"WHAT did you DO, Ray?!"

[MrSmiley]

"WHAT did you DO, Ray?!"

"I crossed the streams...."

Actually it's more along the lines of "I couldn't help it. It just popped in there."

[Dreamstalker]

Update of sorts.

From reports (sometimes I hate getting things relayed through my mom), everything was "recovered" (I'm doubting anything was truly gone to begin with) except all her Firefox/Thunderbird stuff.

Depending on exactly what was done (good luck getting that out of her though) I might be able to retrieve her Mozilla info...nice guy that tech, not bothering to check if there was anything back-uppable (if browser/mail client files are readable, I will always back them up before doing anything).

I bet my carefully-crafted security "suite" was nuked (she did say he "fixed" AOHell, should I read that as meaning he re-enabled the crapware that was disabled for a reason?)

[Dreamstalker]

Update...again.

So she called me asking about her FF bookmarks. I managed to walk her though restoring them (holy CRAP was that a long and convoluted call*, if she can charge her clients $50/hour I can charge her for my time), upon which she was disappointed that the restored bookmarks list wasn't longer (the only ones there were Amazon and some astrology site)...sorry but that's what there is.

Then she takes this moment to tell me that all stored emails in Thunderbird are gone. OK...I'm not going to try to walk her through that now, my brain is fried. She is told not to touch TB and use webmail until I can get a look at it.

In this process it is found that the "tech" did in fact re-enable AOHell everything, including the scanner suite which I had uninstalled because it didn't work and caused ungood things to happen Of course, nothing was documented (or it was, but she didn't think she needed it).

I know she will refuse offers of my enabling the "Remote Assistance" feature as she views it as a privacy violation (wtf, you know me, I will only access what I absolutely need to)...that and her computer needs to be turned on for it to actually work.

I didn't used to charge her as most fixes were 2-minute stuff that I did when my mom and I were up there anyway, but after this...

* The majority of the problem was that she kept insisting there was no "address" bar in Windows Explorer, so when it came time to import the bookmarks file, the whole string had to be typed in. Gah.

[tamezin]

I'm suspecting a virus if the result reporting is accurate, but how could a virus get into the update server (and if it wasn't a virus, could a Windows update hose things that badly)?

It is a virus, my CW's wife did exactly what you described. The virus appears to 'fool' windows update into believing it is legit, when the installer applies the update the virus is activated and bang all is gone.

My CW had to fdisk and start over, then told wifey to not touch anything anymore.

[Hyndis]

At this point I'd just start charging her the usual tech support fees. If she doesn't want you to help her for free, then fine. She can pay for it now.

I just don't get it. Some people refuse to be helped. They refuse to learn, they refuse to teach themselves, they refuse to stop making the same mistake again and again.

Perhaps hitting her in her wallet might knock some sense into her head. If she has to pay for it she might take the tech support and advice on how to avoid future problems more seriously.

[Mr.Customer]

This is a problem which I myself have encountered with Windows Vista. My system works perfectly since I have upgraded to Vista, in fact it runs faster and I haven't had a single problem with it.

However when I was initially upgrading the system to Vista, I kicked the powercord and turned it off, interupting the update. The problem that I encountered with Vista was that unlike previous versions where it is possible to restart an upgrade if it is so interupted, interupting the Vista Upgrade means total system loss and having to reinstall everything from scratch. And as luck would have it I didn't make a backup of my system before attempting the upgrade, yes very dumb of me I know.

I did recover a good deal of stuff on my Hard drive before reformating and reinstalling, but that would require some knowledge and work. And I beleive most techs probably wouldn't bother unless asked to and would just start from scratch because it is easier (thus erasing any recoverable data in the process)

[Dreamstalker]

She lives in an area that had a lot of storms blow through around Thanksgiving (roughly when it originally happened), and she believes a $30 surge protector will keep the PC running until the power comes back on. Given that all her data was there, I suspect it was something along those lines (power loss mid-update, Windows gets confused and to a n00b it can seem like everything's gone).

[PepperElf]

and she believes a $30 surge protector will keep the PC running until the power comes back on.

Only if you have it on an UPS... and even then, you're only guaranteed a certain amount of minutes, based on your usage. but even then they're suppose to be used to shut down your equipment properly in case of a power outage, not for running it until the power comes back on.