Funny Virus Story

[Thelasko]

My fiancee told me yesterday that she thought she had a virus on her Windows computer. I figured it was an April Fools joke, but it wasn't.

Her virus scanner would go off occasionally and notify her that she had a virus. I ran a full system scan and allegedly removed the virus. A little while later, she said she saw a message on the bottom of the screen telling her that her antivirus was scanning email. I had a look and noticed that Avast! was scanning every piece of SPAM her machine was sending out.

Although it completely failed at finding the virus sending the SPAM, that little message was enough to convince my fiancee to do a complete reinstall. Unfortunately, it still didn't convince her to switch to Ubuntu.

[billgoldberg]

Those free anti-viruses don't really catch that much, try a commercial solution.

[Thelasko]

Those free anti-viruses don't really catch that much, try a commercial solution.

I'm going to start by switching her to a limited user account. I'm thinking about installing NOD32. But I will have to convince her.

[|Mitch|]

NOD32 is much better protection over Avast, AVG, Norton and the like...

she was working within the admin account?

[Thelasko]

she was working within the admin account?

As most Windows users do...

[Dale61]

Just tell your fiancee that if she wants YOU to maintain her computer, then YOU decide what software gets installed.

If she's not happy with that, then tell her that if her computer messes up in future, she's on her own.

It worked for me with my sister-in-laws computer, so it should work for you as well.

[cardinals_fan]

As most Windows users do...
...and as none should.

[smartboyathome]

Just tell your fiancee that if she wants YOU to maintain her computer, then YOU decide what software gets installed.

If she's not happy with that, then tell her that if her computer messes up in future, she's on her own.

It worked for me with my sister-in-laws computer, so it should work for you as well.

That wouldn't work as well with a Fiancée, since she would probably just get mad and leave you forever. Kind of nice being alone and unloved when you can have Linux? ;)

[LiamWilson]

...and as none should.

Aye, but with the Limited account, you cannot install software, unlike the Limited account in Linux, where you have to enter a password.

[meho_r]

Those free anti-viruses don't really catch that much, try a commercial solution.

...which are sometimes worse than virus itself.

[cardinals_fan]

Aye, but with the Limited account, you cannot install software, unlike the Limited account in Linux, where you have to enter a password.
SuRun solves that problem rather nicely.

[Thelasko]

that wouldn't work as well with a fiancée, since she would probably just get mad and leave you forever. Kind of nice being alone and unloved when you can have linux? ;)

+1

[Tristam Green]

Aye, but with the Limited account, you cannot install software, unlike the Limited account in Linux, where you have to enter a password.

Shift+Right-click-> Run as... works just as well in Windows (well, most of the time).

[Thelasko]

Shift+Right-click-> Run as... works just as well in Windows (well, most of the time).

What's the shift key for? It seems to work without it.

[Trail]

That wouldn't work as well with a Fiancée, since she would probably just get mad and leave you forever. Kind of nice being alone and unloved when you can have Linux? ;)

If she did that, then she probably wasn't worth it in the first place.

[Tristam Green]

What's the shift key for? It seems to work without it.

On certain things like administrative tools, the run as dialog doesn't appear unless you hold down the shift key while right-clicking.

[albinootje]

...and as none should.
A few days ago I read that MS-Windows XP Home has no admin account, every new user is basically admin.

See here : http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp


Each interactive user in XP Home is assumed to be a member of the Owners local group, which is the Windows XP equivalent of the Windows 2000 Administrator account: This means that anyone who logs on to a Home Edition machine has full control.


Before people start writing "But XP is obsolete" as people have written before here on this forum.. a few days ago I've bought a netbook with MS-Windows XP home for my work because some colleagues had unfortunately bought a scannner in the past which is not supported by Linux, so having a dual-boot would be handy for that and perhaps other things.
I started wondering about the differences between XP home and pro.. and tried to look up the differences.

Shocking to see that MS is so very careless about home users with their XP home :(

[albinootje]

Although it completely failed at finding the virus sending the SPAM, that little message was enough to convince my fiancee to do a complete reinstall. Unfortunately, it still didn't convince her to switch to Ubuntu.

If I were you I would every now and then let her read something good about Ubuntu, about the philosophy behind it, about the millionaire and space tourist Mark Shuttleworth who thinks that Windows 7 is cool.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/22/shuttleworth_windows_7/

Or funny quotes by Linux Torvalds :
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
Perhaps not this one :


Is "I hope you all die a painful death" too strong?

but for example this one :


Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.


Or the cute Linux pronounciation video :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IfHm6R5le0

Do compare with the audio file(s) here how Linus has got an USA accent through the years :)
http://www.paul.sladen.org/pronunciation/

Or show photos of the OLPC project :
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pictures

In other words, the ideas and backgrounds of Linux are appealing to me, and I'm sure they're appealing to others.

