You might take a look at one of the distros used in schools from
kindergarten through the public school years. It may be hard for her
to argue that it is too difficult when preschoolers are using it...
However, assuming you want to stay in one piece...there is another way.
As for the file storage issues, why not set up a symbolic link on her
desktop to whichever folder you want her files to be stored in? There
is a free program for doing this in XP:
http://technet.
Alternatively, just create a documents directory on the desktop so she
will have a single place to store files. Take a few minutes with her
primary programs and see if you can get them to default to store
there.
In addition, I suggest that you get involved with her machine on a
regular basis--perhaps weekly. Back up critical files, run the
necessary scans, clean up things so they return to a known state.
That would likely take less time than having to do emergency surgery
when things are totally fouled up. As I said, it would be a very good
idea to do a ground-up reinstall to be on the safe side. There are
various articles on the Internet on how to do a complete system backup
when it is in a known good state, so you could reinstall the whole
thing very quickly. Also, there are free programs that work similarly
to Norton Ghost that do the same thing rather painlessly. I daresay
with such a user, the primary OS and applications would fit on a
recordable DVD, assuming her system has a burner. Otherwise, you might
be able to move the image to a USB drive of some sort. Then,
rebuilding the system would be simple--it gets too messsed up, you
nuke the drive and reload the image. Problem solved, mostly with time
spent waiting for files to copy while you go on trucking on your Linux
box.
At least three of these programs are rated and download links are
included at <http://www.snapfile
Another thing you might do--if you have a spare hard disk lying
around, you might also use it to make the clone, then disconnect it
until it should be necessary. That way, it would be in a known, clean,
bootable state should her machine fail for any reason again. If you
reformat and reinstall the OS and applications and get it set up
cleanly, that would be an ideal time to make such an emergency
recovery version. Then, you rescue disks put on a USB stick could be
used to get any data files that were on the disk at the time of an
infection or attack. Plug in the new drive, reformat the old one and
make another known good clone on it, copy the saved files from the USB
stick, and you're off to the races once more.
That process may seem rather extreme, but with a user as cluless as
your wife seems determined to remain, it can easily save you much
grief--far more than the cost of a cheap hard drive even if you have
to buy one.
David
David
--- In LINUX_Newbies@
>
> My wife uses XP. Windows 7 would scare her. That's just the way it is. She
> has limited skills and does not care to learn. She likes the familiarity of
> XP. To give you an idea of the nature of the problem. She has no idea where
> files are located. She saves some to the desktop, others to her My Documents
> folder and several other random places. The only way that she can find them
> is to open the programme that created them and then open them from recent
> files. I am sure that you get the picture.
>
> The way that many of these trojans now work is scary. They spoof legitimate
> sites and have popups that show that you may have a virus that look like
> they comes from Microsoft or whomever. Then when you click on them they
> actually install the trojan. My wife has been getting a few of these popups
> and told me about them. I told her not to click on them, but think that I
> was already too late.
>
> My hope is to clean up her hard drive and make a small Ubuntu partition to
> do banking and online ordering on. I am not sure about income tax yet. That
> will be a future project. I have already planted the seed and suggested that
> she use my Linux desktop for now. Once she gets used to that then I will
> suggest that she have her own. I got her to use Firefox and Thunderbird in
> Windows so that is a good start.
>
> My situation is not unlike those of many of us. We use Linux but others
> regard us as geeks because we do and they do not want to use anything geeky.
> It is hard to convince then that Linux is not geeky anymore.
>
> Roy
>
> On 4 May 2010 00:04, David Neeley <dbneeley@..
>
> >
> >
> > Roy,
> >
> > I'm glad you followed my hunch that it might indeed be a rootkit. I've
> > had clients with those before, so I have had to deal with them on
> > several occasions myself.
> >
> > You would still be best advised to do a full reinstall from a clean,
> > freshly formatted disk. If the rootkit authors were clever, they could
> > have inserted a "back door" that would keep the system vulnerable.
> >
> > I don't recall if you said which version of Windows is on your wife's
> > machine, but if it will support Win 7 that would probably be the best
> > idea if she still insists upon running Windows--since that is what is
> > getting nearly all of Microsoft's attention in security matters.
> >
> > It is still a very good idea to be sure she has a very good firewall,
> > anti-malware and anti-virus programs in place and properly set. Even
> > so, that will not protect the average user who tends to click on "OK"
> > whenever a warning shows up from their security software.
> >
> > As your experience shows, some of these things take multiple products
> > to find and eliminate. That should also make everyone realize that
> > relying upon a single program for a particular aspect of security is
> > not always a good idea.
> >
> > The other issue is that for a security program to be effective, it
> > often must be quite sensitive--which in turn can lead to many false
> > positives. In that case, the user is often lulled into thinking things
> > are always false positives, and in turn that leads ignoring warnings.
> >
> > Keep trying to get her to shift to Linux!
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> > --- In LINUX_Newbies@
> > Roy <linuxcanuck@
> > >
> > > First the good news. It is gone. The bad news is that it was a rootkit as
> > > someone suggested. I am crossing my fingers that no personal info was
> > lost.
> > >
> > > I tried several Linux rescue CDs to no avail. It was clean as far as they
> > > could tell. I then installed unhackme in Windows and it did the trick. It
> > > found the rootkit but it took several tried and re-boots to remove it. I
> > > hope that it is gone. I managed to re-install avg and the firewall, so
> > that
> > > at least is a positive sign.
> > >
> > > I hate Windows. Now that I have that off of my chest, I can get on with
> > > enjoying Linux. I am in Sabayon tonight. Life is good!
> > >
> > > Thanks for your help and encouragement.
> > >
> > > Roy
> >
> >
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
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