Can I 'Undo' This Afternoon??

One small decision this afternoon caused me a great amount of frustration.

A decision to upgrade a program that was working perfectly fine as it was ... disrupted my computer as I knew it!

My email and Internet explorer disappeared from my 'quick launch' area. And when I went to retrieve them they had to be set up again. All of my emails were gone and I didn't know if they were retrievable. I got the Internet up and running but nothing was the same as it had been before.

I was so grateful that all of the files on my computer were okay (although the file extensions in the video file didn't show up any more and an 'access denied' message came up when I tried to fix this).

I tried to do a 'system restore' to see if I could undo the mess I created. I was denied access. The more I played around, the more access I was denied.

I called my computer guy and told him the symptoms my computer was showing. He said in a very deep and grim voice, "That doesn't sound good." I booked his soonest appointment (4 days from now).

But in the mean time, I couldn't stop trying different things. The more that I tried, the more I thought the common denominator of most of my problems was in my antivirus program. It flashed a yellow warning as I was upgrading this program and I chose the option where it downloaded the program but wouldn't allow anything dangerous to be done. Once I chose that option, the warnings that flashed before me were endless.

I got someone on the antivirus program's 'live chat' line and he tried to help me. I had already tried the 'restore' button in the antivirus program and the 'access denied' message flashed again. He told me to try it again. Although this time it appeared to work, I was still being denied access at every turn.

Finally, he had me exit the antivirus program and when I got restarted it there was a message that my computer needed to be restarted. I got all the information that I needed from the 'live chat guy' because I would lose him as soon as I restarted the computer.

And wouldn't you know it?!?! Restarting the computer put absolutely everything back as it was, prior to this mess. I have all the 'access' I want now. My emails are back. The Internet home page is exactly as it was. The file extensions are as they were. Everything is completely back to normal.

No, life doesn't come with an 'undo' button ... but 'system restore' and restarting the computer is a good second choice.

I can't get back the 4 hours that I lost this afternoon as I fretted about this dilemma and tried to fix it. But the damage is undone.

Yes I can 'undo' the afternoon.