This week I was called out to a customer in Hadstock, near Linton, their HP desktop computer was exhibiting some rather strange behaviour. It would take an age to boot up and then Internet Explorer would refuse to display any web pages.
I booted the computer from my special diagnostics USB memory stick and checked the state of the hard drive. Sure enough, the hard drive showed as failing with a fair few bad sectors.
After discussion with the customer, I took the computer back to the workshop and cloned the entire hard drive on to a new one. After booting the new hard drive, I checked the system out and checked that all the Windows system files were in order. The computer was running a lot happier after this.
The filesystem was then purged of all unnecessary temporary files, and a suite of malware detection and removal tools was used to remove about twenty or so viruses.
The computer was running BT’s version of McAfee, which in my experience is not the most effective anti-virus, so it was removed and cleaned from the system. Then, my recommended anti-virus software was installed and configured.
The computer was then taken back to the customer, plugged in, and the Internet connection and printer tested to ensure that all was well.
