Someone deserves a slap

[lostcarpark]

Mi sister turned up last night with the laptop she bought from a friend (Sony Vaio - fairly old model, but definitely a bargain for €100). She said that it was giving some trouble and would randomly shut down if she went online for a while, and doing a few other quirky things.

As soon as we powered it up, it started wanting to go online, which made me even more suspicious than I already was.

I checked for a virus checker. There was one. When was it last run? Sometime in 2002! When was it last updated? Never! Not good.

Installed a new virus checker and reboot. Reports three different vituses/trojans/worms attempting to run before bootup even finished. Run virus checker. Finds five different viruses infecting 24 files. All heal successfully.

Install AdAware and get rid of a few more things.

Install wireless LAN card and connect to internet. Run Windows update to download and install 54 patches and security updates.

Install Firefox and recommend avoiding insecure built-in browser.

Machine seems much happier now.

Comments

[digignome.livejournal.com]

Firefox <3

Succinctness = win

[flick.livejournal.com]

I suspect that you'll have already seen it, but there was something t'other day about a method of forcibly removing IE that, although it doesn't like it, doesn't break Windows and means you can still do things like Windows Update.

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Well, we could do that, but it's handy to have around for those pesky sites that refuse to work under anything else.

In my experience, once people get used to Firefox, they don't want to go back to IE.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

By gum, I wish we'd had you around when Matt's already-flaky and insecure PC (IE running on a bare dialup) got infected with an autodialer some time ago!

We'd been running Spybot and AdAware regularly, but this sneaked past them. By the time we spotted it it had run up a bill of 250 quid. :(

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Ouch!

[lproven.livejournal.com]

I know it's a PITA, but you probably shoulda wiped it & started over...

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

We may will do that yet, but that was the best I could do in a couple of hours.

Of course that was before I tried to install SP1 and it refused because it was a dodgy XP license key...

[lproven.livejournal.com]

[Nod]

And [!] I've heard of that, but never seen it...

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

A Vaio for a hundred *euros*? My god. What a bargain. Ok so it wont be very powerful, but is it small? I am looking for something with a keyboard to type on the tube with. Maybe I should trawl Ebay....

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

No, it's big and chunky, the max screen resolution is 800x600, and the battery life is fairly poor. But it's reasonably powerful (I think about a 600MHz P3 with 256MB RAM), and a definite bargain.