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Feb. 18th, 2005 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickButch's computer isn't working anymore. He's not a computer-y guy. He lays tile for a living, has his own contracting business. He knows lots and lots about tile and about estimating jobs and about making a profit in the tile contracting business. He is not, however, computer-oriented. He has a computer to keep his books and run his payroll and stuff. Anyway, it's been acting worse and worse and it finally stopped doing internet (a lot of contracted jobs are offered for bid online these days) and it also stopped letting them run the CD Rom drive, so they called for help.
Butch's computer is Windows 2000 Professional. The antivirus (Norton) expired in 2002 but it kept running okay so we didn't think there was a problem. Man, do people do this with their cars? I heard the oil needed to be changed, but the car just kept running, so I didn't worry about it.
I (briefly) connected it to the ethernet and downloaded (via my good friend the command prompt FTP client -- IE is so borked that I can't touch it without it crashing) the usual set of utilities. Because I'm not entirely stupid, I unplugged the ethernet when I was done.
The first-go-round virus count was 171.
The first run spyware count got to something like seven hundred before I gave up, told it to stop, and ripped those out.
The second spyware count was eight hundred.
The malware count is pretty heavy, including such notables as crap from 180Solutions, CoolWWWSearch, assorted internet accellerators and GoHip. I don't get it. Are people stupid? Nobody is going to pay you to surf the internet. Nobody can make dialup go faster than dialup goes. Nobody is going to do nice things for you if you grant them desktop realestate. And porn doesn't taste better if it comes long distance from Thailand, damn it.
I'm on the second go-round with the antivirus and I'm still getting some trojan downloader hits but things are generally improved. The major thorn in my side is a lovely little thing called Downloader.Small.9.AI, which AVG can't get rid of on its own. It detects it, but it can't remove the damn thing.
Fuck.
Right. Let's look behind the curtain. What's in the toolbox?
AVG Free Edition
Ad-Aware
Spybot Search&Destroy
Those will get you through seventy, eighty percent of user-fucked-up computers.
If those don't do it, get Hijack This, which is a really spiff utility that you need some brains to use. Follow along with the tutorial and don't make changes you're not sure about.
Also, you can get some other freebie antivirus stuff, which I did -- one of them finally killed the Downloader.Small.9.AI, but I don't know which one did the honors.
I'm currently updating the MSFT security shit (39 available updates!) and then I'll have a go with why there does not appear to be a fucking CD ROM on the machine. That may take place tomorrow. Also, Add/Remove Programs is royally fucked, won't even open. Don't know how they expect me to fix that without a reload. We'll see.
I also get to come in tomorrow (my day off, btw) to fuck with another, different piece of shit belonging to someone else entirely. Oh, joy!
Update: There are TWO cd drives on the machine (one writes, the other does DVD) and they both work following a full course of updates from MSFT. One thing off the list, then. Add/Remove also appears moderately functional -- at least the fucker opens.
On that note, I'm gonna call it a night. I'll massage the adaptec CD-burner shit into working again tomorrow and call him to come get his piece of shit. He will be pleased. I will look reasonably intelligent. It'll all be to the good.
Butch's computer is Windows 2000 Professional. The antivirus (Norton) expired in 2002 but it kept running okay so we didn't think there was a problem. Man, do people do this with their cars? I heard the oil needed to be changed, but the car just kept running, so I didn't worry about it.
I (briefly) connected it to the ethernet and downloaded (via my good friend the command prompt FTP client -- IE is so borked that I can't touch it without it crashing) the usual set of utilities. Because I'm not entirely stupid, I unplugged the ethernet when I was done.
The first-go-round virus count was 171.
The first run spyware count got to something like seven hundred before I gave up, told it to stop, and ripped those out.
The second spyware count was eight hundred.
The malware count is pretty heavy, including such notables as crap from 180Solutions, CoolWWWSearch, assorted internet accellerators and GoHip. I don't get it. Are people stupid? Nobody is going to pay you to surf the internet. Nobody can make dialup go faster than dialup goes. Nobody is going to do nice things for you if you grant them desktop realestate. And porn doesn't taste better if it comes long distance from Thailand, damn it.
I'm on the second go-round with the antivirus and I'm still getting some trojan downloader hits but things are generally improved. The major thorn in my side is a lovely little thing called Downloader.Small.9.AI, which AVG can't get rid of on its own. It detects it, but it can't remove the damn thing.
Fuck.
Right. Let's look behind the curtain. What's in the toolbox?
AVG Free Edition
Ad-Aware
Spybot Search&Destroy
Those will get you through seventy, eighty percent of user-fucked-up computers.
If those don't do it, get Hijack This, which is a really spiff utility that you need some brains to use. Follow along with the tutorial and don't make changes you're not sure about.
Also, you can get some other freebie antivirus stuff, which I did -- one of them finally killed the Downloader.Small.9.AI, but I don't know which one did the honors.
I'm currently updating the MSFT security shit (39 available updates!) and then I'll have a go with why there does not appear to be a fucking CD ROM on the machine. That may take place tomorrow. Also, Add/Remove Programs is royally fucked, won't even open. Don't know how they expect me to fix that without a reload. We'll see.
I also get to come in tomorrow (my day off, btw) to fuck with another, different piece of shit belonging to someone else entirely. Oh, joy!
Update: There are TWO cd drives on the machine (one writes, the other does DVD) and they both work following a full course of updates from MSFT. One thing off the list, then. Add/Remove also appears moderately functional -- at least the fucker opens.
On that note, I'm gonna call it a night. I'll massage the adaptec CD-burner shit into working again tomorrow and call him to come get his piece of shit. He will be pleased. I will look reasonably intelligent. It'll all be to the good.
