NEW VIRUS RECORD!!

[MadMike]

"Gateway makes a good computer. I won't need to bother with anti-virus crap. It just slows stuff down anyway." Ugh.

Even if it was true, that doesn't make it indestructible. You still need to learn how, and more importantly, how not to use it.

Reminds me of a piece from George Carlin's "Driving" rant.

"We bought a Saab!"

"Why'd you buy a Swedish piece of shit like that?"

"It's a safe car!"

"Some people seem to think that buying a safe car excuses you the responsibility of driving the fucking thing! First you learn to drive, then you buy a safe car!"


Oh, and that number has me totally beat. The worst I ever had was 2 or 3 viruses floating around, and a little over 2000 pieces of spyware. It belonged to my one friend, who was recently-divorced at the time, and her husband had been using it a lot before he left. I don't think I even want to know what he was doing.

[RichS]

I posted quite a while ago (I think it was a couple of board hacks ago) pictures of a computer at my old place of work that had 23,235 files infected with the LoveLetter virus - I still have screenshots, if anybody wants to see...

The most malware infections I've seen was around 35,000, again in the shop - I don't have pictures of that, unfortunately. I did show the customer, who was in shock at the amount.

In both cases, I was able to clean 'em out and not have to format/reinstall - must've been lucky somehow.

[lordlundar]

hmm, worse I had was from the Chernobyl Virus. Mean little bugger too. Blocked access to a variety of files and on the anniversary of The incident, wave bye-bye to all the software on your computer. The worse part was that it used the virus scan to spread. FUN!

Was up all night clearing that bastard out.

[Imogene]

19,000?!
That is not a small number.
That is a BIG number.

Aand...
The compy... just peed the carpet.

[Tria]

I think if I ran a scan that showed 19,000 viruses on my computer, I'd just drop a match on it and walk away.

Aw, where's your sense of adventure and love of a challenge?

[KamenRiderOsaka]

If I had 19,000 viruses on my pc...first Id kill my husband because hes usually the one that gets the PC infected. After that, Id have a mini meltdown. Id be in shambles because my pc is like my child.

[playtime]

You gave him Norton? That's just another kind of virus One that seems to totally prevent you from being able to connect to any network or run any game in it's default configuration. In fact we call it Norton Anti-Game around here. It's too hard to configure for the proles.

Was that part of the punishment?

[Sandman]

Damn.. that computer has more viruses than a streetwalker!

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Damn.. that computer has more viruses than a streetwalker!

But probaby with more intelligence.

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

How much porn d'you suppose a person has to look at?

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

The question is...

...is that actual 19,000+ discrete viruses found, or is it a handfull of viruses and the 19,000+ was just the infected virus count.

My record on a Typhoid Mary (our term for badly infected computers) was 176 Viruses infecting 27,000+ files and a whopping 40,900+ spyware/malware files and registry entries.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

I think if I ran a scan that showed 19,000 viruses on my computer, I'd just drop a match on it and walk away.

The best way that I found to deal with a computer that comprimised (but you still have to keep the customers data) is the following.

Take the infected hard drive completly out of the computer and put it into a computer that has Linux on it.

Let it run an anti-virus scan and clean (It's Linux so there's nothing on a Windows HD that would have any effect on it)

While the Linux Box is doing that, drop a clean hard drive into the customer's computer. Fdisk and format that sucker so you know it's clean.

Install a fresh copy of Windows and any of the customer's software that they remembered to bring. Put on a free Anti-Virus program (AVG or the like) to help keep it clean and set it to automatically update itself and to do it in such a way that the customer isn't even aware it's doing it (otherwise they might screw with it and kill it)

Once the Linux box is done, take the hard drive out and put it in as a second hard drive into the system. Grab any and all of the data that the customer needs and copy it to the clean drive.

Fdisk and format the old drive so we know that the damn thing is clean.

Use hard drive mirroring software and copy the clean install and data to the old hard drive.

It takes a while, but I've never had a reinfection that was caused by the saved data. In fact I've only had three computers come back to me with viruses a second time, but they were due to one of those viruses that come out and isn't known to ANY anti-virus program.

Mongo

[trunks2k]

How much porn d'you suppose a person has to look at?

I think that should be one of the quesiton computer tech support should ask when taking a call.

TS: "What type of computer do you have?"
CS: "A dell"
TS: " And what operating system does it have on it?"
CS: "Windows XP"
TS: "And roughly how much porn do you look at using this computer?"
CS: "WHAT?!"
TS: "We need to know because the more porn you look at the more likely you are to be infected by spy/malware.
CS: "Well, I look at it at least once a day"
TS: "And do you have virus protection?"
CS: "No."
TS: "Sir, we're just going to need to reformat your hard drive and reinstall windows"

[Mr. Rude]

...is that actual 19,000+ discrete viruses found, or is it a handfull of viruses and the 19,000+ was just the infected virus count.

19k was the infected count

[lordlundar]

The best way that I found to deal with a computer that comprimised (but you still have to keep the customers data) is the following...

Too much work. The match is easier.