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Thread: Why some people shouldn't have PC's.....

  1. #1
    Oh no!I've re-dorkalated! Jiff Lemon's Avatar
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    Angry Why some people shouldn't have PC's.....

    So a woman at work asked me to have a look at her 18 month PC, as it wouldn't boot. 18 month old machine running XP home, should be a breeze.

    Was giving BSOD on boot - Unmountable boot volume. Sorted that and in we got.

    Now whilst a p4 1.5 with 256 meg isn't going to be super speedy, this thing was seriously dragging it's bum. So, lets check for virus's yes? Anti virus software on there, but as it's never been registered,so its 18 months out of date. :O

    Quick AVG install and copy the updates across and holy mother, 154 virus's found and cleaned.

    Then I noticed that it didn't have SP1 - so I'm looking at plain old Vanilla XP home. Several Updates and hours later, I finally feel comfortable about sticking a NIC in it and putting it on my network to grab the final couple of updates.

    Connects up to my net, changes the net settings but it won't connect. Hmmmmm. Then when I finally get a page cannot be displayed error, its a f*cking spyware search page showing in the address bar...

    Search and destroy installed and launched.

    454 separate instances of spyware, including a staggering 27 different tool bars for IE! If they were all switched on at once you couldn't see the web page for toolbars!

    Finally get to windows update and surprise surprise, the update client has never been installed

    Machines like this should be allowed on the net I say!

  2. #2
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    I would've just reformatted the thing.. No backup? Tough.
    Heck, I know I used to reformat on first sign of a BSOD. Keeps the system nice and clean. I am using Win98 on my old PC, and it still runs fine without reboot after 6 days now.. It may not be ground breaking for NT/2000/XP/Linux.. But I've seen enough Win98 rig crash daily..
    Last edited by TooNice; 31-03-2004 at 09:05 AM.

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    Thats tickled me this morning, 154 viri thats gotta be some sort of record.

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    Oh no!I've re-dorkalated! Jiff Lemon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TooNice
    I would've just reformatted the thing.. No backup? Tough.
    Heck, I know I used to reformat on first sign of a BSOD. Keeps the system nice and clean. I am using Win98 on my old PC, and it still runs fine without reboot after 6 days now.. It may not be ground breaking for NT/2000/XP/Linux.. But I've seen enough Win98 rig crash daily..
    Well, it was a pre-installed system with no recovery disk. Clean it or buy another copy of XP.

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    I don't get that.. I could've sworn that pre-installed systems (non 2nd hand anyway) came with a full version of the OS in the past. But for some reasons, I see a lot of people who are stuck with just a recovery disc nowadays..

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    Was that machine on a broadband connection?
    Soon people like that will be made accountable, I mean for 18 months on BB she ran a virus server in effect, is heading towards a system which needs a driving licence type thing.
    The Cow by Ogden Nash
    The cow is of the bovine ilk;
    One end is moo, the other, milk.

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    Oh no!I've re-dorkalated! Jiff Lemon's Avatar
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    Nah, she was Dial up! Thats the amazing bit - even after being Virus cleaned, it literally couldn't connect to the net (on a 512 pipe) due to the amount of spyware fighting for supremacy! What the heck must it have been like on a modem at 56k?

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    classic

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    Senior Member Nemeliza's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by daniel_owen_uk
    Thats tickled me this morning, 154 viri thats gotta be some sort of record.
    I have cleared 1002 viri from a single computer before. funny thing is the computer was working (ok'ish) so they must hav somehow cancelled each other out.

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    Ah, Mrs. Peel! mike_w's Avatar
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    How could you not notice 154 viruses though? Although the next time I run my Virus Checker, I'll probably get something like that

    The only virus I ever got was Wazoo. There was no need for a Virus Checker then (mainly because it was hard for them to spread with no internet).
    "Well, there was your Uncle Tiberius who died wrapped in cabbage leaves but we assumed that was a freak accident."

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    Heh, that reminds me of my Uncles PC when he had problems and called me to help. Not quite as bas as that but i still found around 80 virus' and around 150 different SpyWare elements. Its been 3 months now...I'm expecting a phone call any day 8-S

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    M'well, were they 150 different viruses? Or were there many duplicates?
    I cleaning a pretty messy PC in my school years ago (I am talking the days where P150 were the best one could afford, and the average person still had a 486). I don't remember how many viruses it had anymore, but with all the students inserting infected copies of Doom and such, it got infected by maybe 5-10 diff viruses. But each of them replicated within the system, some worse than others, and ended up with a pretty huge number of infections by the time it was cleansed..

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