Another Sick PC

One of the folks from work asked me if I’d take a look at his PC, which I did this weekend. I was worried enough to make sure there were no other active machines on my network as it booted up. Good move.

No sooner did I turn it on, than pop-ups for adult web sites began to appear. I attempted to open some utilities, but the computer hardly acknowledged my clicks. It was slower than sluggish.

A quick check revealed there was a lot I didn’t recognize in the start-up folder and task manager. Not a good sign.

Usually I go after these thing methodically. I wonder if it’s even worth it in this case? There’s nothing of real value on here – a few kids games which can be reinstalled.

There were few, if any, updates performed. It’s still Windows XP SP1! On the Internet, this box didn’t stand a chance. It was probably infected within minutes as it sat and idled.

It’s a Compaq, which I think has a restore partition on the hard drive. If that’s right, I can just spin it back to day one.

Oh, Compaq… you should be ashamed of yourself, letting this XP PC ship with only 128 mb. Sure, it will work, but just barely. I’ll try and pick up another 512 mb to get thing a little snappier.

It’s good to be the geek, but it’s depressing to see what can happen to nice people who did no wrong.