Lack Of Sleep And Viruses

I got woken up extra early today. My mate had somehow gotten a virus, or multiple viruses, on his computer, on which he used Windows XP Home. He suspects from visiting a fishy site a friend linked, but considering how many intrusive banner "ads" there are on even legitimate and otherwise trustworthy sites it can be incredibly hard to figure out.

This likely wouldn't have been a problem had steps he had attempted actually worked. For reasons we do not understand, his installation of Firefox was not actually installing updates, and so he was not able to have NoSript and AdBlock Plus installed and running. I know I should have had him completely reinstall Firefox when I first found that out, but for the most part I leave him to his own with his computer because he does know the basics of computer security and procedures. To his credit, and proof that he does have working knowledge even if he doesn't always act on it, he spent an hour running scans with his anti-virus, and even downloaded a new one from Google in an attempt to eradicate them, but they kept replicating and the core parts were unable to be handled by his anti-virus software.

He would have just continued using his computer while ignoring the anti-virus popups, other than that they were constant and he was unable to properly run any browser or messenger program. At his wits end he finally came in to wake me up for help. I still feel kinda bad for at first shrugging him off, but then I was mostly asleep and not really cognizant of what he was asking. After a couple more minutes of gaining consciousness I called him back in to let me know what the problem was. I also wasn't that upset I got woken up, because my dreams were drifting towards the unpleasant.

So, I poked around a little bit, using some information from his comp. I found out that part of the problem was Backdoor.Tidserv!inf. Unfortunately I didn't trust the sources of over half the removal tools for it I was able to find, and the rest were for more computer users with more expertise than I have to successfully use. I was able to find the names of some files, and so I booted his computer off of an Ubuntu live-disk so that I could delete what I hoped was the core problem. Unfortunately it didn't work.

At this point I became glad that when I helped set up his computer years ago I had left a small partition to install Linux to, as I had been planning on making both of our computers dual boot systems but was still searching for a distro that I liked. I had then never gotten around to installing any distro there, or having it formatted for extra disk space. Well, I was then able to use that space to install Ubuntu 8.10 onto his comp so that he could have some immediate basic computer operation.

He's already used to OpenOffice and Firefox, so that at least helps, and I've been using Ubuntu 8.10 on my computer for almost a month now, and have poked at it longer making sure I understood basic use, so I can still walk him through the basics he doesn't already know. I've also now got him set up with Pidgin, and later plan on getting Amarok on his computer for when he wants to listen to his own music.

Currently a snag I've then run into is that I've not set up a Linux network before, so I have to learn that before we can get stuff backed up off of his computer (as he sadly doesn't have a DVD burner). I'm also not sure if it's his monitors or video cards, but the highest resolution I've been able to get through basic settings is 800x600. Fixing his resolution is the first to tackle of those two issues, but I'm not looking forward to having to pull and insert different video cards until I find which is going to work, or at least why what he has isn't. I suspect it's because he has a Voodoo3 card in a PCI slot for what had been his second monitor, but is now acting as his primary. I'd much prefer his NVidia AGP card were the one being used as such. Still, on a somewhat crowded desk that I have to reach across it's not the most fun.

Once his computer is backed up he is fine with having just Ubuntu on his computer, as then he doesn't have to worry as much about problems like he just ran into, and because he really doesn't run any software that won't run in Ubuntu. While in the immediate future it means I have more to deal with, different settings I have to keep in mind, and read through and poke at a lot of things, but in the long run I feel the transition will be well worth it, in security, customizable interface for individualization, and the fact we won't have to spend hundreds of dollars to upgrade our software.