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  • #16
    Quoth wolfie View Post
    WTF? If they've got a pile of malware on their machine, that's a pretty good indication that their AV package, even if it's active, is a steaming pile of shit that's not doing the job. It's clear that they need a GOOD AV package.
    Because therein lies the problem: when you try to tell the customer that they need a better AV program, they ask why because they know they just dropped however much money on Norton/McAfee several weeks ago. Telling someone the program they spent money on is a steaming pile of dung isn't a great way to build customer relations, and 99.99% of the time they would have declined spending an extra $50 for our preferred AV suite when they just spent more than that on something else. I'm not a fan of Norton or McAfee myself, but in a business setting you have to forego your opinion of a program and agree with what the client wants--especially if you're a small mom-and-pop. (Don't confuse that with giving in to a SC because these things are not one in the same.)

    In other cases, we'd just send an AV-less PC out the door with Avast or Security Essentials because what we sold sucked, too. The boss loved our suite, but we'd get regular calls from business clients complaining that it was making their systems unstable. Every time we'd bring this to his attention, it would start a long and drawn out debate about how he'd never heard any complaints and it works fine for him, so it must be good. It got to the point that my CW's and I just stopped letting bossman know about the complaints because we didn't want to argue about it.

    That same program was also what we sold to home users. My CW's and I really didn't like selling that suite given its issues with certain software (hell, we got calls it was blocking out peoples' legit copies of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010...and sure enough, we investigated and confirmed the reports), but if that's what the client wanted, that's what they got.

    I've not been around that job for several months, but I hear bossman is shopping around for a new preferred AV suite to sell. I guess since he laid off 98% of the company and has been running it himself for the most part that he's starting to hear--and grow tired of--all the complaints we told him about. Hmm...I wonder if he thinks we were telling him the truth now?

    Quoth Chromatix View Post
    Worth noting: Avast is one of the better ones, and doesn't cost anything for home use. If I ran a computer repair shop, installing Avast on otherwise unprotected machines would be policy.
    Although not a company policy, I made that a personal policy of mine. Windows 2000 doesn't support MSE, so those machines usually get the Avast treatment. (Yes, I had professionally--and still have personally--machines running 2000. The professional machines were mostly used for older software, and my personal 2000 machines are used for classic gaming. Neither were "everyday" machines to their users. )

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    • #17
      Quoth AmbrosiaWriter View Post
      Though just because the AV says/thinks it's malware, doesn't mean it is. I can't tell you the number of times where I'm getting legit games and my AV was all "OMg THIS WILL BLOW UP YOUR COMPUTER I'MMA NOT LET YOU PLAY IT." So I would run exceptions, saying FU to the AV, and played the game with absolutely no issues coming from this action. (AKA; the game wasn't malware.)
      You know what's worse? Publishing a free software package that's really popular, when some AV decides to flag some part of it as malware. Next thing you know, the mailbox is filled with "My AV says you're trying to steal my data!"

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      • #18
        AMIDST gets this treatment. Any Minecrafters should be familiar with what I'm talking about. Then again, anyone who's got enough brains to be using a tool like AMIDST also should have sensible enough to recognize a false positive.
        "English is the result of Norman men-at-arms attempting to pick up Saxon barmaids and is no more legitimate than any of the other results."
        - H. Beam Piper

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        • #19
          Quoth Fire_on_High View Post
          AMIDST gets this treatment. Any Minecrafters should be familiar with what I'm talking about. Then again, anyone who's got enough brains to be using a tool like AMIDST also should have sensible enough to recognize a false positive.
          Don't be too sure. My first job out of college did a crackdown on pirate software, bringing around a floppy with an automated checker (this was in the DOS days, when a 386/20 was a HOT system). It flagged my machine as having multiple copies of ChartMaster, when I didn't have any. How did it (mis)manage this? I had a HardCard as a second drive, and had used a couple DOS commands to mount it as if it were a directory on my C: drive (could also be seen as its native drive letter). My text editor (I was a programmer) was installed on this drive, and its macro compiler had the same name as the executable for ChartMaster. This "software finder" found the macro compiler under both the "mounted" directory and the native drive letter, and proudly announced I had 2 copies of ChartMaster. Fortunately it was a "snoop and announce" program, not a "search and destroy".
          Any fool can piss on the floor. It takes a talented SC to shit on the ceiling.

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          • #20
            Back at the old comp repair shop I worked at a decade ago, we had certain regulars. One of them stood out -- a 70-80ish year old dude who came in EVERY MONTH and had us completely wipe/reinstall his system from scratch, usually without complaint. Ya see, this guy was a HUGE fan of...well...we all know what the Internet is for, don't we, boys and girls?

