Craziness...
Jul. 15th, 2004 04:46 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
achernow.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
techrecoveryOK.. So I'm unofficially IT support for all my friends... I get a call from my friend "Is there a way to get into Safe Mode on XP?" Naturally, that sparks a "Why?" response from me.
Turns out, he was at one of his friend's houses and they were having a problem with the computer. They had been playing on the internet and had gotten a pop-up that said "Have you cleaned the porn of your hard drive" and the machine shut down. When the restarted, they couldn't get into windows (explorer wouldn't start up).
So, forward about an hour... I went over there with a CD that had AVG, Ad-aware, Spybot S&D, and Zone Alarm on it. I got over there, got into windows far enough that I could get into the task manager and install AVG. Ran it and it immediately found 281 viruses. Well, it got through the search and proceeded to crash trying to repair the files. So I rebooted and tried to install Ad-aware... The system hung well before I could do that. So, I asked the guys if they had their data backed up. Thankfully, he had the system set up for a program drive and data drive. So, I wiped C: and re-installed XP on the machine.
Turns out not only did this kid not have anti-virus software running on the machine, but he had the cable modem connected directly to the computer, had no firewall running, and was still running IE despite seeing all the warnings not to. Well, I installed AVG onto the system (set-up for auto update and auto scan), installed Zone Alarm onto the computer, and strongly recommended running Ad-Aware and spybot. I also strongly recommended he switch to Firefox, but he didn't like that idea.
Anyway... This is by far one of the best examples of a user who should not be allowed to have a computer or cable modem.
-A
Turns out, he was at one of his friend's houses and they were having a problem with the computer. They had been playing on the internet and had gotten a pop-up that said "Have you cleaned the porn of your hard drive" and the machine shut down. When the restarted, they couldn't get into windows (explorer wouldn't start up).
So, forward about an hour... I went over there with a CD that had AVG, Ad-aware, Spybot S&D, and Zone Alarm on it. I got over there, got into windows far enough that I could get into the task manager and install AVG. Ran it and it immediately found 281 viruses. Well, it got through the search and proceeded to crash trying to repair the files. So I rebooted and tried to install Ad-aware... The system hung well before I could do that. So, I asked the guys if they had their data backed up. Thankfully, he had the system set up for a program drive and data drive. So, I wiped C: and re-installed XP on the machine.
Turns out not only did this kid not have anti-virus software running on the machine, but he had the cable modem connected directly to the computer, had no firewall running, and was still running IE despite seeing all the warnings not to. Well, I installed AVG onto the system (set-up for auto update and auto scan), installed Zone Alarm onto the computer, and strongly recommended running Ad-Aware and spybot. I also strongly recommended he switch to Firefox, but he didn't like that idea.
Anyway... This is by far one of the best examples of a user who should not be allowed to have a computer or cable modem.
-A
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