[gary_bath_jr]

Hey Lynn

You are absolutely correct, a full backup should be done of your system to be able to recover from a disaster such as you had. The best backup to do is a complete system backup so that windows and all your apps are backed up along with your files so that you do not lose anything except a bit of time. If this type of backup can not be done I would suggest getting a NAS box (Network Attached Storage) from a company called Q-NAP, they are awesome because you can get one that will let you install 4 Hard Drives and spread the data across them, say you put 4 1TB drives you would get 3TBs of storage space. This setup is good because if you get a virus on the laptop it will not get to your files on the NAS, also if one drive fails you simply pull it out and put a new one in and the device will automatically add all the data that was on the old drive to the new one.

As for AV the best ones I have seen are ESET NOD32, Bitdefender and Kaspersky, the worst I have seen are McAfee and Norton.

Just my 2 cents, BTW I have been in IT for 15 years.

Gary