wasn't possible. That’s where Ay Recovery came in. As it can be accessed during boot up it doesn’t rely upon Windows working; so if you've ended up frying Windows somehow, you can restore to a time before whatever caused the problem so long as you’d used the program properly and created save points regularly. I used to create a new restore point before I installed anything new.

   I just wish they would hurry up and make it compatible with Win 7 64 bit.

   I'm sorry you’ve had major problems with this software but as BuBBy said, "backing up is the way to go". Then problems like this wouldn’t be as frustrating.

   Posted 12 years ago #
4. 

   Buzz
   Member

   Yes, backups or "images" are always mandatory. No one ever knows what might happen.

   Posted 12 years ago #
5. 

   Anonymous
   Unregistered

   Yes, backups or "images" are always good & System Restore, you not say how it Destroyed your HDD and boot mgr ?

   Posted 12 years ago #

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