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.
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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.