techrecovery | (no subject)

We don't service personal computers. If it's the department chair or an important professor, we may work on a personal laptop. But we don't touch student's personal machines. Ever. So why have I spent the last 2 days clearing spyware infections off of an undergrad's personal machine?

$BOSS: "His mom called, and I felt bad."

Grrrrrrrrr.

He had limewire installed and running under an admin account. Along with Norton. *gazes into the heavens* NORTON!!

It's getting a fresh format and install after I backed up what documents I could find. I fought the spyware, and the spyware won.

I'm really tempted to contact his mother and show her just what I found when cleaning out her little boy's computer. Still think he needs his computer for school mommy?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Hello, Mom of $student? Hi, this is $name calling from the University's IT department. I'm just calling to tell you that we're working on $student's computer, and I had a question. Unfortunately I'm not able to get a hold of $student, so I was wondering... See, I've backed up all of the documents I could find, but I've got this 4gb of illegally downloaded music, and 5gb of pr0n, and I wanted to know if I should back that up as well, because it will take a lot longer to get the laptop back to $student for him to use it for, ahem, 'school work'."

I was thinking the same thing. "Look, Mom, the computer you spent thousands on won't survive another 'attack' like this. Either keep on your son about keeping the computer clean, or it will die and you'll have to buy a new one."