By the way, you can run Ubuntu inside MS-Windows with CoLinux :
http://portableubuntu.sourceforge.net/index.php?section=screenshots

I have tested it a little bit, and I have suggested it to a colleague (abroad) to play with it, to have the chance to use Ubuntu every day, without having to worry about boot problems, partitioning problems, installation problems in a dual-boot setup.

[Thelasko]

A few days ago I read that MS-Windows XP Home has no admin account, every new user is basically admin...

Before people start writing "But XP is obsolete" as people have written before here on this forum...

Shocking to see that MS is so very careless about home users with their XP home :(

I don't think XP is obsolete, just misused. I also think it's a shame that Microsoft treats home users as second class citizens. It only shows that they have no insight into the future of home computing, and is the source of all of their problems. For example, Windows 98 was supposed to be the operating system that took you to the internet. It took you there, and then you got a virus, because they didn't implement user accounts with privileges. It should have been based on NT from the start, since NT was designed around networking in the first place.

Anywho, when I installed XP pro last night, it guided me through setting up an administrator account, and now I can't find it. Is this normal? Why do they even go through the trouble? If it does still exist, I want to delete it, because I feel an account named "administrator" is a big target.

[albinootje]

Forgot this one, this fairly well-known actor (Played e.g. in V for Vendetta) talks about Linux and Free Software : http://www.gnu.org/fry/

[Thelasko]

If I were you I would every now and then let her read something good about Ubuntu.
I do better, I let her use my machine. She is currently using Ubuntu on my machine since hers is out of service at the moment.

She wants to keep using Windows, so I'll respect her decision.

[albinootje]

If it does still exist, I want to delete it, because I feel an account named "administrator" is a big target.


<irritated HAL voice> : I'm afraid I can't do that Dave.. :)

I think you cannot remove the Administrator account, and also not the guest account in MS-Winows-XP (Or was that in MS-Windows 2000 ?).
SuRun sounds like a good idea, and buying Nod32 seems also a good idea (I know sysadmins who chose Nod32 instead of something else).

[Thelasko]

...and also not the guest account in MS-Winows-XP

The guest account isn't active by default, so it basically doesn't exist.

[albinootje]

I do better, I let her use my machine. She is currently using Ubuntu on my machine since hers is out of service at the moment.

She wants to keep using Windows, so I'll respect her decision.

Well, it is your decision.

But imho women are often much more social than men and therefore interested in different aspects of things, and women often feel a bit intimidated by new computer *technical* things that isn't (yet) within their control.
Here's an (imho) interesting article somewhat related to this : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7977454.stm

Apart from that I think that the whole planet deserves to know more about the background of Linux :)

[mwillams73]

My fiancee told me yesterday that she thought she had a virus on her Windows computer. I figured it was an April Fools joke, but it wasn't.

Her virus scanner would go off occasionally and notify her that she had a virus. I ran a full system scan and allegedly removed the virus. A little while later, she said she saw a message on the bottom of the screen telling her that her antivirus was scanning email. I had a look and noticed that Avast! was scanning every piece of SPAM her machine was sending out.

Although it completely failed at finding the virus sending the SPAM, that little message was enough to convince my fiancee to do a complete reinstall. Unfortunately, it still didn't convince her to switch to Ubuntu.

That would be the conficker worm she and you are dealing with, heres a link to the wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker

[majamba]

use clamwin

i tend to like kaspersky, nod 32 and avg

[apmcd47]

I think you cannot remove the Administrator account, and also not the guest account in MS-Winows-XP (Or was that in MS-Windows 2000 ?).

No, but you should be able to rename and disable the admin account, unless they removed that ability from XP Home the same way they removed it from Vista Home Edition :-(

Andrew

[DarkReaper79]

I must of found a keeper. She told me to change her to Ubuntu. She was so sick of windows, and hates even using it at work;)

[Thelasko]

That would be the conficker worm she and you are dealing with, heres a link to the wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker

I'm not so sure about that. Especially since it started showing symptoms while the system clock was set to March 30th (the machine has had a bad CMOS battery for a while). I was also able to access symantec.com from the machine without any trouble.

[Thelasko]

use clamwin

Which reminds me...

I've scanned all of the data she backed off of her machine using ClamAV on my Ubuntu machine (Hardy). It didn't find anything. I spent quite a bit of work just getting ClamAV working. The default Ubuntu installation wouldn't download any definitions. I ended up installing the latest .deb for clamtk (http://clamtk.sourceforge.net/) off of it's sourceforge page.

If it was conflicker, wouldn't it have hidden itself on her thumb drive? Would clam find it?