Re: Family tech support

[Martin Hepworth <maxsec () gmail com>]

2009/11/29 Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>

> Daughter.1 has picked up a nasty, that wants her to pay for an antivirus,
> and keeps nagging at her. She already had Norton, but that doesn't seem to
> want to know. I don't know if she's updated it - probably not.
>
> I didn't fancy wrestling with the malware to try to remove it, or go back
> to some previous checkpoint (there probably isn't one).
>
> I offered her two solutions.
>
> 1) reinstall XP. She doesn't have the CDs (I don't think they came with
> the computer). I suspect you can't buy XP now. Vista will cost her about a
> hundred pounds, and then she'll need to buy a new word processor, I'd
> guess. Probably another hundred or two.
>
> I suspect that a new laptop would be cheaper. I remember when we used to
> wonder if a virus could actually destroy the hardware. Well, you don't
> need to when it's cheaper to buy a new computer than to get rid of the
> virus.
>
> 2) I install Linux. Zero cost, and she most likely won't ever see another
> malware.
>
>
>
> It's a no-brainer, really.
>
>
> Do the folks at MS realise what this is doing to them?
>
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3) use combofix to remove the nasty. I've used this quite a few times
reccently, worked every time.


-- 
Martin Hepworth
Oxford, UK

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