PC Horror Story #1

Dateline: August 23, 2006
Subject: PC Horror Story

College classes must be starting soon. How do I know? I just received a call from a client that her (the student's) computer is completely fouled up. No programs will run, error messages popping up like grasshoppers in a summer wheat field.

NO! I'm not just being cynical. This stuff happens every time school resumes after a vacation of some type. Summer and Christmas vacation being the most popular. The "genius" college student waits until one day, two at the most, before they leave for school to inform the parent that their school laptop or PC is not working properly. "You need to call that computer guy" (They don't even say "Please".)

Did the errant PC just begin behaving badly? Noooo. It's been like that since they brought it home from school weeks ago.

Well, enough preamble. Here's the scoop.

First of all, it's Windows XP Home Edition - bad news. See operating system . Bear Share is installed for illegal music sharing. A Trojan laden anonymous browser program is installed. This kid has been going where no honest person should go. And now her parents get to pay the price - my FEE! (I'm only FREE on the internet, you lucky surfer!)

Turns out Nail.exe is present - particularly nasty to get rid of. And a host of others. The registry is a bit corrupt also.

I finally clear the viruses, trojans and malware and guess what? Windows XP Home Edition will not boot all the way to the desktop. What to do? Let's see if we can do an in place upgrade to XP Pro from safe mode.

Sure enough, the upgrade works. Everything looks pretty good. For a while. I ran Trend Micros SysClean utility and I just can't hardly believe what I've found. But one thing that really bothers me are the registry errors.

That means there is really only one solution for this poor abused system. Clean install of Windows XP Professional with a drive reformat. So, backup any data you are partial to and get out the checkbook. Then direct yourself (or your offspring) to my page on User Behavior.