Neighbor's older Sandy Bridge dual-core Windows 7 box.

[VirtualLarry]

She told me that she was informed on Facebook, that her PC had a virus, and to call this number, so she did, and the guy informed her that her SS#, bank acct#, etc., had been stolen, and she had viruses galore, and oh, it would cost $450 to fix. She claims that she didn't have those pieces of info stored on the PC, nor did she give them to the guy, but she says he was moving her mouse around. So, obviously, they gained access to her machine somehow. (I asked, if "they" had asked her to go to a certain web site, and run a program, to get remote-access, but the way she described it, seemed to be some built-in feature of Facebook now???)

So, nuke and pave. She wants to upgrade to Windows 10, has Windows 7 OEM pre-installed version.

I told her $50 to install a new OS, or I could give her a disc and let her do it herself. She doesn't really have any money.

Told her to get Malwarebytes anti-malware, and run a scan, before the upgrade, just in case they put a trojan in her boot sector or something. (Don't know if Malwarebytes does boot-sector trojan scanning? I would hope so.)

She's not really super computer-literate, she's a retiree.

I wanted to help her, but I already replaced and backed up and restored Windows 7 onto a new 1TB HDD for her a few months ago, which took like 3+ hours, and I got paid a princely sum of basically $10 for my labor. I don't mind giving occasional freebies or near-freebies, but she said she needed this done, so she could change her passwords, but she couldn't give me any money for it. Well, shrug, we all have financial difficulties.

I normally don't do "payment plans" on labor, only parts and complete PCs.

I asked her, if she could afford $250 over six months. She said "no". If she had said "yes", I would have gladly hooked her up with a PC today.

Basically, wondering how I should help her out, guide her, upgrade her, whatever.

Although, I think I'll make her a Linux boot DVD, so she can at least securely change her passwords and browse, even if her current Windows HDD is infected with a trojan.

Suggestions? I deal with people that don't have a lot of money, but I'm fairly turned off by people that want to demand work, but can't pay me anything. I don't mind burning her a few DVDs of Linux distros or whatnot to mess with though.

 

[JackMDS]

Update to Win 10 and other similar solution do not Help when people do not know how to react correctly to Scams and follow the request to Call, email and allow on line connections to their computers. or other similar devices. ""There is a Lot of Nigerians Princes around"".

What this lady needs is a written instructions to follow on what to do in such situations.

Do not forget guys that before to-days Science there was Alchemy. Centuries of hard work to make Gold out of lead and other substances and for No avail.

Many aspects of todays dealing of uninformed people with modern communication devices
(Wireless use and working for example) is the new modern Alchemy.


😎

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've got a couple of AMD FM1-era dual-core APU boxes, with SSDs, that I could let her have for $200, but again, if she's got NO money? I know my "business" has basically been a sort of charity for F&F the last 10 years, but I continue to try, hopeful that I could turn a profit somehow, someday. I guess the truth is, that the competition is cut-throat, and I'm not using what strengths I have as a boutique-builder (of sorts), to take care of customers' needs that the big-box OEMs cannot.

Heck, even the big-box OEM boxes, are now starting to come with SSDs standard, and come with half-way balanced dGPU configs. Whether this is because the last few remaining desktop PC consumers, are more savvy, and demand more, and aren't fazed by "high numbers" on checkbox features, or whether the industry is waking up, or coming to the realization that only gamers are really buying desktop PCs anymore, besides the three-year business PC refresh cycle.

 

[whm1974]

Update to Win 10 and other similar solution do not Help when people do not know how to react correctly to Scams and follow the request to Call, email and allow on line connections to their computers. or other similar devices. ""There is a Lot of Nigerians Princes around"".

What this lady needs is a written instructions to follow on what to do in such situations.

Do not forget guys that before to-days Science there was Alchemy. Centuries of hard work to make Gold out of lead and other substances and for No avail.

Many aspects of todays dealing of uninformed people with modern communication devices
(Wireless use and working for example) is the new modern Alchemy.


😎

One can't be too aware and wary of current scams going around. Maybe the OP can her give a list of the most common ones she is likely to encounter.