            We actually had a custom Ghost of his Win9x system that we just slapped on there every month. It included solid AV and spyware progs (read: install the Ghost image, update everything), as well as a HOSTS file setup to block everything we could think of, but he found ways around them. (Keep in mind that, on 9x, EVERY named user is, more or less, an Admin, and bypassing the password prompt isn't hard)

            It didn't take too many of his repeat visits before my boss stopped bothering to *ahem* investigate just what sort of sick shhhhtuff this guy had been downloading every month, with such consistency that the comp took something like 5-10 minutes to BOOT whenever he brought it in.
            Quoth ender View Post
            You know what's worse? Publishing a free software package that's really popular, when some AV decides to flag some part of it as malware.
            That's nothing. Try telling clients who just dropped anywhere from $200 to $8K on one of two incredibly popular accounting packages (QB and PT), only to discover that the recommended way to keep Norton AV from interfering with their installers/EXE's is to REMOVE Norton completely. Why is this, you ask? Simple. Adding exceptions for every possible EXE and triggered program that these programs use to Norton's whitelist doesn't usually work. They would sometimes even continue to be blocked with Norton removed, if it had been around for a long time >_> Same thing went with McAfee, at times. It didn't help that both of those programs/suites gid their claws quite deeply into the Registry.
            "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
            "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
            "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
            "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
            "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
            "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
            Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
            "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

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            • #21
              Aaand this is why I prefer avast.

              Still flags the occasional game as being malicious, but most of the games I play (read: Nancy Drew games ) don't do this.
              The best professors are mad scientists! -Zoom

              Now queen of USSR-Land...

              Comment


              • #22
                Quoth AmbrosiaWriter View Post
                Though just because the AV says/thinks it's malware, doesn't mean it is. I can't tell you the number of times where I'm getting legit games and my AV was all "OMg THIS WILL BLOW UP YOUR COMPUTER I'MMA NOT LET YOU PLAY IT." So I would run exceptions, saying FU to the AV, and played the game with absolutely no issues coming from this action. (AKA; the game wasn't malware.)
                Comodo does that. Drives me bonkers. It also has a huge hissy fit when I install spybot, those two do NOT like each other at all.

                I have to install spybot for 1 use then wipe of from my system every time I want to run a scan. I can't have it on my system for more than 10 hours or war begins.

                Comment


                • #23
                  I helped a neighbor twice in similar situation. Got a brand new Vista Home Basic machine and asked me to help set it up. I immediately uninstalled all the crapware that was shipped on it and set them up with a regular user account.

                  Fast forward a month. They call me. It's barely usable. I removed, IIRC, 20+ crapware "speed up your pc 10000000%" and similar programs. It took that thing almost 10 minutes to boot to the desktop the first time.

                  THe 2nd and last time I fixed it when when they had managed to instal so much crap that MSCONFIG F***ing crashed. I reinstalled Vista, removed the OEM crapware, set them up with standard account and walked away.

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                  • #24
                    Quoth mattm04 View Post
                    I helped a neighbor twice in similar situation. Got a brand new Vista Home Basic machine and asked me to help set it up. I immediately uninstalled all the crapware that was shipped on it and set them up with a regular user account.

                    Fast forward a month. They call me. It's barely usable. I removed, IIRC, 20+ crapware "speed up your pc 10000000%" and similar programs. It took that thing almost 10 minutes to boot to the desktop the first time.

                    THe 2nd and last time I fixed it when when they had managed to instal so much crap that MSCONFIG F***ing crashed. I reinstalled Vista, removed the OEM crapware, set them up with standard account and walked away.
                    Did you actually explain to them what you had done and what they'd done wrong?
                    "Bring me knitting!" (The Doctor - not the one you were expecting)

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      KB -- I've dealt with cursetomers like this before. While there are some who are willing to learn and correct the error of their ways, many refuse to acknowledge that their behavior could POSSIBLY have anything to do with their comps slowing down/malfunctioning, even as they gleefully click on every popup they see, fall for every email scam that comes 'round the pike, and (in some cases) insist on downloading pr0n/gambling online non-stop and pretending that nothing bad will happen to their comps as a result.
                      "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
                      "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
                      "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
                      "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
                      "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
                      "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
                      Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
                      "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Quoth EricKei View Post
                        KB -- I've dealt with cursetomers like this before. While there are some who are willing to learn and correct the error of their ways, many refuse to acknowledge that their behavior could POSSIBLY have anything to do with their comps slowing down/malfunctioning, even as they gleefully click on every popup they see, fall for every email scam that comes 'round the pike, and (in some cases) insist on downloading pr0n/gambling online non-stop and pretending that nothing bad will happen to their comps as a result.
                        I figured you probably had, and yes, there seem to be plenty of horror stories of that time on this board, but since you hadn't mentioned in your story, I thought - heck, what can I say, I HOPED you hadn't because then there would be an excuse for this moron. Now all one can do is weep for humanity. (It's the second time today I've had to do that after my friend, who is a secondary school teacher, posted on Facebook that she had to show one of her students, who has had a computer for years, how to open Excel...)
                        "Bring me knitting!" (The Doctor - not the one you were expecting)

                        Comment

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