Let no good deed go unpunished!
 

Hey, I try to do nice things. Some friends of ours needed a computer, because their house had burned down, and so I fixed up an old laptop for them, to pay bills on and stuff. I loaded it with a fresh, clean copy of XP, MS Office 03, free AVG anti-virus, and free Zone Alarm firewall. This thing was a clean, simple, blank slate.

The dude brought it back a few months later, completely thrashed, so bad that I almost couldn't get shit to stop popping up long enough to even figure out what the hell they did to it. Apparently I’ve been conscripted into a lifetime of technical support!

He had already mentioned that they loaded AOL on it. He thinks they can't live without it because "all their stuff is on it" whatever the hell that means. Well, I can't get the fucking thing to quit popping open, and trying to dial through a phone line that isn't there. And it won’t stop trying, no matter how many times I kill it. Annoying. He also installed McAfee, because it came free with AOL. I guess two anti-virus agents running at the same time is twice as good, huh?

But it gets worse, he says his system is telling him that he has viruses but it won’t fix them without him buying the full version. Huh? I gave you free shit, dude. How could you fuck that up? Well, the real problem is, supposedly, a third anti-virus agent: “XP Anti-Virus Ver 2.4” …sounds official, huh? It “warns” you about viruses, and prompts you to do all kind of crazy shit to “fix” your system, which fucks it up even worse. Where did it come from? And where did all these fucking toolbars and shit come from? He doesn’t know. They just “started showing up” he says.

Let me venture a guess: were you doing a bunch of stupid, reckless porn surfing and clicking on all kinds of shit all over the place like a total fucking dumbass? Yeah? And now you want me to fix it? Hey, I’m sure glad I gave you this computer.

I don’t have the energy to get them off AOL, and I’m not going to reformat the damn thing, so I know it’s useless to even try. I uninstalled McAfee, don’t need it. I ran a full virus scan with AVG, and I’m working on getting rid of the other various things he picked up from the internet.

But… what do I do next?

Either I have to try to teach him why this happened, and how to avoid it in the future (so now I’ll be giving free computer lessons to dumbasses) or he’ll be back in a month with the same problems, or worse. Either way, I just feel like saying “You’re a fucking dumbass. Get a job, and go buy your own goddamn computer, and fuck off and leave me alone.”

Obviously there’s more to the story with this guy, but this computer thing really pissed me off. Fucking idiot.

Hey, you tried to be a nice guy. That'll learn ya! :)

Give him a Damn Small Linux boot CD and send him on his way.

This is why I only do tech support a) for money or b) for my parents. (The fact that they successfully resisted understandable urges to strangle me before I reached adulthood is worth some consideration.)

VPC!!!!

My friend, load a copy of Virtual PC on the system and tell him that ALL internet surfing must happen in that window. Then, when that **VIRTUAL** machine is hosed, you can magically recreate the same baseline system with a single click, by opening a fresh copy of the vpc file.

If, *IF* you want to continue down this road... This is a hole with no bottom. Your only chance is to educate the user, which may or may not be possible, or to enter the witness protection program.

Clean it up for him. Warn him not to hit pornsites and click shit he doesn't understand. Load the software that emails your significant other when you hit questionable sites. (available at XXXchurch.com) Don't tell him. His wife will take care of the rest.

Fix it and give it back. You did a nice thing for them, but now you're done. Tell him if it has problems in the future, he needs to take it to a shop, not you.
hh

When you say he "brought it back", do you mean as a complaint, or begging another favor, or somewhere in between?

You know those little popup window with say a spider , and a hand to smash it ? " squash the spider and win a free IPod !!!"

Our neibors will sit and play that game for HOURS , the call there grand kids over to play as well !! NO SHIT !!!

The Last time I cleared off over 400 e-mails , WAY to many viriouses , toolbars from hell , Porn popups , etc,,,,
I told them they needed to take it in for Pro tech support ,

Not long ago they came and asked if the free pc from this resort " Just for sitting thru a SHORT simanar " was worth while
Pentium 120 , 4 meg of memory , a Free mouse ,
but you had to pay for the operating system , and you had 2 choices
win 3.1 or dos 4
I shit you not !!!!

I explained to them that they had a faster pc than that , more memory , and had all ready given them Lots of free software .

