[kwlug-disc] [way OT] how to de-virus someone's windows box?

[Johnny Ferguson]

On 07/19/2010 07:38 AM, Lori Paniak wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-07-19 at 05:04 -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>> On Mon, 19 Jul 2010, Johnny Ferguson wrote:
>>
>>> I think the only humane thing to do is take it out back with a
>>> shotgun and put the poor thing out of its misery.
>>>
>>> Alternatively, I used to swear by Avira Antivir. Viruses are nasty
>>> though. I was hit by one that corrupted every archive file on my
>>> system. I lost quite a lot of important stuff, and was finally
>>> pushed into using linux.
>>>
>>> I think the basic steps are:
>>>
>>> 1. Find out what the virus is
>>>
>>> 2. Find out what it can do
>>>
>>> 3. Salvage data accordingly
>>>
>>> 4. Get out the windows CD and get ready to spend the next hour
>>> clicking buttons and installing drivers for everything.
>>
>>    and that's a road down which i really don't want to go.  i mean, i'm
>> fairly smart and i'm sure i could figure out how to be moderately
>> helpful, but unless i *really* know what i'm doing, there's a good
>> chance i can make things worse.  so i'd rather be able to just give
>> some generic advice -- perhaps a utility that simply *identifies* the
>> viruses -- then point the person in the direction of someone way
>> better at it than i am.
>>
>> rday
>>
>
>
> I'm sure a kernel developer can handle re-installing Windows!  Just make
> sure you back up whatever data the user wants to save.  If something
> goes wrong, blame the virus.

Which I think is fairly reasonable. It definitely taught me to be more 
cautious in the future.

-Johnny