Thread: My mother succeeds in killing her PC..again

She is incapable of doing tow very important things: regular maintenance scans, and refusing to open those horrible FWDs and chain letters.

Every time Walker and I go down to Dallas, we fix it up..but this is beyond my abilities over the phone. She turns it on, it shuts itself off and says it's doing it to protect Windows. She wants to take it to Best Buy *shudder* to see if they can at leave save her pictures (backing u stuff is also not something she does)

grrrrrrrrrrrrrr....

Both are very good ideas.

I actually told Walker we needed to send some TTP-er over there...I really don't like the Best Buy people.

We did that..or so we thought. she has an uncanny ability to somehow delete entire programs and such. While falling for every hacker/adware/malware scam that comes her way. I have found pron too, but it was either my brother's, or loaded when she clicked on something stupid. She very friendly with the click to accept button.

What amazes me is she works on computers all day long at work, and flies through 'em like nothing, and the software they use is ancient and buggy...you confront her with the internet and she acts like a total newbie. She's been doing this for years, it was like my grandparents learning to set the clock on the VCR..for whatever reason it just won't stick.

She's now convinced a cheap laptop will solve her problem and behave better. *headdesk*

If we can get it fixed, I think remote access and mozy are both going to happen.

Lock down her machine like an administrator would do to you. Chances are she won't notice and she'll be a safer person because of it. If she needs access to something you didn't provide her, she can call you and if you deem it safe you can allow/install it. Leave remote access on, and leave yourself the main administrative account so you'll be just like tech support! Well this is what I did to my mom anyways....

Geek Squad may be pricey, but for those who don't know what they are doing they really have no other choice. There aren't many options when it comes to that stuff. Sure there are local shops and neighborhood techs, but it's hit or miss.

In any case, see if she can boot into Safe Mode. I am guessing it blue screened when she said it is "shutting down to protect itself"

If she can get into Safe Mode tell her to load up msconfig and disable all non-windows services and start-up programs.

Originally Posted by vectus

Geek Squad may be pricey, but for those who don't know what they are doing they really have no other choice. There aren't many options when it comes to that stuff. Sure there are local shops and neighborhood techs, but it's hit or miss.

In any case, see if she can boot into Safe Mode. I am guessing it blue screened when she said it is "shutting down to protect itself"

If she can get into Safe Mode tell her to load up msconfig and disable all non-windows services and start-up programs.

We're going to try that, we've been girding our loins for the attempt. Trying to explain how to do stuff over the phone is....trying. Ah well, we all have things we're bad at.