OK, so I've just finished an epic 12hr session over the course of 2 days fixing three peoples PC's. I've seen all 3 of these PC's before, I've worked on them many times in the past. One might surmise that I'm a crappy repair-man given the repeat work. It's really easy to simply re-install the Operating System and return a perfectly fine working machine. It's another situation entirely to return it to them as though nothing happened. There is however, one recurring theme that is out of any well buffed, good looking guys hands.
The abomination that is "anti" "virus" "software".
You're driving down a road in your Triple-A-Safety rated car. You drive off a cliff. Your air-bags deploy as designed when you hit the ground. You're dead anyway. Had you not been driving as though you were invincible in the first place, this never would have happened.
Over the course of my entire lifetime, the #1 biggest virus I have ever worked against is anti virus software itself.
- 100% if the time it has been the underlying cause of an imaginary sense of security.
- 100% of the time the user has CLICKED AND RUN something they should not have, which resulted in malware, spyware, phishing scams, loss of data, loss of privacy or otherwise critical system failures.
- 100% of the time anit-virus-software has been directly responsible for automatic updates being stalled, halted, broken or otherwise not working as a result of some sort of security settings alteration it has made (of which there are literally several thousand). I cannot express how common, serious, and disastrous this is.
- 100% of the time the anit-virus-software has MADE IT DAMN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to remove the ACTUAL PROBLEM without UNINSTALLING THE anti-virus-software first.
There are long, oh so very long, lists of variation, complexity, and just blatant stupidity associated to all four of those bullet points. The most offensive component is when anti virus software has broken something first, which resulted in situations where the user was FORCED to click something they should not have.
This includes broken script warnings that weren't broken until false-positives are reported. Popup warnings, cautions, and the like. The end user becomes SO DISMISSIVE with the continuous clicking of "yes" to make warnings go away, that they lose any sense of discerning decision making, and will click on any old rubbish. No I mean it. Anything.
Without spending HOURS explaining some of the finer technical points of why anti-virus-software is by every definition, the worst virus of them all, let me finish with a few pointers.
- If the porn site you're browsing tells you that you need to "install a media player" of any sort, and you click "yes", it's already too late for you. You need CODEC'S, not PLAYERS. Once you're running their software, you're done. The only exceptions are the the big 3: adobe, sun-java, and apple plugins.
- You're browsing the local football scores webpage, and you see some sort of official looking window, message, or popup that says "you might be infected, click here to do something about it". The host of the web page does NOT have any means of determining your actual security status. Try and be a little discerning in future please!!
- If you click ANY file to run it, without knowing its extension type, you're done.
- Why did you download the virus in the first place? What did you think you were clicking on? Were you REALLY duped? So there were no indicators that the file you ran wasn't legit?
Everyone knows the rules about web browsing, secure connections, and porn. Stop making it someone elses responsibility to protect you from yourself. I have never seen a situation first hand where any virus software actually STOPPED, PROTECTED, AND KEPT THE PC UNHARMED. I hear about it all the time. Have you? If so, do you have the technical knowledge to determine if what it told you was true, and not a false positive? Like I said. Never seen it do anything but harm.
STOP DRIVING OFF CLIFFS !!!
The TV corner is getting out of control, cords, cables, plus the whole thing is immobile. When we were growing up our main TV was on castors and we would move it around the house to suit what we were doing, rather than commit to sitting in the lounge room to do nothing but view the screen. Time to remedy this error of the future.
Removed the rear panel, it adds a lot of light to the inside when viewing the DVD library now. Used some castors I'd salvaged from a bed-base that Skev was throwing out.
Support blocks required in the corners. The cheap castors are heavily supported by the plastic shroud.
I stained and varnished the piece of my desk that I'd cut out for the keyboard-well, and attached it as a shelf to the side of the cabinet. This will give me a spot to put the PC-TV-controller, and keep things mobile. Cut-outs were req'd for the castors. All the white dots are drill-holes from using this piece as scrap for a considerable amount of time. Other side looks new though :)
Mobile PC stays with the cabinet. 