" but we need a new pc , and the ad says thats it is "STATE of the ART "

" I said " well do what you want then "

Damn that's harsh... they could at least throw in DOS 6!!

you weren't actually asking for advice on how to handle this situation were you?

just observing the irony, right?

tell us more stories about these friends you dislike.

Oh I like them ,
but I hate getting stuck behind him in a car , " got to save that motor !! at 25 mph , in a 55 mph zone

but their horse drawn buggy is worse

be sure to let me know when these fine folks are in the market for a new pre-owned automobile. K?

I bet they play scratch off lottery tickets a lot?

My first line of defense against this is just to throw up my hands and say, "I'm a Mac user, I don't know anything about windows." It worked fine for years until my in-laws finally decided to buy a MacBook Pro. Now I'm stuck doing IT for them.

But, it's a mac, so it's pretty much a cakewalk. They love it.

oh they have at least 5 that I know of , and a whole fleet of old school buses , full of stuff

That really sucks, flint.

I ended up with that XP Anti-Virus thing on my laptop a while back...I don't know how it got there. AVG would not pick it up. Also, the desktop background to my PC would not show up. And in the display properties, the option to select a background was greyed out. I ended up getting a trial version of one of the big anti virus softwares. (I believe it was norton?) That was the one thing that solved these problems. I had tried AVG, another free software (after I uninstalled AVG), and spybot to no avail.

It's a real motherfucker, this thing. I think this will zap it, but I haven't tried it yet.

For anyone's future reference, I think this is how he got it:

You're surfing along, and something pops up telling you that you have X number of virus, and no virus protection, and download this thing to fix it. It may even burrow in and then later pop up from the system tray; because that's where the thing lives now, masquerading as the Windows security alert icon. So anyway, you download the thing, and it's a trojan which takes over your system and starts inviting all it's friends in.

Two things that piss me off about this: I put virus protection and a firewall on this PC, so when it said "you don't have any protection" and he believed it, did he think that I was lying to him?! He trusted an anonymous fucking popup over me?! Obviously he did, and the real reason why he didn't find this behavior unusual is that he has AOL. And AOL also takes over your system and does all kinds of shit without asking you. So, in his mind, that's what computer programs are: a "smart" thing that makes decision for you without your knowledge or consent. AOL fucks people up.
__________________

Oh, and thanks for all the suggestions. I may use the software that lookout suggested. The other suggestions I fear would be wasted on this guy.

My current plan is to keep it for about a week, and make him think it's permanently destroyed and will never work again, and he doesn't have a computer at all anymore. I'll make sure to let him know exactly what he did wrong, so he can thnk about that. Eventually, I will at "great effort" manage to find a way to fix it. And when I finally give it back to them, his wife should be so pissed that she will be on the "lookout" for those emails.
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Oh, and one more thing: No amount of security in the world can protect you if you knowingly invite something in. Your security is ultimately up to you.

Try sitting him down and explaining the problem with popups and trojans. Warn him about the tricks they employ to snag unwary users such as he. My mum had hser system do the same thing. Had to reformat the whole fucking thing and reinstall XP. I explained to her about not downloading huge amounts of stuff to her toolbar and not believing the warning popups when they appear.

If you aren't computer savvy (and god knows I am only barely literate in pc terms) and are used to using AOL packages that do everything for you and basically take over, then you aren't going to be aware of the potential pitfalls. That's how AOL manage to get so many people using them. People want an appliance, rather than a hobby. With the best will in the world, computers are not yet a simple appliance.

I appreciate that. I'm sure this is a "teach a man to fish" situation, but the problem here is that the guy's wife legitimately needs a computer to pay bills on and stuff. I'm not fixing it for him, I'm fixing it for her.
Somewhere in between. Like the bullet I'm starting to feel like putting between this guy's eyes. It's a long story. Apparently I've moved past the "novelty" phase and have settled securely on not liking this guy, just like nobody else likes him.

I set up this computer for them, for legitimate business purposes, and he fucks it up by surfing porn all day. And he brings it back because he needs it to go to "job sites" or whatever.

Perhaps I'm a luddite, but I won't do anything banking related on my computer. They are too unreliable.

My credit card has been used on a computer, but if that number is compromised, there is a small minimum liability for me, so I'm not concerned. Similarly, my 401K information is on the computer, but all a hacker could do is switch funds around into various accounts.

