Working on my very first clients laptop

[thestrangebrew1]

Its a milestone for my business. Its a Toshiba satellite c655d with the following specs:

And e-350 1.6ghz
3gb ram
w7 64bit
300gb hdd

I ran CC cleaner just to get rid of some temp files and started MS security essentials. That was last night. At 742pm PST. It is still scanning today and is only about 90% done. Holy shit I've never heard of a scan taking this long lol. I've cleaned my friends/families PC's or laptops before but I've never had a scan take this long before. Running on 21:39 hrs now!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Ouch...

 

[us3rnotfound]

Why did they take it to you? General slowness?

 

[thestrangebrew1]

Why did they take it to you? General slowness?

The client is a coworker of mine and complained that she couldn't create desktop shortcuts, the pc was acting "weird" and wasn't running right. The desktop shortcut was new to me, she had some crap from a PokerStars installation that I cleaned up. I thought it might've been a registry cleanup fubar, but I couldn't even create a shortcut in safemode. Kept saying the shortcut was already create and would I like to replace it, but there was no icons on the desktop. Workaround I found for now is to create a new admin acct and I was able to create shortcuts to that account. Seems to work, everything opens up fine. Just created a restore point again just in case. Bastard took 25 hrs to scan using MSE. Doesn't seem right seeing how it only takes about 20 mins on my pc.

 

[power_hour]

21+ hours scan is nuts. If your still not sure if the system has been compromised, offer to reinstall the OS for a nominal fee. Or you can return it to her and she can keep losing at Poker ;-)

 

[thestrangebrew1]

21+ hours scan is nuts. If your still not sure if the system has been compromised, offer to reinstall the OS for a nominal fee. Or you can return it to her and she can keep losing at Poker ;-)

I offered but she insisted on having poker on there. she said its the only thing keeping her ailing hubby company while she's at work, so she'll put up with it for now.

 

[max347]

I would run a couple harddrive scans on it to check the health of the harddrive, sounds like a sick hd to me. Seatools will allow you to scan it even if it isnt a seagate hd.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I have never seen a horribly borked, "oh, it's just soooo slow... is the RAM full?" computer that DIDN'T have online poker software installed.

I'm beginning to suspect they may be related, I just don't have a working theory for mechanism of action.

 

[cheez]

Dood, your PC is infected with virus. 98% positive.

Logon under admin account and go to user's folder and browse to desktop folder and see if any icons show up. If not, go to folder option, go to View tab and select "show hidden files, folders, or drives". I bet the items will show up then. Another way to suspect is that it's infected with virus / malware.

Run full scan using malwarebytes (usually more effective then security essentials) with latest definition. Also try running Kaspersky Rescue Disk in dos mode and run virus scan.

Also check out hosts and lmhost files to see if any unrecognized entries (IP's to ad sites, porn sites, etc). If so, delete them. Back up the original files first.

After removing all malicious objects and if the user is still getting the problem, rebuild the user profile. Backup her files and delete the profile. Create a new one.

Voila ha ha lmao

 

[cheez]

How much are you charging her for the service?


Oh and check n see if her favorites is all disappeared if she uses I.E.

Also the Start - Programs. They might go hidden too....


cheez

 

[Viper GTS]

When new laptops can be had for under $400 any day of the week you probably can't charge rates that will make this kind of repair job worthwhile.

When friends/family come to me with stuff like this the only solution I will offer them is an OS reinstall. I pull the drive, drop it on a USB dock, AV scan to kill any nasties, and grab their data. Then it's diskpart, clean, and back into their system it goes.

Reinstall/patch, install AV, replace the data, and you're done.

Manual cleanup is simply too labor and time intensive and frankly the results are always suspect.

Viper GTS

 

[thestrangebrew1]

I charged her $100 but gave her a Very First Client discount of $20. I didn't feel comfortable not catching everything from various scans so I just did a clean install. Her 1st question asked was did I lose the poker stars? lol. I said yea and she wanted it back on there so I did as she wished. I did tell her to get a prepaid card if her hubby was going to play on it and to make sure never to do any transactions with this laptop.

Oh well. She's happy because he's happy. Custmer's always right. Right?

 

[Mushkins]

Custmer's always right. Right?

Nope. Ethics win out over what the customer thinks they want any day of the week. If someone *really* wants Bonzi Buddy back, they're welcome to take it to someone else for "repairs" or reinstall it after it's back in their hands and the contract is complete. You're being paid to fix the problem, not clean it and then reinfect it. Reinstalling MS Office or Quickbooks is one thing, knowingly reinstalling software that compromises the system is another entirely. Once it's back in the clients hands, they can reinstall whatever crapware they choose. In a lot of these home PC repair cases, you can't ethically go with what the client wants because they honestly don't understand what they're asking you to do. You're supposed to be the expert here coming up with the right solution, and also explaining to the client *why* it's the right solution in a tactful and diplomatic way. If you reinstall their crapware because they want it, they're going to be knocking at your door two days later because you "didnt fix the problem and charged them anyway." It only serves to make your business look bad, and you have no grounds to turn around and say "we're not responsible for what you do with it after you take it back."

That being said, it sounds more like a corrupt windows profile than anything else. You probably could've gotten away with just creating a new profile and migrating everything from the old profile to the new, but it's a moot point now.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

When new laptops can be had for under $400 any day of the week you probably can't charge rates that will make this kind of repair job worthwhile.

When friends/family come to me with stuff like this the only solution I will offer them is an OS reinstall. I pull the drive, drop it on a USB dock, AV scan to kill any nasties, and grab their data. Then it's diskpart, clean, and back into their system it goes.

Reinstall/patch, install AV, replace the data, and you're done.

Manual cleanup is simply too labor and time intensive and frankly the results are always suspect.

Viper GTS

This, this this, this this, this.

This.

This this this this, this this! :$

This, th-this, this.

Don't waste time cleaning if you can do a wipe/reinstall. Get a thumb drive with the installers for MS Antivirus, ATI/nVidia drivers, and the other freeware that goes on a basic install.

Also, yeah, shouldn't have installed the Poker software if you thought it was the culprit, but you also need to be able to articulate why you don't think it's a good idea. (Poker Stars specifically is known for including spyware with their client, and would go on my "avoid" list.) They're not just paying you for your time, but also your experience and advice.

 

[Drsignguy]

This, this this, this this, this.

This.

This this this this, this this! :$

This, th-this, this.

Don't waste time cleaning if you can do a wipe/reinstall. Get a thumb drive with the installers for MS Antivirus, ATI/nVidia drivers, and the other freeware that goes on a basic install.

Also, yeah, shouldn't have installed the Poker software if you thought it was the culprit, but you also need to be able to articulate why you don't think it's a good idea. (Poker Stars specifically is known for including spyware with their client, and would go on my "avoid" list.) They're not just paying you for your time, but also your experience and advice.

I agree with all of this. TIME is MONEY. Old cliché but it is the truth.

 

[gmaster456]

This, this this, this this, this.

This.

This this this this, this this! :$

This, th-this, this.

Don't waste time cleaning if you can do a wipe/reinstall. Get a thumb drive with the installers for MS Antivirus, ATI/nVidia drivers, and the other freeware that goes on a basic install.

Also, yeah, shouldn't have installed the Poker software if you thought it was the culprit, but you also need to be able to articulate why you don't think it's a good idea. (Poker Stars specifically is known for including spyware with their client, and would go on my "avoid" list.) They're not just paying you for your time, but also your experience and advice.

This^.

 

[Zorander]

You should have scanned the PC by booting via a USB AV bootloader. Scanning from within an infected Windows session may either slow down scanning, not remove all viruses or both.