 

[whm1974]

Basically, wondering how I should help her out, guide her, upgrade her, whatever.

Although, I think I'll make her a Linux boot DVD, so she can at least securely change her passwords and browse, even if her current Windows HDD is infected with a trojan.

Suggestions? I deal with people that don't have a lot of money, but I'm fairly turned off by people that want to demand work, but can't pay me anything. I don't mind burning her a few DVDs of Linux distros or whatnot to mess with though.

I'm almost in same boat, I'm mostly around folks who like are living off a fixed income. Telling her about Linux may be the best thing you can do for her. Granted Social Engineering attacks can happen no matter what OS a person is using, but with using her using Linux would prevent Windows support scams.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I pulled the pair of FM1 APU (A4-3420, thanks to one of our more frugal members telling me about these FM1 CPUs + boards + heatsinks for under $50 total on ebay, NEW of all things) PCs out.

Hooked one up. Other than the fact that they won't seem to do 4K UHD out of their HDMI1.4 port on the mobo, which is somewhat frustrating, they're not too horrible. They're no-where near as speedy as my G4560 or Ryzen 3 1200 OCed to 3.8Ghz rigs, but they're passable for browsing. The APU, combined with dual-channel RAM, makes the graphics pretty decent, but the rather somewhat slow CPU slows things down slightly. A Haswell G1820 Celeron is probably faster in the CPU dept by like 20%. I could overclock these slightly, but not if I'm going to sell them or give them away. Only if I were going to use it for myself.

 

[mindless1]

Update to Win 10 and other similar solution do not Help when people do not know how to react correctly to Scams and follow the request to Call, email and allow on line connections to their computers. or other similar devices. ""There is a Lot of Nigerians Princes around"".

What this lady needs is a written instructions to follow on what to do in such situations.

^ This, it is a problem that education, not one an upgrade to win10 will solve. I'd restore the factory Win7, maybe investigate her browser history first just for my own curiosity if the machine will run enough to allow that, then possibly give her tips on what went wrong, and give her some links to safe computing practices.

 

[VirtualLarry]

^ This, it is a problem that education, not one an upgrade to win10 will solve.

True, although she requested an upgrade to Win10, for whatever reason.

I'd restore the factory Win7, maybe investigate her browser history first just for my own curiosity if the machine will run enough to allow that, then possibly give her tips on what went wrong, and give her some links to safe computing practices.

I suppose. She has closer neighbors, that try to give her advice on her computing habits.

BTW, it was supposedly "Facebook", that told her that she had a virus (according to her). I hope that she can at least see now that it had to be a malicious ad.

 

[Torn Mind]

Don't have her use the account with admin privileges on Windows. Use the account with limited permissions when not installing anything.

(Yes, I myself am guilty of not using a limited account).

 

[mindless1]

I don't necessarily trust what retiree and older people tell me. Maybe facebook, maybe some other site had a timed script, or maybe an email attachment and she was merely on facebook when it shut her activities down. Maybe she was drunk/stoned-on-pain-pills/whatever out of her mind and the last thing she can remember is facebook and her imagination filled in the blanks. There are all kinds of users out there.

She requested Win10 because she is easily influenced, but obviously not competent to know if she needs win10 if she doesn't even see past the scam and calls them.

Wanting and getting are two different things. There are a lot of cars I want but I don't want to pay for them, so I stick with what I have. I do not see a reason to change her OS let alone hardware if what she has works fine for what she does and she (and her budget) are the weakest links. 😉 Besides, it worked fine for a long time, this is not some epic disaster (unless valuable files were lost but again this is a user education about backups, issue not OS).

It might've been time to start clean again anyway. She could have installed some game with malware attached in the installer from who knows where and it altered her hosts file and she went to fake fappbook, or already had the malware from that. If the system has no valuable info stored on it then I wouldn't even sweat this.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I was looking off the side of my desk, and lo and behold, I've got a Kingston UV400 120GB SSD new in package, looking back at me.

