As of May 8th, it will have been one month. One month of what? Why, one month that my Facebook Account was removed, of course. And the 12th will be one month since my computer died. Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. Maybe I should start from the beginning. After all, what's a good rant without the background to fill it out?

On April 8th, a user on Facebook by the name of Suzan Compton sent me a friend request. Normally I would have ignored it, which would not have changed a thing anyway, but I had been getting so many friend requests that I was unsure if I knew this person or not. Lots of family I have never gotten to know and lots of like-minded people I have recently met who were sending requests at the time.

So, I sent this person a message, politely asking if I knew her, and apologizing in case I did and had forgotten. The reply came back in a few minutes. She was rather nice about it. She said I was on her list of recommended friends and she just decided to add me. In addition, she also proposed that I add her as a friend and check out her profile. If I didn't think it would work out then I could remove her from my list.

In retrospect, this would have been the best option, my only escape from this fate. However, hindsight being what it is, and foresight never being too good, I explained that I had enough family and friends on my friends list that I didn't know and would like to avoid adding more at this time. I thanked her for her offer and went about my business.

Suzan: Are you gay?

Sitting there, dumbfounded for a moment, I carefully considered my reply.

Me: No. =\

Suzan: Ok, so why dont you like chatting to girls are you so young you are into girly germs?? :)

Not liking where this was going, I thought I should restate my reason for not accepting her request.

Me: I'm 24. I just don't need random people on my friends list.

Of all of the things I was thinking, one thing came over strong, this was a stuck up little girl who has never been rejected. I was anticipating something bad to happen, though I had no idea what. However, I never thought this would be her reply...

Suzan: I think you are a fake account and need to be flagged

Completely shocked by this, I immediately made a response, not knowing whether or not she was joking.

Me: I'm a fake account for not wanting random people on my friends list? What kind of logic is that?

Fearing the worst for my account, and knowing how bad things like these can get, I immediately took a screenshot of the conversation, with the above quoted text being all that was visible at the time.

She wasn't joking. Immediately after taking the screenshot, I clicked the link to reveal the rest of the conversation and was met with this message:

Account Disabled

Your account has been disabled. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page

Shortly thereafter I got a friend of mine to report her for abusing the system. Her account was disabled the next day -- not immediately, like mine was -- which means she got booted by the staff. I got booted by the system.

As I said, this was a month ago. I've since made a new account and continued on my way. However, I lost 45 friends/family, several groups and pages, and quite a bit of discussion which all need to be made up for. One permanent loss was a group I had started, for which I was the only admin at the time. I was about to name a new admin, in case something like this happened. Too late, apparently.

I've sent a message to Facebook every Thursday since then, in the hopes that I might get my account back. However, I noticed a few days after I was disabled that Suzan Compton had her account back, nothing lost. Mine has received no attention at all, good or bad. I've tried the e-mail in the security section, I tried posting to a forum that Facebook staff answer problems on, I even tried e-mailing the staff directly, nothing has worked.

On a darker note, the Monday following that unfortunate turn of events (the day after I noticed Suzan was back) my computer died. Nothing major, just the boot sector on the C drive! Just enough for it to not be able to use ANY form of Windows AT ALL. So, everything on my computer dead. Thankfully I had made a backup a while back. I'm losing all of my recent stuff, but it's not a total loss. I know it is the hard drive because I can plug in a Knoppix disc and it works fine. I'm figureing it is the boot sector of Drive C because all forms of Windows, even bootables, go to a blue screen, and Knoppix almost freezes when I try to access the C drive, but the D partition is fine. I've also tried reinstalling Windows (7 Ultimate 32-Bit) but when it begins the Setup Process... it stays there for all eternity and I have to shut it off.

For a while there, almost 2 days, the screen refused to work unless the computer was unplugged. Yeah, it's a laptop. Then it was alright again. Very strange.

So, in short, my Facebook account was falsely flagged by a stuck up brat and my Acer Aspire 5515 laptop refuses to run windows.

If anyone knows how to fix my Facebook problem (like direct contact with a specific staff member) or my computer problem (like a bootable program that doesn't run in windows that can fix the boot sector of a drive) then PLEASE let me know as I have completely run out of ideas and sources.

