Safe computing is sorta like safe sex.

Several weeks ago, my daughter, Jamie, brought home a laptop computer for me to look at and fix. It belonged to a coworker. People often ask me computer questions; I used to have a computer maintenance company, long before Geek Squad existed. So, Jamie and I played with this virus-scannerless-played-with-by-young-teens machine that crawled along at a snail’s pace.

The temporary Internet files had never been cleaned, nor had any other clean up ever been done. That took several hours. We then optimized it, several more hours. We installed Norton Anti-Virus, scanned, cleaned and optimized again. We returned the computer to the coworker on September 18 in perfect working order. We explained to the mother that these maintenance things must be done WEEKLY (you do them weekly, right?).

On October 1, the computer came back with a desktop picture, that looked like a windows warning pop-up, threatening bad things. It was unclickable. It had been set as the background. But nothing else on the computer worked either. Norton ran in a loop scan-abort-tell-to-reboot. Now, the child had only HAD the computer for 2 weeks, so I thought, how bad could it be?

It could be that bad.

Norton refused to go online and do an automatic update. Hmm. The computer, in fact, would not go on the internet at all. The desktop tab was missing from the desktop properties menu and it was moving at a snail’s pace again, well when it didn’t lock up anyway. The only installed software was Limewire (which is a peer-to-peer music sharing site/software in the image of Napster or Kaza – it is copyright-infringing-virus-infested-shite. But that would be another whole essay.). I told Jamie to tell the mother that the child should not be allowed to use the Internet unsupervised. Were it my child to create such havoc on a cleaned machine in 2 short weeks, she would undoubtedly be thinking that being stolen by gypsies looked appealing. The computer was given paperweight status while I thought it over.

The mother said she was just going to buy a new computer, and we could just keep this one – it’s junk. No, it’s a machine, the CHILD is who she should be considering trading in.

Yesterday was the day I attacked it in earnest, the computer not the child. I started at 7am. I uninstalled Limewire. I deleted the child’s logon (and all files associated with it). I made enough progress to run Norton, it still wouldn’t update, but it found a Trojan horse virus that it was unable to delete. I managed to go online and do some research on the virus. But it was a slick horse – managed to block access to any and all virus protection sites (including Norton, TrendMicro, Panda and PC Tools). Great. Norton was deleted. I installed Kaspersky (which is great software, especially for Trojans). It ran a scan and found…404 issues…viruses and vulnerabilities, including 44 trojan horses. Eek! But it too was crippled because it could not go online to register itself or update its virus list. It did remove the annoying desktop issue and returned the desktop tab in properties for me. Progress. It was 2pm.

I shifted gears and moved to my own laptop. I downloaded a Trojan cleaner/killer and copied it to a flash drive to install on the infected computer. I inserted my flash drive into the paperweight and clicked on My Computer. Kaspersky popped up and told me that Windows Explorer was infected with a virus and must now be terminated.

This was bad. Very, very bad. Windows Explorer is the Windows interface. To turn the machine off we had to unplug it and pull the battery. Reboot. Plan B: try to get to Download.com and download the cleaners. Thankfully plan B worked and I was able to clean up some more of the mess. I returned to my machine and looked up the specific Trojans – several were backdoors. What’s that you ask? And you should ask. Well, backdoor viruses infect a machine and send any pertinent information out to someone, likely someone with ill-intent – you know like your bank or credit card info. Your passwords to EVERYWHERE you go on the internet. Yes, the gypsies seemed too good for this child. Kaspersky logged on and updated itself and rescanned. But left several things intact, so the computer was still a paperweight for all intents and purposes.

I went to Trend Micro (you ARE writing all of these virus sites down, right?) and scanned again. Trend Micro is an online tool. It’s free. Use it. Anyway, it found the Trojans and warned that I might not want to delete them – they were system files. Well, with the viruses intact, the computer was unusable. And I was tired it was now after 6 pm. My baseball game was going to be starting in an hour and this little project had already cost me a whole day. I should have downloaded new copies of the system files, renamed the infected files and then deleted them. But I was tired and deeply mired in my fantasies of what sort of punishment would be just for a child so negligent. So, I thought, what the hell? I told Trend Micro to clean them. Now it doesn’t boot at all, not even in safe mode. In order to make this decent machine usable I am going to have to get a clean copy of XP – i.e. purchase an OEM version, reformat, likely f-disk the harddrive, and start fresh. And yes, I know how to do all that.

And it is a good machine, a Toshiba, that was owned by a child who will likely travel through ALL of Dante’s circles of hell before arriving at her destination in the innermost circle. I think her mother should help her on her way on that particular journey. This woman is going to have to find out if her credit file has been hacked, if her identity has been stolen. It could take several months before she knows the answer to that question. Her life is going to be hell. If she were paying me: $25 per hour, 12 hours plus the price of the Kaspersky ($90), Norton ($90) and Windows XP (at least $100), plus the time I will spend installing and updating…it will be cheaper for her to replace the whole machine, or possibly the child.

Now, if you’re still with me, there’s a lesson to be learned here. Well, several important lessons actually:

1.