All of my "money" information is kept as far away from the computer as possible. Figuratively speaking. Astute Dwellars will remember from my house tour that my filing cabinet was situated next to the computer desk.

i reached through the webz and took a couple of your credit card statements. they were the easiest to grab. hope you don't mind.

I don't have my statements on the computer, I just meant that I had purchased things online with my credit cards before.

*sigh* joke. fail. i meant that i reached through and took them out of your filing cabinet. i suck at that humor thing.

I knew you were joking, but didn't get the filing cabinet aspect of it. My bad.

Anyway back to Flint's friends who do their banking online and surf sketchy porn sites with the same machine. What's up with them? [/awkwardly tries to change subject away from my lack of a sense of humor]

I thought it was funny, lookout. :D


Flint, if he's so unsavvy, couldn't you put a net nanny on his browser?

just tell him god will shrink his package if he clicks on any popups without consulting hezekiah 1:1a first.

I think I might just invite him over, get a sledgehammer and smash the laptop, and then say "this is what clicking on stupid shit does to your computer" and then hand him the broken fragments of the thing and boot his ass out the door.

Please take video!

you'll have more fun watching his wife cut him into tiny pieces after she starts getting emails telling her he's visiting Barely legal buxomb bisexual beauties next door.com.

Tell him it's got a PEBKAC and there's nothing you can do.
{ProblemExistsBetweenKeyboardAndChair}

It isn't the computers fault here. No smashy.
:)

Get him and his mrs together and teach him how to "safely surf porn". Then add that if it happens again, you will be unable to help him because you can't risk infecting your children with the porn viruses he downloaded. :D

No you won't.

I said I "might" ...

You could just give them a bunch of "clean" porn and just tell them don't click on add or play games on the internet.

Bump.

For the next time, of course. Or for a kid machine. Like transparent carbonite.

Nice "bump" BigV.

As of now, dipshit took the laptop back as-is when I left to go to Houston for a week. He needed it to get his resume off the hard drive, so he said. I happen to know he uses a web-based email that he could log onto at the public library, and retrieve the resume as an attachment from his sent mail folder. I mentioned this, and apparently he has NEVER emailed his resume to anybody. Then what the hell do you need it for now?!

Obviously he just wanted his "free porn machine" back, even as crippled as it is. He hits like 2,000 porn sites per day.

Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job did a commercial for the "Internette" which lives entirely on a CD-ROM... they stole your idea!

Man, some people just don't have any discipline. You can't teach it to them either.

At least the laptop is out of your hair.....for now...

I heard a nice adage once.

"Build a man a fire, keep him warm for a night.
LIGHT a man on fire, keep him warm for the rest of his life."

I think this might apply nicely to your friend.

Update
 

They went and spent $$$ on XP Home Edition because I explained that I couldn't reformat the laptop for them because I got the one-time use OS from MSDNAA and I'm not enrolled in a class that qualifies me for that right now.

So now the laptop is back because they couldn't figure out how to update the drivers. They almost certainly could have bought a better laptop than this P3 1000mhz, 512mb piece-of-crap Dell Ludditude, for the price of XP. I don't even think this thing can quite handle having XP on it, honestly.

I'm taking lookout's suggestion to load the xxxchurch email alert app. BigV, great ideas, but I don't want to have to teach them how to use anything else.

If I can find a good net nanny, I'll set up an administrator account that they don't have the password to, and run it from there. How embarassing that I have to search cNet's "Kids & Parenting" section, to find something for a grown man. Any advice on a good net nanny?

Oh, and they were borderline complaining that the thing doesn't have MS Office apps on it now. Uh, yeah, those aren't free. I gave them to you last time, that's how you had them at all, ever. Maybe I'll grab Open Office for them.

He initially implied that it was Flint's fault that the laptop was totally f*cked up... because he said AVG is terrible. Like he would know. And that Flint han't properly taught them how to use it... what??? Does Flint really need to teach them to READ? Apparently so. He is the most ungrateful individual I've met next to my own brother. IT didn't actually stop with the laptop... we offered other items to them that have also come back to bit us in the arse, but thats a whole different thred now ain't it.

