The tech support game!

[Jon P. Inghram]

My uncle just called and said he's having problems with his computer. When he tries to type in a ID number to log into a site sometimes the main number keys won't work, only the number pad. I had him try notepad and it worked there, and then when he tried to log in to the site it worked fine too. He also said Norton Internet Paranoia's updater isn't working.

I'm going to go see if I can figure out what's wrong, anyone want to hazard a guess? Also, has anyone ever used the Remote Assistance feature of XP?

[Helevitia]

Remote assitance is a great way to solve problems without ever leaving your keyboard. BTW, the easiest way to setup remote assitance is through MSN messenger. You both have to have XP though. Once you IM someone, just click the 'remote assistance' icon, then follow the directions. Takes about 10 seconds.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Not entirely sure what the problem was with the number keys not working (chair/keyboard interface issue suspected ) but the first thing I noticed when the system booted up was a icon on the desktop called "SpyHunter."

First order of business, CTRL-ALT-DEL to get task manager, and then to be taken aback by the sheer number of tasks running due to NIS and the various bits of software his HP scanner/printer combo uses. Also, NIS and NAV were both still running so there probably wasn't too severe of a virus in memory as most try to kill active antivirus programs.

I fired Ad-aware up, updated it, then scanned. Sure enough it detected SpyHunter, seems that he saw a banner or something that likely had the classic newbie bait pitch, "Your system isn't safe, install this program to protect it!" Ad-aware cleaned it and a few other minor adware items off the system.

I then investigated the reason why Norton's LiveUpdate wasn't working. It'd come back with an LU1803 error every time, but thankfully Symantec's site was actually helpful. After deleting the LiveUpdate settings files it was back up and running, and after a virus scan the system turned out to be clean.

Thankfully I had set Norton's and XP to automaticly download and install all updates when I set his system up, thus XP was fully patched and NIS only slightly out of date.

After I got home I called him up and gave the remote assistance thing a spin, that's actually pretty damn nifty!