I spent the last day and a half cleaning an infested XP box. This guy had 19 trojans running, but only knew about one of them. He knew about it because he could no longer launch any programs. The trojan kept popping up a message demanding his credit card info. To top it all off, he was limping along on 256MB of RAM. It just wasn't enough. It wasn't even enough to boot from a Kaspersky or Avira antivirus CD.
Had to do it the old fashioned way, by hand from Safe Mode. (There's an oxymoron.) After finally getting rid of the one he knew about, as well as a couple of others, I downloaded and installed Avira for Windows. Because of the RAM issue, I had to let it run overnight. When I returned the next day, the scan revealed an additional 16 trojans. I knew there was at least one, because clicking on a Google search link took me to the same three web pages. Didn't matter what link I clicked on. I had to reach Avira's site by manually keying the address in.
The second day, I brought with me a couple of AGP video cards and a couple of DDR memory sticks. They were all what would be considered "junk" by most. In any event, I gained some RAM by using a dedicated video card instead of the shared memory used by the motherboard video. I gained more RAM by adding the two DDR sticks. Went from 256MB, (including shared video memory), to 640MB of dedicated RAM. Huge difference! I also removed some application from his wife's Vista machine that he could not uninstall.
My last task was to set up security on his router. He was using a password his son had assigned. But, he didn't know the password. I had to set the router back to factory specs in order to gain access to the Linksys setup menus. He was also operating an unsecured wireless network (no password). After explaining to him the importance of using strong passwords, (mix of upper and lower case, as well as numbers, as well as a long password or pass phrase), his first attempt at entering the router's password failed. He had entered less than eight characters! I then had him create a second one to be used for access to the wireless network. Finally, I set up his wife's Vista laptop and his Windows7 laptop to automatically connect to the now secured WPA2 network.
I had incessantly stressed the advantages of Linux. Each time I came to a new obstacle, I commented on how much easier it was to accomplish the task using Linux. I told him about how Google could not have become the "world power" it is without using Linux as its foundation. Being a stock market watcher, he was told how the NYSE and London exchanges are powered by Linux. I explained to him that the Kaspersky live CD that did run overnight on his wife's computer was actually running Linux. You may have guessed by now that he decided he did not want to try it. Not even from a live CD.
I charged him $175 for the work I did. He and his wife, who are financially very well off and live in an upscale 3,000 square foot house, thought that I did not charge them enough!
