Today's kids may know how to use a computer...

[KJ3N]

... but they're not any smarter at keeping it any cleaner than the adults. :roll:

My nephew's PC was dropped off by my mother today. He claims he can't connect to the internet.

First thing is to try it in Safe Mode with networking. OK, seems to connect to the internet fine hooked up to my network. Hmm....

Noticed that MalwareBytes is supposedly installed, but doesn't run. That's a little odd. Try to do a re-install in Safe Mode. Doesn't seem to work. Try to install Spybot Search & Destroy in Safe Mode. That doesn't seem to work. OK, now I'm suspicious. This isn't right.

Yank the HD out of his machine and pop it into one of my spare PCs as a slaved drive. Start up the machine and do a scan with MalwareBytes against the suspect drive. Find about 36 items, including 2 root kits. Run AVG against the HD and find 5 more items. None of this actually surprises me, BTW.

Return the HD back to his machine, boot in Safe Mode again and this time Spybot S&D comes up. Start a scan and not 10 minutes into the scan, it's finding "stuff". Total for Spybot's first run is a tad over 180 items between registry and browser.

I still have to install AVG on the machine. It had AntiVir on it, which obviously wasn't working either. Not to mention several more scans and about 5 rounds of registry cleaners to come.


JFC!

[KG4CGC]

Holy Shmengies!

[kc7jty]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shmenge_Brothers

[N2CHX]

Windows, you gotta love it. If the kid was smart he'd use a Mac or Linux.

[n2ize]

Linux is not entirely invulnerable either. Back when I had a single Linux box on dialup via ppp I was rootkitt'ed twice. Then finally I firewall ed and hardened the system and no problems after that.

[AA8AE]

... but they're not any smarter at keeping it any cleaner than the adults. :roll:

My nephew's PC was dropped off by my mother today. He claims he can't connect to the internet.

First thing is to try it in Safe Mode with networking. OK, seems to connect to the internet fine hooked up to my network. Hmm....

Noticed that MalwareBytes is supposedly installed, but doesn't run. That's a little odd. Try to do a re-install in Safe Mode. Doesn't seem to work. Try to install Spybot Search & Destroy in Safe Mode. That doesn't seem to work. OK, now I'm suspicious. This isn't right.

Yank the HD out of his machine and pop it into one of my spare PCs as a slaved drive. Start up the machine and do a scan with MalwareBytes against the suspect drive. Find about 36 items, including 2 root kits. Run AVG against the HD and find 5 more items. None of this actually surprises me, BTW.

Return the HD back to his machine, boot in Safe Mode again and this time Spybot S&D comes up. Start a scan and not 10 minutes into the scan, it's finding "stuff". Total for Spybot's first run is a tad over 180 items between registry and browser.

I still have to install AVG on the machine. It had AntiVir on it, which obviously wasn't working either. Not to mention several more scans and about 5 rounds of registry cleaners to come.


JFC!

Kids, you gotta love em !
When I'm lucky enough to get home in the middle of the night I do all the maintenance before I get my computer time. I'm not a big fan of AntiVir either, AVG works much better.

[KJ3N]

Kids, you gotta love em !

Ah.... no, I don't. That's why I've never had them.

When I'm lucky enough to get home in the middle of the night I do all the maintenance before I get my computer time. I'm not a big fan of AntiVir either, AVG works much better.

All the machines in this house are fully protected. Not much maintainence to be done. AVG does scans every day, AdAware is updated and scans done about every other week, Spybot Search & Destroy is also updated and scans done about once a month, and Malwarebytes is updated and scans done in between AdAware scans.

You're not getting much past my machines without me knowing about it. :naughty

[PA5COR]

Since 2000 XP-Pro, now Windoze 7 AVG Pro, Spybot Search and destroy.
Tune up Utilities.
Hardware firewall in the router, software firewall configured on the pc.
Never had a problem.

on the net almost daily 8 to 12 hours a day.

[KJ3N]

on the net almost daily 8 to 12 hours a day.

Won't be on the 'net when I get home. She called to tell me that an evergreen branch just took out the fiber cable from the pole.

Given that the snow's coming down pretty heavy, I doubt that Verizon will be out to fix it before tomorrow.