This is more of a rant then a problem. I'm gonna crucify my nephew, I'll explain why in a moment, but first thing is first. I got a new desktop last weekend and had some issues with it. Those issues had nothing to do with him, that was a whole nother can of worms. Read the link below, I'm not gonna type it all out again.

http://www.generalforum.com/advanced...ues-59823.html

Back to my nephew... While he was here this weekend I let him use my old desktop which was hooked up still. Well he wanted to download something to play called zwinky or some **** like it. He told me it could be uninstalled and he needed it to play his online game. I said sure, thinking nothing of it. Well then I had problems with my new computer (link above) and took it to the shop for repair.

I turned on my old computer so I had a computer to use... I turned it on and immediately

I remind you I keep my computers free of all clutter, crap, spyware and other such non-sense...

You get the point...

First my web browser was all jacked up. I had 10 different tool bars I never have seen before from mywebsearch, zwinky and a bunch of other ****. Second my homepage was hijacked to some random website I never heard of. Third I had some program installed that monitored my internet usage and something with AOL... which I never use and fourth my AIM buddy list was gone... it was not there... G-O-N-E, and it was replaced with seven AIM bots one of which included zwinky...



I wanted to ring his neck. I ran Spybot and about had a combined double stroke, aneurysm and pulmonary embolism from all the spyware on my computer from his little program... mind you I rarely get spyware,a nd when I do it's usually 1 or 2 here and there... nope, not this time 632 files

So I spent the last two hours first uninstalling everything, two letting Spybot do its thing and three running 'safe mode' to manually delete what Spybot couldn't get rid of, and four running a scan for anything called zwinky on my computer and deleting every last trace of that pain in the ass.

Pro2A = Not happy.

This is exactly why I hate people touching my computers. After this, unless I am standing right there, no one is touching my computers ever again.

Are you the same way?

Zwinky is a stupid program targetted at kids who don't know better. They download it and kabaam! Compute explodes.

I never let other people touch my computer. My older brother maybe because he knows what he's doing but never my younger siblings because they have not a hot clue. I'm fairly anal about it. At least if something breaks while I'm using it, then I know what I was doing when it broke.

I usually try to keep my laptop to myself alot for that reason. I mean I let my girlfriend use it but other than that I dont like other people messing with it so much. I've been fortunate in the sense that I've never had any bad virus' rip through any of the computers I've maintained. So to me that tells me I'm doing something right, haahaha now my sister on the other hand, her computer is fried. But she does all the myspace and facebook and torrents and lord knows what else. And well her computer hardly lasted a year. Now it moves at the speed of smell.

Yeah I try to avoid other people installing stuff on my computer, I hardly ever get spyware and things of the sort.

When I do get spyware usually it's because of something that somebody else did, and no matter what you do to your computer you simply can't get it back exactly the way it is, that's usually when I reinstall Windows because it's good to do that every once in a while anyway.

Sorry about what your nephew did though that's a serious bummer.

I hear you. My wife loves to play her online games and she stays on them forever. She once had my desktop so full of icons for games she had downloaded that I could hardly find my own apps. For a while she was using my email address for her contacts so my inbox was jammed with trash every morning. I finally had enough. I bought a desktop for her to use so that she'd leave mine alone.
When we have guests over I always turn my password protection on, then turn my system off and unplug it from the wall. This system is for my own personal use and I don't want anyone else screwing up what's taken me years to perfect.

Yeah, I'm the same way, but for a second reason.

While the first reason is so nobody ****s up my computer, it's also so I know that it was me if my computer ****s up, and as such I'll roughly know how I ****ed it up.

It's a lot easier to troubleshoot a PC when you're the only one who has access to it.

That's very true, I hate it when I'm asked to fix someones computer and they can't tell me the first thing that they think they might have done, it's infinitely easier to fix a computer when you are the one who messed it up, not only do you roughly know what you did but you also don't have to get mad at somebody else. Everything installed on my computer is installed by me to make sure that everything is on the right drive and is installed correctly with features that I'll use, etc.

I like to be the only one effin up my pc and even then it still pisses me off when it is effed up lol

I despise fixing other peoples computers for the exact reasons mentioned above. If you really don't know what you did to eff it up what are you doing on it anyways is my motto but I fix em as best I can and mosy on.

I used to be paranoid about it.. but now I have linux, so.. "sudo adduser annoyingnephew", and no worries.

I always try to let people use my computer, for web surfing, but I'm specifically booting ubuntu so that noone can download bull**** .msi's, exe's, or activeX controls. Most people say they feel sorry for me when I tell them that I'm never gonna play games like zumazuma, jizzball, or what have you. But the only things I want to use my computer for are programming, office work, and media. ;)