How infected can a computer get?

glhs837

glhs837

Power with Control
Someone I know, they had issues. Have had issues repeatedly over the say five years since this computer has been in the house. I have cleaned and treated this machine (and loaded prophylactic software and explained it use every time) several times.

Problem is, the owner of the machine has a sibling that for reasons I cant get into, cannot be kept off the machine, and evidently cannot be taught to use basic safe computing practices.

Now, I'm not asking for help, I will just end up putting a new hard drive in this thing and putting whatever OS I can scrounge.

Thing was so bad Spybot choked repeatedly, AVG was locked out by some sort of serial number pretext. Windows update wouldnt, Mozilla and Internet Explorer both crash on start. Task manager, locked out, admin only, and the account I left as admin, isnt anymore. Even changed the desktop for a Graphic saying "YOUR SYSTEM IS INFECTED TAKE STEPS IMMEDIATELY"

Wow, I think if you strapped this thing down at a hacker convention and let everyone stick anything they wanted in its USB ports for a week, it still wouldn't be that bad.

Upside, its a five year old Dell desktop, not worth a lot anyway. Wow, I'm just amazed.
 
glhs837

glhs837

Power with Control
No good, the owner needs it. And, sadly, the "kid" is 30:) But its not going to be an issue anymore, thanks to a change in the circumstances that led to me not being able to intervene before, now I can tell him to go pi#$ off, and lock the damn thing out,:evil: once I decide how to sort it out. I was just amazed at how badly this thing was infected. Ive never seen a machine so badly compromised and still function at all.
 
J

jaksprat

Member
Ever try Linux? Sounds like your system might be a good candidate. The last Linux I tried was Ubuntu which was much more user-friendly than older distros. It's easy to setup multiple user accounts which allows 'Junior' to play in his own sandbox.

I mainly use Macs now cause they finally wised up and used a Unix derivative for their OS but Linux is great to use on an old junker that's ready for the curb. I've been Windows-free for 5 years and am not looking back.
 
glhs837

glhs837

Power with Control
Linux wouldnt work, these folks are barely computer literate. And GW, that's what his option will be now. Not going to be a problem like this again, I can keep him off now.
 
R

raven

I SAID IT YES I DID !
glhs837 said:
Someone I know, they had issues. Have had issues repeatedly over the say five years since this computer has been in the house. I have cleaned and treated this machine (and loaded prophylactic software and explained it use every time) several times.

Problem is, the owner of the machine has a sibling that for reasons I cant get into, cannot be kept off the machine, and evidently cannot be taught to use basic safe computing practices.

Now, I'm not asking for help, I will just end up putting a new hard drive in this thing and putting whatever OS I can scrounge.

Thing was so bad Spybot choked repeatedly, AVG was locked out by some sort of serial number pretext. Windows update wouldnt, Mozilla and Internet Explorer both crash on start. Task manager, locked out, admin only, and the account I left as admin, isnt anymore. Even changed the desktop for a Graphic saying "YOUR SYSTEM IS INFECTED TAKE STEPS IMMEDIATELY"

Wow, I think if you strapped this thing down at a hacker convention and let everyone stick anything they wanted in its USB ports for a week, it still wouldn't be that bad.

Upside, its a five year old Dell desktop, not worth a lot anyway. Wow, I'm just amazed.
Click to expand...

I use three computers one computer for sites that I don't care about getting infected that I can restore at a moments notice . One for personal use and it's loaded with all the bells and whistles for viruses protection. and one for everyone who wants to surf the net to use.Works out well!
 
J

jaksprat

Member
raven said:
I use three computers one computer for sites that I don't care about getting infected that I can restore at a moments notice . One for personal use and it's loaded with all the bells and whistles for viruses protection. and one for everyone who wants to surf the net to use.Works out well!
Click to expand...

