And by that, I mean the call from the Windows User to the Computer Person to fix something undetermined. And she was cute, so one will agree and mentally review the steps involved in hopefully saving the day. It's a 2-yr-old-ish Vista laptop and this time, I'm not just doing updates but expecting the worst in the way of poorly written Russian adverts and so on. I'm picking it up on Thursday but forged ahead by downloading a new build of Trinity Rescue Kit.
TRK 3.4 is a Linux distro with a payload of tools aimed at Windows repair. The star of the show is a command-line version of ClamAV. I'm assuming viruses have set up housekeeping, so I'll give it the full treatment (boot from the TRK cd and go online for latest signatures, then run against HDD for three or four hours). But after that's done, the usual list will kick in:
0. Ideally, do backups as soon as one gets to a stable desktop (hope springs eternal)
1. Disk Cleanup and chkdisk (file integrity check)
2. Defrag
3. update and run the anti-junkware (Spyware Blaster, SuperAntiSpyware or whatever)
4. update and run any onboard brand-name Antivirus (or download AVG or something if there's nothing already there)
5. OS updates
6. browser updates
7. Flash update
8. Acrobat reader update
9. any other app updates available
That's the seat-of-the-pants list. Better lists exist; this one's probably all I'll have time for this week. Unless she's really persuasive.
RESULT: The laptop didn't even boot, so she let me have the carcass for parts and the effort (I got an HDD and some memory out of it) and she went with a new netbook. Good to reacquaint myself with TRK, though.
