Holy Crap! Spyware!

[morganlefay]

I only fix 'em for friends and family and that's usually for wine.

Hey thats my gig

I carry around open office on my usb key....for the othe whiners

I have even had businesses say "cant find our autocad cd...you wouldnt have a copy we can use??"

MLF

[SirDice]

Backup a customer's data?!? The last repairshop I worked for and every other one I ever walked into had a sign saying they (the repairshop) weren't responsible for the data and customers are urged to backup important stuff before sending it off.

My last shop also had a policy; software problems aren't covered by warranty. So they had to pay a minimal fee (first hour) and additional hourly wages. Spending 5 hours cleaning it would be unacceptable and very costly.

[Gir]

Well I spent most of the day saturday working on that computer and am up to 10 hrs total got it working and in decent shape. But when I would connect to the internet would get about 6 new connections that I didn't like seeing and couldn't think of a legitimate reason for the computer to be making them. So it's off to the format factory for them yesterday i spent like 3 hrs backing up these people have so much music and in redundant directorys so i just backed it all up. I am currently in teh process of updating the computer though automatic update since M$ says there copy isn't genuine(kinda funny how that works) and am going to hopefully get everything back onto there computer by 7pm its 6 now. Wish me luck.

In response to Net2Infintys coment on how much we are charging them. I have only charged them for 4 hrs of service at $49/hr (we are the cheapest in town and I still feel bad about that charge but meh they shouldn't have been so lazy about there computer)

[brokencrow]

Well I spent most of the day saturday working on that computer and am up to 10 hrs total got it working and in decent shape. But when I would connect to the internet would get about 6 new connections that I didn't like seeing and couldn't think of a legitimate reason for the computer to be making them. So it's off to the format factory for them yesterday i spent like 3 hrs backing up these people have so much music and in redundant directorys so i just backed it all up.

...been there, done that. Good luck. Note that Best Buy's Geek Squad is charging $199 in store, $249 in home/office for what they call "Advanced Diagnostic & Repair" to remove spyware and viruses, so you're not too far off.

That's the dilemma of doing AV work: quickly evaluating what you're getting into. I try to make a judgement in that first hour which way I'm going to go, format or clean. It's not an easy call to make. I wouldn't feel bad if I were you, not unless you can walk on water (and didn't!).

[zigar]

Windows updates another hour or two,

HA.... If you're installing off of an xp sp2 disc...you want pain???? try reloading off a w2k (no sp's) cd..like i did last week....you're looking at the better part of a day with the sp1 reboot, sp2 reboot sp3 reboot sp4 reboot Ie6 reboot office sp1..sp2 sp3

a serious pita

gah


(i keep telling myself ...ok..ghost this...but hey that would be too easy)

[brokencrow]

Uh, zigar, can't you just skip all the service packs, save for the latest (SP4)? That's what I always do with W2K. I think (and I could be wrong) that the latest service packs encompass previous versions).

[zigar]

hmmm... if that's the case ...damn.

i though SP2 required SP1 and it wasn't a cumulative rollup (am i disremembering?) didn't know it had changed. Or am I just thinking that's the way it works because that's how AutoUpdate does it.?

Oh well.. I haven't had to deal with w2k much lately we're virtually all xp boxes now and they're all on AutoUpdate...