-1 Internets

[eiahmon]

I'm glad that I've never had this, and hopefully never will. My anti-virus and firewall have never let me down, and I hope that trend will continue.

But things like this are why I backup my stuff to my portable hard drive often and why I keep my reboot disks handy, in case a destructive reboot becomes neccesary.

[envirovore]

When you get to that point where you know it's going to take over 2 hours to fix, it's probably more efficient to boot up with Knoppix, copy documents/savegames off the harddrive, and format/reinstall.

If it were my machine, I would have taken the hit and just wiped it. My friend didn't have any of their stuff backed up, so wiping their machine wasn't an option. I didn't mind the challenge either.
I got paid for working on it, and got free beer while working on it and afterward as a bonus.

[mattwestwick]

Yes it was the challenge for which I persevered. As most of us nerds will agree, we DONT get viruses, especially scareware. The fact that my dad had it a few weeks back at least gave me some credibility in passing the blame.

The whole process, even getting programs with premium options available to clean it (malwarebytes) just reeks of corruption within anti-virus companies.

In my stubborness I don't make backups so wiping it wasn't cool. Actually getting rid of the trojan doesn't take long but system scans chew up free time. I might have been playing gta4 on the xbox in the meantime...


I really think for everyone's convenience any computer infections should be simplified to a legitimate pop-up saying "do you want a virus?" It would save everyone a lot of time and still have the same effect.

Regards,

Fraudomatt.

[gandalf91]

Rescue discs are handy as well.