My parents have a HP desktop and Gateway laptop that both have XP. They are not serious computer folk, but they enjoy the internet and I am typically their first call for tech support.
Both machines are a couple of years old and over the years they have contracted a virus or three. Each time they have taken the machine to a local guy (only one in their town), had the virus removed and the operating system reinstalled.
Both machines are starting to have issues again and I was going to walk them through a system restore only to find out that it was turned off. The more we dug around we also discovered that the Task Manager has been disabled and I have not been able to figure out how to turn either back on.
I do not have a problem with them just taking their computer to someone to have it fixed, but I am starting to question the ethics of the guy they have been using.
Could he have turned these things off when he set up the computers the last time so they would have to bring them back for any issues? They have also had several things pop up and tell them that they would have to log on as Admin to do whatever it was and they only have one user account on each computer and it does not have a password or show another user ID.
I've heard rumors of this guy doing some things that I did not like, but it would really upset me if he is turning things off intentionally so that they could not do something as simple as open the Task Manager to see what is really running in the background.
Both machines are a couple of years old and over the years they have contracted a virus or three. Each time they have taken the machine to a local guy (only one in their town), had the virus removed and the operating system reinstalled.
Both machines are starting to have issues again and I was going to walk them through a system restore only to find out that it was turned off. The more we dug around we also discovered that the Task Manager has been disabled and I have not been able to figure out how to turn either back on.
I do not have a problem with them just taking their computer to someone to have it fixed, but I am starting to question the ethics of the guy they have been using.
Could he have turned these things off when he set up the computers the last time so they would have to bring them back for any issues? They have also had several things pop up and tell them that they would have to log on as Admin to do whatever it was and they only have one user account on each computer and it does not have a password or show another user ID.
I've heard rumors of this guy doing some things that I did not like, but it would really upset me if he is turning things off intentionally so that they could not do something as simple as open the Task Manager to see what is really running in the background.