Tags: Facebook, Rant, Windows

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Comment by Eric Fox on May 5, 2010 at 3:26am: Well, I think I've narrowed down the problem. According to a few other websites, the malware/virus/whatever that attacked my system made alterations to the MBR file in the boot sector of my hard drive. Most of these will encrypt that file and make changes to your system from there. Apparently, I was shutting down my computer at the time and corrupted it instead. Lucky me. If it had simply encrypted it the programs that you have been suggesting just might have helped. Instead, I must now replace the MBR file entirely. There are two ways I have found to do this.

1. Input the windows disk, run a complicated list of DOS-prompt commands, replace the MBR
2. A transplant from one computer to another, copying the MBR from a completely identical source

I'll be trying them in that order. Thankfully a family member of mine has the exact same computer I do with the exact same OS, so the transplant should work, I just prefer the faster solution of doing it myself over waiting for that family member to have the time to visit.

So, hopefully, one of my two problems should be solved soon. I'll let you all know how it works out.

Comment by TheGratefulNed on May 3, 2010 at 2:06pm: Check out Ultimate Boot CD. It's a bootable CD and has a bunch of (command-line or DOS GUI driven) apps. Motherboard, hard drive, file system, memory, peripherals; there's all sorts of things you can test with it. Some are generic others are brand-specific.

http://ultimatebootcd.com/

Comment by Eric Fox on May 2, 2010 at 9:36pm: @ Tyler

Yeah... I'm not sure if that Ubuntu disk will work or not, what I do know is that I have no idea how to use it. I see something on the page about a GUI, but it also says I have to install it from Ubutu... which can't be done live, and (assuming it could) I would have no idea how to do that anyway.

I'm still trying other options that I've found, but I don't feel like I've given this one the proper chance. Perhaps if you could provide a link, or a description for how to use this program I might be able to fix my computer with it.

At this rate, it might be easier if I save up the money for a drive mounter. =\

Comment by Mihkel N. on May 2, 2010 at 12:46pm: Really? It's like a robber steals your car, you instead of him go to jail and the robber gets your car, it's sth like that. That's just SO unfair. My suggestion is that you post this to like YouTube and be make yourself noticeable. Companies of any kind don't like if there are bad stuff going on about them.
That's my only suggestion - post videos everywhere and post links etc. Good luck.

Comment by Candy on May 2, 2010 at 5:53am: I feel your pain. My face-book account was closed by face-book because they do not believe that my name is Candy Graham. And that really is my name.

Comment by Eric Fox on May 1, 2010 at 7:16pm: I never said Facebook in any way had anything to do with my computer crashing, I simply clumped both of these things together into one blog entry because they completely destroyed my access to everything I used throughout the day, including my career.

Not sure why it was posted in the newsletter as a Facebook virus crashing my computer. What did it was very aggressive malware.

I'll definitely check out those links, thank you for posting them.

Comment by Tyler on May 1, 2010 at 3:53am: I seriously find it hard to believe that "Suzan" had anything to do with your computer crash. Hard drives ten to do that, particularly on cheaper laptops such as those by Acer. ;) And unless she sent you a link or some kind of commands in the messages, I doubt she did anything at all to your computer. As far as I know, one is not able to embed dangerous code in plain Facebook messages yet. It just sounds like you crossed paths with a rather desperate young lady. ;)

As for your hard drive, you may try downloading and running Rescubuntu on it. It's a variant of Ubuntu with several system recovery tools built into it. I have to say, it has saved my bacon before. http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/Download

Last I checked though, it did not have a GUI, so you may or may not be able to use it depending on your user skill.

Another thing you can try to do is taking a desktop disk of Ubuntu, any version 8.10 and up. Boot your laptop live with it, and then open Gparted to see if Gparted can at least detect the hard drive. If nothing on Rescubuntu or Gparted help, then most likely it's a hard ware problem. I've seen a number of hard drives go bad due to a burned out logic board, which is very easy to replace without very much risk of damaging the hard drive permanently. You may also want to try mounting the hard drive in another computer, perchance it is your hard drive controller that is giving you the problem. You can find adapters that will attach your IDE or SATA hard drive to another computer via USB. http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=usb+sata+ide+ada...

If Gparted or Rescubuntu can detect the disk, but not read the information on it, I recommend a Linux program called testdisk or photorec. ddrescue would be my third suggestion. All on Linux. These programs do not have a UI either, but they're actually very easy to use.

I could give you more suggestions, but I think I will let you start with that. I hope I was a tad helpful!

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