Being A Joke Is No Laughing Matter

The Globe and Mail

Yesterday I worked on my brother's computer. There were two major problems: the printer would not print, and the computer was so riddled with viruses that anti-virus programs and even the Task Manager would magically close after a split second. I don't know much about computers but I did my best. To fix the printer, I first tried printing. The paper wouldn't feed. I looked inside and found a safety pin wedged in a roller, and removed it using a pencap. Phew, no computer knowledge needed.

As for the viruses, I was a bit screwed. I ran Ad-Aware while in safe mode and found some 500 cookies and background programs. This still didn't solve the disappearing Task Manager program. So I held CTRL+ALT+DEL with one hand and hit PRNT SCRN with the other, and after several attempts finally captured the window before it closed. Using my own computer, I Googled the names of some of the programs to find that yes, they were fraudulent. The help pages also directed me towards this Security Task Manager program that imitated the actual Task Manager while also showing the origin and producers of programs with a diagnostic of possible threats. The program let me quarantine certain programs from there and let me run the computer normally. Amen.

It doesn't sound like much but I'm proud of myself for figuring it out. Of course if my brother had an anti-virus program I wouldn't have needed to do anything at all.