I think, I'm going to talk to her, and see if she'll agree to a payment plan for this whole repair / upgrade operation. My plan, is to pull the 1TB WD Blue HDD, that I only installed a few months ago, and put that into an external desktop HDD enclosure (*), and then install the Kingston SSD, and then install Windows 10, and then try punching in her Windows 7 64-bit license code, if she has one on her case (I hope).

Then, she'll have her old data and old HDD, and a shiny new SSD for the OS. I don't think that she actually needed the 1TB HDD. I just had that in stock, and I didn't realize (guess I should have checked), that her existing HDD was only 320GB, and wasn't full.

(*) Predicated on my experience with SFF mobos from Gateway and Acer, that tend to only have two SATA ports onboard, thus not having ability to keep the DVD-RW, SSD, and HDD all connected via internal SATA at once, thus offloading the bulk data drive to a USB enclosure.

So, we're looking at:
$65 Kingston UV400 120GB SATA 2.5" SSD
$20 Sabrent USB2.0 3.5" desktop SATA HDD enclosure
$50 labor for OS installation for Windows 10

total: $135

Although, if I re-use her current Sandy Bridge rig, what about the video driver support for Windows 10? I've read that Sandy Bridge is officially unsupported.
Now, I DO have some low-profile, like GT610 and GT620 and GT710 video cards, that I could add for another $45, if necessary.

Which would make the total $180.

And if I sold her the AMD FM1 APU rig outright, that would probably be $200.

And that's not even looking at the RAM amount for her existing rig. I could bump it up to 16GB, from 4GB, probably, but that would be another $130 at current prices.

So, total $310. And then she's stuck with the same CPU.

For $400,. I could hook her up with a G3258, G4560, or Ryzen 3 1200 rig, more or less.

Edit: My bad, I didn't install a WD 1TB Blue drive into her rig, I think I actually installed a Toshiba 1TB Retail-boxed HDD (7200RPM) P300 drive.

I've got a refurb SFF Acer with a Haswell i3, and built-in WiFi, and Windows 7 64-bit.
(Edit: Like this one for $310 at Newegg on ebay🙂
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Acer-Deskto...3-4th-Gen-4160-3-60-GHz-4-GB-DD-/292180467906

I wonder how much an SSD would help a Sandy Bridge Pentium? I'm sure that it would help some, but I'm sure that there would still be bottle-necking on Windows Updates and whatnot, on the CPU too.

I think I paid $240-ish for this unit, with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 500GB HDD, and Windows 7 64-bit pre-installed.

I was planning on upgrading the video with a dGPU GTX750ti low-profile, but... it wouldn't physically fit. The order of the slots, and placement relative to the chassis and PSU wouldn't allow it to fit.

Edit: I'm competing against something like this though:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Acer-Aspire...r-Core-i5-i5-6400-8GB-1TB-Win10-/382215146246

Acer Aspire ATC-780-UR61 Desktop Computer Core i5 i5-6400 8GB 1TB Win10

$339.99 FS on ebay

 

[edcoolio]

I have to say your effort is admirable, but unfortunately, will not solve the problem.

Whatever you decide with her, you really need to set up a very easy recovery option for her with the most basic of instructions. Put it all in a folder and tell her to put it in a safe place in case of emergency. Keep a copy of the procedure you decide upon and (ideally) the baseline backup image described below, in your customer file.

Install the system, get all the updates, log her into "whatever" she needs help with. Then set that in stone via an image either on a separate drive or on a partition within the current drive. Have a simple script on boot that, in a pinch, will nuke her working partition with the virgin image. Something easy, like "Press F1 when you turn the computer on", or give her a USB, or CD, or something. Be creative.

If you do it right, you can use the procedure for all your systems and get your clients up and running fast with minimal involvement from you. Happy clients, happy you, happy money.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Whatever you decide with her, you really need to set up a very easy recovery option for her with the most basic of instructions. Put it all in a folder and tell her to put it in a safe place in case of emergency. Keep a copy of the procedure you decide upon and (ideally) the baseline backup image described below, in your customer file.

