The Laptop and the BSoD's

So my most recent computer encounter was quite interesting and in some ways impressed me. The guy comes in saying that his system keeps crashing and he's been told he has a virus by Windows Live OneCare (I think that is what its called). He didn't manage to grab the bug name before it crashed again and was now in my room asking em to fix it. I won't lie, it made my day, its just how I roll. So i go about the usual checks, it crashes pretty much every time you boot normally, so I did the safe mode routine and found out a number of things about this guy's system. For one thing, his anti-virus had expired a while ago, he was using the standard windows firewall, and had only one anti-spyware program. (That's asking for trouble) I set about my business installing The Anti-Bug Free Software Cocktail, removed what was left of McAfee, and gave him all the relevant updates.

It took me a while to track it down, but he somehow contracted a variant of the Nuwar email virus and he wasn't able to prevent the infection because his virus definitions were out of date. Called him up and he was all set. This made my day as the people I consulted when trying to fix it were all telling me he had to do a clean format as a number of system programs such as System Restore, Internet Explorer, and Search were all toasted along with the anti-virus. System Restore was gotten back by uninstalling the trial version of Norton Ghost he never configured or used. Search and IE came back to life after i removed McAfee, the Virus files, and ran the system file checker (SFC.exe)

Another job done, Dorm Room I.T. kicks back for some UT2004 and MissionRed
Until next time...

~Caged