Teach an old dog?

  • Thread starter Thread starter needlove
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needlove

I gave my old hp pc to a friend and recently had to do a destructive
recovery as it had been bitten badly by various viruses. I installed my own
unattended sevicepac2 and update files for xp (nearly 100 critical updates
since sp2 came out) and installed Comodo firewall before connecting to the
internet and updating. I uninstalled the useless crap, (Symentec and Freedom
both require a uninstaller that I had to download) that comes with hp
recovery, and everything was working fine. A month later he complains that
the pc is very sluggish, virtually unusable.

I had instructed him on how to update with MS after the second week of the
month for critical updates and not to download any other MS updates and set
MSSC to alert him of updates. I had installed Spybot and Adaware(I am sure
he didn't update, or use these). He insists on installing everything that
has to do with Yahoo(that's his world). I don't need to look at the PC and
haven't yet, to know that such performance degridation means serious
infiltration...possibly requiring reinstallation. The firewall was set to
ask for all internet activities and I'm sure he clicked to allow everything
that was queried.
I don't want to make monthly service calls because of one's inability to
understand the necessity of a firewall, AV checks, updates, etc....

How do you deal with these people?
 
Teach your friend how to use the HP recovery set. Make the point that any
problem similar to what you describe will require that he uses it to restore
the computer to a reasonable working state.

Learn from this and never ever sell a computer to a friend again.. :-)
 
I gave my old hp pc to a friend and recently had to do a destructive
recovery as it had been bitten badly by various viruses. I installed my own
unattended sevicepac2 and update files for xp (nearly 100 critical updates
since sp2 came out) and installed Comodo firewall before connecting to the
internet and updating. I uninstalled the useless crap, (Symentec and Freedom
both require a uninstaller that I had to download) that comes with hp
recovery, and everything was working fine. A month later he complains that
the pc is very sluggish, virtually unusable.

I had instructed him on how to update with MS after the second week of the
month for critical updates and not to download any other MS updates and set
MSSC to alert him of updates. I had installed Spybot and Adaware(I am sure
he didn't update, or use these). He insists on installing everything that
has to do with Yahoo(that's his world). I don't need to look at the PC and
haven't yet, to know that such performance degridation means serious
infiltration...possibly requiring reinstallation. The firewall was set to
ask for all internet activities and I'm sure he clicked to allow everything
that was queried.
I don't want to make monthly service calls because of one's inability to
understand the necessity of a firewall, AV checks, updates, etc....

How do you deal with these people?
Click to expand...


In my view? You warn them of the dangers, tell them how to protect
themselves, and let them know that if they don't follow your advice,
you won't be able to help them. Then, if they ignore what you've told
them, you let them know they're on their own.

It sounds to me like you've followed most of what I said in my first
sentence, but not the second.
 
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