He has no interest in looking for a job. He has worked a total of maybe a month in the past year and a half... was fired from all 4 jobs. He just wants to surf porn all day and night. I mean... I like porn as much as the next guy, but really??? All day... hasn't it fallen off by now? And I have it from good athority his wife ISN'T benefiting from all this stimulation... not that she wouldn't like to... so it is simply an addiction. I relish the thought that he won't be able to access those sites once Flint sets it up with the blocks. I am actually looking forward to that call. //evil laughter//

Flint has avoided him for a while not responding to calls etc. But they just show up at our house and call me. In fact, after I told them last week that we were in the middle of packing to go out of town for a week... they still showed up the day before we left hoping to catch Flint and "see what they could do to help him fix it" before we left. Fortunatly, Flint was at work till 10pm that night and legitimatly didn't have time... as I had already told them. The packing was completed by me if you had any worries... the only thing I left out was my own socks.

Then you're halfway to barefoot and pregnant!

:lol2:

Naaah, I'm sure she packed some pantyhose or something.

This whole situation is just beyond.... beyond. You try to be nice to somebody . . . .

Just tell him bluntly to his face that it's from downloading porn and you know it, and to STOP BEING SO RECKLESS!

Go rent a DVD or something!

I have had success with "move on boot" someone here recommended it to get rid of windows extra premium super genuine disadvantage. It deletes files before windows boots. That's about all I know cuz I'm not edjacated about computers.

Here.
http://www.softwarepatch.com/software/moveonboot.html

We've already told him that multiple times. He must have caught wind of our plot to censor him because the latest is that he now needs this as a work computer only and is planning on buying a new computer for home... Huh. I wonder how many times he is planning on slapping us in the face.

I remember you telling me that nobody likes this guy, and I was like, "What, he's entertaining!" Yeah, that wears off.

This made me think of you and your troubles flint.

oops, not that one. this one. but that one was funny too. but it didn't make me think of flint. although flint getting a blowbo at 7-11 is pretty funny when you think about it. er, nevermind.

This should give you some ideas if you need to enhance the entertainment aspect of it. I bet you could rig Privoxy or something to do that just on his computer. (I enjoyed the use of the word "trivial.")

Sometimes the best way to help someone is to not help them.
Unfortunately I usually don't find this out until I've already helped them. :o

Flint, I'd keep it the next time the laptop shows up. Then you can give it to someone more needy next time, now that you know "the rest of the story".

I've done the "fix a friend's computer thing" too. He kept going to questionable porn sites and downloading untested porn from Limewire.

Eventually, inevitably, I get the Call...My computer has another problem!

Again? What now?

You have to see it.

Does it have to be tonight? Or can it wait until tomorrow? (this is 9pm and it's two hours away)

It can wait.

OK, see ya tomorrow.

Tomorrow comes, I'm halfway there and I get a call from his Filipino gf:

jkasfgashserfhl!

OK, calm down! Say it again in English.

The police were here, they gave me a paper and took his computer stuff!

(Uh oh!)

Are the police still there?

No, they are looking for him now.

OK, I'll be right there.

(note to self: call a lawyer posthaste)

When I get there, I read the warrant, they have permission to take any and all computer/storage medium they find as well as videotapes/DVDs/photo albums.

Uh OH!

Turns out he was downloading Kiddie pr0n as well as myriad other disgusting porn (this from ME folks, I'm hard to disgust).

Mentally I scratch him off my Friend list and go into "cover my butt" mode.

I explain about search warrants to her and tell her what they are looking for.

Back at home, I talk to a criminal lawyer (my acct on his computer has my name on it) and I should be in the clear but he does stand by me when I talk to the detectives. Free! I like that lawyer.

Later, I find out that ole' Joe was trying to implicate me to save his ass. He failed. Because I never allowed Limewire on MY acct and didn't download anything other than a few free utilities to help fix his messes and keep him a bit more secure.


Thank BOB I wasn't there when the police came to serve the warrant.

So it could be worse, dude.

Damn, dude. That's an extreme example!

Wow, that's heavy! The only thing that makes my day more than having to talk with lawyers, is having to talk with law enforcement officials. Been there, done that, had to burn the tshirt.

(Note: I don't have anything against lawyers per se, but when I have to talk to one as part of my IT management duties, it's rarely a sign that something's going well.)

Holy crap!!!!!!! :eek:

Um, hello? Don't think you are getting off without sharing THAT story mister!!

Spillit!

I'll see your Holy Crap and raise you a Jesus H Christ! :eek:

Details are here. It's a touch sketchy but it didn't make headlines, even in Philly.

But I lie not.