>Yes, a home network connecting through a Linksys wireless router. I think it had (has) some firewall protection but don't know much about that stuff. In fact I am having trouble getting the wireless network set up again. It was working before with a secure WEP key.

I don't know if this could have been related (probably now) but WEP is pretty much outdated to the max. I would look into WPA or maybe upgrading the firmware of your router to an open source firmware.

>Yellow Lab Technologies? Is that new? Does it mean if someone hires you you come in and pee on the floor and chew up everything in sight? ;-)

It is new, but nothing big. Really, nothing at all. My sister knew a guy who wanted a basic web form done and he would pay for me to host it, so I got a website and needed a name. I had big plans, but ultimatly I am pretty lazy ;-). This guy might have more work in the future and I might try to transition a part-time gig I currently have into a contract. It would be nice to get something going because I had a heck of a bad week last week and I wouldn't have had it if I were working on my own. I don't have the business know-how to do it, though.

>>Mike,
>>Out of curiousity, was this on your home network? If so, what kind of network setup do you have? Do you a hardware firewall through your router?
>>
>>
>>>Thanks, Thomas (and to all others who have replied). I took your advice and turned off all the computers yesterday and tried to forget them for a while. Today's task is to rebuild them all, make sure the antivirus is up to date on all of them, and have them all connected to the network. Just being on the road to recovery has me less unhinged, which I definitely was. It's still going to be quite a loss if every scrap of information I had is gone, but if that's the case, just make the best of it. I am going to explore Al's suggestion of data recovery. It's probably expensive as hell but then the lost data is pretty valuable.
>>>
>>>>>This is worse than I thought. All four PCs are hosed. This from the Mac, the only computer that will connect to the internet. The PCs are all reporting viruses. Worse, my backup drive got dusted. All my work, all my finances, everything gone. You may not see me for a while.
>>>>
>>>>Mike,
>>>>
>>>>sorry to hear that. I had feared some silent data corruption during operation (but from OS, not virus trouble) which was the reason for my tips to use boot cd's and make a copy FIRST.
>>>>
>>>>Usually I'ld recommend a slow night with 2 or 3 beers watching some escape flick, in your case probably the best is to get out of the house for a few H either jogging or walking - depending on personal preference you might oogle some women.
>>>>
>>>>Get your mind off the problem first! Then using a knoppix or other linux boot CD/DVD check those drives. I the technical term "dusted" might only mean the MBR of the drive is unavailable or that it, after a thoughtless reformat to NTFS from FAT is unreadable from the MAC. (I have been in such panic situations TWICE [burglary leaving only shrink wrapped backup tapes and removing all those written to and left in the office and laptop HD chip toasted when there were no laptop burners while backing up date to the server inside the security barrier...] and remember overlooking some easy steps first).
>>>>
>>>>Work only off copies of the disks, leaving the original disks for professoinell recovery in the current state. There are some Linux based virus checkers as well, where you can either only check or try to "fix". Linux is here better, as I don't think there are OS-spanning viruses as of yet. Splurge on the disks - 2 or 3 play disks oven sized 500 GB are nothing compared to the troubles of real loss.
>>>>
>>>>On the ultimate boot disk there are tools to make a disk copy using raw sectors - start working from there.
>>>>
>>>>HTH
>>>>
>>>>thomas