The Computer Guru

So I'm sitting there in my office, up to my derriere in dinosaurs, when Oso comes in and says, "Hey, can you look at my computer? The screen says that I have a virus and to 'click here'. "

"Don't click!" I snapped.

I went over to look at his laptop and sure enough, there was the nasty little popup that wants you to "click here for a free virus scan," whereupon you get infected beyond belief. But, since it was still up on the screen, I thought that it meant that Oso had not clicked it.

I shut the machine down and did my "twenty-count" to be sure the RAM was bled off, then booted up normally. Bang, there was the message back. Crap.

I ran the high end Trend Office Scan and it popped up with "troj_vundo.bwn" identified as the infection culprit. Moving over to my laptop, I went up on the Trend website, and there was a pile of information about the "vundo" family with detailed instructions about what to do to get rid of it. So I printed out the main instructions and went back to Oso's machine.

I was just getting started when Ricochet walks up behind me and says, "Hey, whatcha doin?"

"Getting rid of a virus on Oso's computer," I mumbled, trying not to let any conversation get started.

Just then the virus popup came up again trying to get somebody to "click here." Ricochet reaches over my shoulder and grabs the mouse, moving the cursor toward the "click here" button. I batted his hand away and said (maybe shouted), "NO! Don't click that ... it's part of the virus."

He let go and just stood there sulking.

I had to go back to my printer in the next room to pick up the rest of the sheets giving instructions on how to get rid of "vundo." The phone rang, I picked it up, and was tied up on a call for a couple of minutes. Too long.

Just as I stood up to go back into Oso's office, I heard Ricochet gleefully shout, "There! I got it!"

"What did you get?" I asked, walking up.

"I'm deleting all these files in System 32 that have fresh time stamps on them. Those are the virus files."

My heart nearly stopped. There sat Ric, clickity-clicking on critical Sys file after file and slapping the delete button as fast as he could.

I must tell you here -- those of you who are Windows XP savvy -- that the 2nd thing on the Trend list of How To Get Rid of Vundo is to disable Restore. Our only possible salvation from Ricochet's onslaught would be (if Windows could even still boot,) that we might have been able to do a Restore and everything would have been O.K.

But, such was not to be. Restore was disabled.

"How do you know that those time stamps are the virus actions?" I asked.

"Don't worry, they are," he said, madly clicking files into oblivion.

I gulped deeply, turned on my heel and walked out. Packed up my stuff (it was now after 5pm) and headed home. Why bother getting upset this late in the day?

Back in my office the next morning, Oso poked his head in the door and said, "Where's my computer?"

"Don't know," quoth I, "Last I saw it, Ricochet was working on it."

Oso's eyes grew as big as saucers. He knew from past experience that this probably meant that he wouldn't be seeing his precious laptop any time soon -- at least not working anyway.

The day wore on a bit and Ric shouted from his office, "Hey doctor (my nickname, created by Ric) come and look at this!"

I reluctantly went to his office and there was Ric with Oso's laptop, running Spy Doctor (an adware detector ... NOT a virus detector/repair package.) "Look, I've already found over 1,300 things! I'll have this fixed in no time."

A grunted "Uhn" was about all I could muster as I watched him detecting cookies and adware remnants all over the place. I left and went back to my cage.

Hours passed and then I heard Ric crying out, "Darn thing [clickity, clickity, click ... beep], darn it [click ... beep] ... oh, hey, doctor," he shouted down the hall at me, "I can't delete this darn dll file."

I gave him a clue, shouting back, "You'll probably have to do it in 'cmd'." No answer.

Five minutes later, "This won't even delete in 'command'." I was stunned that he knew how to get to the command prompt. I got up and went to his office because I needed a little amusement at this stage of my day.

There was Sir Ricochet, seated in front of Oso's laptop and, sure enough, he had the little DOS window showing.

Now I don't mean to brag or anything, but I've been kicking around PC's for so long that I experienced the day when everything you typed into a computer had to be preceded and succeeded by some type of DOS command. Therefore, I was pretty good at it. Watching Ric hammer away on the keyboard made me question the state of my memory. I'd sure never seen any command lines like that, and ...

[beep] "XXXX is not recognized as an internal or external command."

[beep] "XXXX is not recognized as an int" -- well, you get the picture. Ric was just making stuff up as he went. He obviously knew a few of the old DOS commands but he sure was flinging a lot of pooh along with them.

I went to lunch.

Came back. Ricochet was still messing with the laptop. [beep]

"Hey, doctor, I'm running that little (?) DOS program that they say will fix this. It'll either fix it or it'll reformat it."

Well, he at least had that right. I'd bet anything that Oso's laptop is going to the I.T. Department for reformatting and reloading of all his software.

Hope he had a recent file backup.

[beep] It's 1:30 in the afternoon and Ric is still wackin' the keys.