Yup, months of nagging and answering the same questions over and over again (including "why should anyone attack me?" Well... how does one explain the motives of a psychopath, exactly?)
Last night, she relented and allowed me to install, run, and download updates for Norton Anti-Virus, and get rid of any viruses I found. What I found horrified me, but wasn't exactly surprising. 83 files, all infected with the same destructive virus, and only three of them able to be fixed. Whoopee.
Luckily, the other 80 were disposable files, so after disposing of them, I was ready for the next step. I looked at the Symantec site to see what the virus would do apart from infecting files. I was stunned to find out that the virus was still alive and kicking - in Windows Registry, which stores every single bit of information about the system. And NO "undo" feature. In other words, one mistake would be one too many.
Just a few months ago, I would be horrified by even looking at the registry, and actually editing it was unthinkable - the entire computer could go kaput. But now, having the benefit of months of training, It was time for... THE BAPTISMAL OF FIRE. <dramatic chords>
With shaking hands, I edited the registry, found that a hacker had been using my sister's computer, removed his "backdoor pass", and re-booted the computer...
And 2 minutes later, I wiped my brow as Win98 showed up as per normal. I did another full system scan, and was relieved to get a clean bill of health.
Chalk it up to experience, I suppose...
*celebrates*
Hmm. Plus, this all happened right on Halloween, too. Do you think it could make a good horror story?
