Categories: uncategorized
Date: 10 March 2004 08:34:24
Right so this morning I turn up at work, on time for once (I accept no responsibility for my train being cancelled for the last 3 days) and my boss says to me "My computer isn't working very well". I pretend for a minute that he has come in and said he feels sick - what are the symptoms? How long has it been like this? Can you think of anything that may have caused it? Has it happened before?
The computer is going very slowly and spontaneously freezing. He is unable to access the internet. It has been like this since he turned it on this morning. It hasn't done it before. Could it be something to do with the TWO funny looking attachments he opened yesterday?
I used this information to formulate some more specific diagnostic questions - have you deleted the emails? (No) Can I see them? (Yes) Why on earth did you open those when they're from weirdo email addresses and have .exe and .pif extensions? (He thought they might be someone's resume) Don't you have an anti virus program? (Yes, and he ran a full system scan yesterday afternoon and it was clean) Have you updated your virus definitions recently? (No - the subscription expired a while ago). Ding ding!! We have a diagnosis!!
While there was much faffing around trying to dispense scripts without using computers (his computer buggers up the whole network if it isn't going as it controls the printers) I called my brother and he found the "how to get rid of netsky virus" website and told me what to do. I then intimidated my boss into immediately buying a new licence for his software (he was sufficiently scared to buy a whole new package). And the rest of the day went smoothly.
Oh, except when I was doing the banking there was a nutcase woman from the "but I've done that here before" brigade and I spent my final half hour at work worrying that she would suddenly require pharmacy goods.