What happened to Michael D's Region 4 DVD Info Page?

A ransomware attack wiped all our computers at home, including the one running the web site.

Are you coming back?

I believe so. The attack happened on 20-Sep-2020.
There was a full site backup done on 1-Sep-2020 which is intact.
The site's database appears completely intact up to 20-Sep-2020.
The only irretrievable data appears to be Cover Art from 1-Sep-2020 to 20-Sep-2020, which shouldn't be too hard to replace once I get the site back up and running.

Recovery Log

25-Oct-2020: Server operating system reinstalled onto a new SSD drive (safer and ultimately more efficient than trying to clean up the old drive). Created this placeholder page. Currently in the process of restoring the site data back onto the server and re-implementing server backup processes. Once that is done, the next task will be to set up SQL Server again and connect the site's database.

7-Nov-2020: Site backup processes confirmed to be working correctly and index placeholder page (this page) moved to actual server rather than temporary server. The next step is to install SQL Server.

11-Nov-2020: SQL Server is now installed and the old site databases have been attached. I had to solve a problem with .ASP pages not being found first (now fixed), but I still have to resolve some database connection issues before I can bring the site back up. Once I resolve the database connection issue, I intend to bring the site up in read-only mode initially, just to confirm that everything is intact.

29-Nov-2020: The main page of the site has been timing out as the result of one of the database queries. I haven't been able to resolve the time-out yet, but have worked out which query was causing the problem. For now, I have disabled the display of Release Lists, which allows the main page to load. The next issue to debug before the site can come back up is that trying to load a review is currently producing an "Invalid ReviewID" error message. Disc and Review search work, and really old text-based reviews will load, but no recent reviews are loading.

22-Dec-2020: I am currently in the process of doing some hardware maintenance on the server. The CPU fan needs replacing and I have taken the time to fix a few other minor hardware issues whilst I am at it.

7-Jan-2021: I have set up local read write access to the site's database so I can manually make minor adjustments to the site's database, such as updating news items. The site remains READ ONLY for web access at this stage. I'll be replacing the CPU fan today which will complete the hardware renovation of the server.


Cheers - MichaelD
Last updated Thursday 7th January 2021