Please don't take this the wrong way, but why have 3 computers when you can just buy a Mac and create separate user accounts for each person in the house? That's what I've had for 5 years and I've never had an issue. Just turn on the firewall and turn off unnecessary services. No virus protection needed. Same thing with any Linux box I've had. Bottom line is, Windows as an OS is junk. There's just no comparison to Unix. I've wasted too many hours/days/weeks/... of my life trying to deal with Windows.
 
wch

wch

New Member
glhs837 said:
Someone I know, they had issues. Have had issues repeatedly over the say five years since this computer has been in the house. I have cleaned and treated this machine (and loaded prophylactic software and explained it use every time) several times.

Problem is, the owner of the machine has a sibling that for reasons I cant get into, cannot be kept off the machine, and evidently cannot be taught to use basic safe computing practices.

Now, I'm not asking for help, I will just end up putting a new hard drive in this thing and putting whatever OS I can scrounge.

Thing was so bad Spybot choked repeatedly, AVG was locked out by some sort of serial number pretext. Windows update wouldnt, Mozilla and Internet Explorer both crash on start. Task manager, locked out, admin only, and the account I left as admin, isnt anymore. Even changed the desktop for a Graphic saying "YOUR SYSTEM IS INFECTED TAKE STEPS IMMEDIATELY"

Wow, I think if you strapped this thing down at a hacker convention and let everyone stick anything they wanted in its USB ports for a week, it still wouldn't be that bad.

Upside, its a five year old Dell desktop, not worth a lot anyway. Wow, I'm just amazed.
Click to expand...


I have seen a few good ones, usually used by people who open every attachment in every email they get, the most common one lately is from facebook, where your friend sends you a link saying you have to see this, my son clicked on it, thank god for system restore and firewall
 
glhs837

glhs837

Power with Control
Yep, I run up to four PCs running various versions of Windows, XP, Vista, and Win 7 RC, and dont have any problems. Think I'll experiment with my power nailer and that hard drive:)
 
GopherM

GopherM

Darwin was right
Is there any reason that completely cleaning it and then passwording it so that only the owner can get on won't work?
 
GWguy

GWguy

*
GopherM said:
Is there any reason that completely cleaning it and then passwording it so that only the owner can get on won't work?
Click to expand...

That will work. Most BIOS setups allow you to create a boot password so you can't even boot into Windows without it. However, if you loose the password and can't do a BIOS hard reset, you're screwed.

You can also configure Windows to force password usage, but that can be bypassed if you're knowledgeable.
 
glhs837

glhs837

Power with Control
glhs837 said:
Now, I'm not asking for help, I will just end up putting a new hard drive in this thing and putting whatever OS I can scrounge.

.
Click to expand...

Folks, I know what I'm going to do, put in a new hard drive, one bigger than the 30 gig wont cost much, and I'll scrounge an operating system off one of the machines I'll be converting to Win 7 shortly.

And yes, it will be pass worded, and owner wil be told in no uncertain terms that giving the password to the offender will terminate my familial computer service contract. See, unitl now, there were family reasons that I could not lay such conditions upon the owner, nor refuse to revive the poor machine.

Now, however, those conditions no longer apply, and I am finally free to do things my way. :yahoo: Do as I say, or dont have a functional computer, I really dont care:coffee:
 
GopherM

GopherM

Darwin was right
GWguy said:
That will work. Most BIOS setups allow you to create a boot password so you can't even boot into Windows without it. However, if you loose the password and can't do a BIOS hard reset, you're screwed.

You can also configure Windows to force password usage, but that can be bypassed if you're knowledgeable.
Click to expand...
Any sort of passwording sounds like the best solution. Clearly the person that repeatedly loads a computer with viruses and doesn't know how to run, use or sustain virus protection is also not smart enough to bypass a password.
 
J

jaksprat

Member
Chasey_Lane said:
What do you do when more than one person wants to get on the computer?
Click to expand...

That's a good point. We alternated which worked OK for us. There were 4 of us before and now there's just 3. It was very rare that 2 of us really needed to use it at the same time for something serious, and it encouraged us not to stay on the internet and become internet junkies.

I did get another Mac last summer (a Mac Mini) and now we have 2 Macs. The reason for the extra Mac was to be able to use MagicJack for a phone and my old one wasn't compatible since it had a PowerPC CPU versus Intel. We do use the extra Mac for internet too I must admit. :whistle:

But your comment is well-taken.
 
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