Install the system, get all the updates, log her into "whatever" she needs help with. Then set that in stone via an image either on a separate drive or on a partition within the current drive. Have a simple script on boot that, in a pinch, will nuke her working partition with the virgin image. Something easy, like "Press F1 when you turn the computer on", or give her a USB, or CD, or something. Be creative.

If you do it right, you can use the procedure for all your systems and get your clients up and running fast with minimal involvement from you. Happy clients, happy you, happy money.

Simple script? That might have been true back in the DOS days, in fact, I used to be a master of DOS bootloader scripting. But nowadays? You need to write a partition bootloader replacement. The big OEMs can afford to do that, I don't think I can. And it's far from simple - for example, how do I get it to survive Windows 10 OS Upgrades, which are like a full OS install? And how to get it to work with Secure Boot? Get my bootloader signed? And if it ever is, I have to make sure that it itself doesn't have security holes in it, that could be used to compromise the whole Secure Boot process. (Although, that already apparently has happened.)

I'm sure that there is commercial software, but then I have to pay for a license for each machine I install, which adds up fast. I'm basically not making money as it is.

All, just to save a service call to me, which helps me out how? Saves me time, but costs me business?

Sounds all really slick in theory, but kind of breaks down in terms of actual process.

One slightly less slick possibility, is to just make a baseline image of the PC using Macrium Reflect, and store that image on my NAS unit, and make a bootable USB or DVD, customized to their PC, to restore it, and store it somewhere.

I wouldn't give that to the owners of the PC, though, because 9/10 users will just lose / misplace / destroy that image backup / bootable restore media anyways.

So, that still requires a service call to me, to restore their custom PC back to "Factory Settings". Hey, it's how I (in theory) make some $$$ out of them, and them having to pay money, makes them learn (in theory) not to do whatever they did that required the service call.

 

[edcoolio]

Simple script? That might have been true back in the DOS days, in fact, I used to be a master of DOS bootloader scripting. But nowadays? You need to write a partition bootloader replacement. The big OEMs can afford to do that, I don't think I can. And it's far from simple - for example, how do I get it to survive Windows 10 OS Upgrades, which are like a full OS install? And how to get it to work with Secure Boot? Get my bootloader signed? And if it ever is, I have to make sure that it itself doesn't have security holes in it, that could be used to compromise the whole Secure Boot process. (Although, that already apparently has happened.)

I'm sure that there is commercial software, but then I have to pay for a license for each machine I install, which adds up fast. I'm basically not making money as it is.

All, just to save a service call to me, which helps me out how? Saves me time, but costs me business?

Sounds all really slick in theory, but kind of breaks down in terms of actual process.

One slightly less slick possibility, is to just make a baseline image of the PC using Macrium Reflect, and store that image on my NAS unit, and make a bootable USB or DVD, customized to their PC, to restore it, and store it somewhere.

I wouldn't give that to the owners of the PC, though, because 9/10 users will just lose / misplace / destroy that image backup / bootable restore media anyways.

So, that still requires a service call to me, to restore their custom PC back to "Factory Settings". Hey, it's how I (in theory) make some $$$ out of them, and them having to pay money, makes them learn (in theory) not to do whatever they did that required the service call.

Clonezilla is free and will do everything you need it to do.

Windows 10 security upgrades will only touch Windows 10 partitions. It will not format the entire drive on updates.

Another possible solution is to simply install a basic Linux image on separate partition. Set your GRUB menu timeout to whatever you feel is appropriate. You could even call it "emergency boot" or something similar. This would solve 2 problems.

1. It would get your customers up and running quickly on the Internet with basic connectivity.

2. You would still be called out for service as Linux is scary and you will fix their Windows 10 issue for a reasonable cost.

Regardless, your question was about an elderly woman who wouldn't be paying you much (if at all), I figured you wanted little to no labor on your part.

You could also solve the issue with a used $20 2.5" HDD, used only to store a clone of the main drive with a script on the desktop which, when double-clicked, would clone back to the main drive.

Anyways, you can charge whatever you like for the service. I suppose my point is: you get paid the same either way and maybe there is an easier way to do it.