Re: Family tech support

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

On Sun, 29 Nov 2009, Theodore Pham wrote:

> Drsolly wrote:
> > 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. 
>
> Have her run the free version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 
> (http://www.malwarebytes.org/) to remove the fake antivirus. It's 
> surprisingly effective for removal.  Has a better UI for novices than 
> ComboFix and updates very frequently.
>
> Then dump Norton and install either the newish free Microsoft Security 
> Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/) or Avira's 
> free AntiVir (http://www.free-av.com/)
>
> Also switch her to Firefox and make sure she has the latest Adobe 
> Flash/Reader. Tell her not to skip any of their updates.
 
 ... or ... install Linux. 

Look, I don't want to fire up the old controversies, but for some people
(ladysolly, older daughter, me), it seems to have everything we need,
installs without any problems (even without asking questions about
hardware), and doesn't require constant pruning, weeding, tickling with
other software and general schmoozing to keep it running.

And Microsoft ought to be told this. In case they can make something 
competitive.

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