How to Convince a "Bud" ??

[SARGE]

Some are tiring of my Bud questions, but this one has me caught between saying "I told you, dummy" and wanting to help. I've lectured him for the longest to get a virus program and ZoneAlarm, but he "never had time". He gets 24 hours in a day like the rest of us. He just bought a new pc and got a cable modem. Went online playing some game and was blowing away when some message came up about Osama Bin Laden and pc went bonkers. Desktop has really huge icons (his words) and can't even see toolbar to shutdown and can't access display settings by right clicking desktop. I figure the game needed an updated direct x, open gl, or whatever, or video card crapped out, etc. But first, had him restore a few registry dates. Desktop came up ok, but "illegal operations" were plastered all over it. Don't know the game played, but he left himself wide-open with no protection, and the Osama message keeps me thinking virus. I suggested a "safe mode" try first to see if anything will run.

[glc]

Make a bootdisk in your PC and write protect it. Download free F-Prot for DOS and the latest signature files for it. Unzip the program itself onto a floppy, unzip the sign.def and sign2.def onto another floppy, and unzip the macro defs onto a 3rd floppy and write protect them too. Boot with your bootdisk and put the 1st F-Prot disk in - and type F-PROT /LOADDEFS . Take it from there.

[SARGE]

glc, thanks. I'll do it for me and give him your info and let him use his other pc to do his own. He needs to learn these things himself

[LawyerRon]

Hey SARGE,
You're trying too hard. Let him reformat his hhd a few times and lose a bunch of important data and then maybe a light will go on.

[Xayd]

Agreed, everytime he asks a question give him a reply that's wayyyyy over his head. When he disregards the answer to the question because he's too lazy to grasp it, and screws up his machine, he'll pay the price. The reply to his "man, this sucks, i screwed up my computer" whine is, "Well, I told ya, why didn't you listen?"

I disagree with the whole "lead the horse but can't make him drink" scenario . I think the horse can be beaten into drinking, he just needs enough humiliation and motivation (which are one in the same..).

[HAL9000]

I agree with you completely Xayd. I have billed one of my corporate clients in excess of $1000 this week because I have to keep going back to reset their internet settings which they keep screwing up... eventually, they'll learn.

[SARGE]

Lawman, you're right. He kept me up all night on phone recently trying to install Win98 off a Hewlett Packard recovery disk onto an old PBell 75. He wouldn't listen, yada, yada. Same guy I mentioned in "Shock the System", whereby he pulls the power cord while online, to clean the cookies off. He got that hot tip from some stranger. He listens to them He's now cussing AMD because of yesterdays experience (Current thread) and says it's their fault pc crashed while online gaming. I give up, but alas, I really won't.