Ballmer Beaten by Spyware 501
Devil's BSD writes "At a Windows Vista reviewers conference, Microsoft platform president Jim Allchin told a rather amusing story about Steve Ballmer. Apparently, a friend asked him to rid his computer of the spyware and malware that had accumulated over the years. As the story goes, neither Ballmer nor Microsoft's top engineers could fix the infested computer. The article goes on to discuss and compare Microsoft's new security offering, Windows Live OneCare."
Chairs everywhere! (Score:5, Funny)
(and don't believe an article that says Microsoft didn't know what was going down in the spyware world until Ballmer bought in an infected PC: "This really opened our eyes to what goes on in the real world," Allchin told the audience. )
Re:Chairs everywhere! (Score:4, Insightful)
its about time, this comes only about 10 years too late...
Re:Chairs everywhere! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not too sure about that. IIRC this tale unfolded several years ago and was one of the reasons behind MS's big security push. The only thing "new" about it is that Allchin seems to like telling the story over and over, year after year. And it keeps getting publishes as if its a new story.
Re:Chairs everywhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
If he meant "Microsoft", then bollocks - I'm sure MS engineers / support partners / etc, were screaming for years.
If he means "Clueless, viewing MS's security through rose tinted glasses upper management", then I guess that statement could be correct. (I doubt it tho')
Re:Chairs everywhere! (Score:3, Funny)
The only thing "new" about it is that Allchin seems to like telling the story over and over, year after year. And it keeps getting publishes as if its a new story.
Complaining about a dupe story on Slashdot? Talk about nothing new!
Re:Chairs everywhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to deal with spyware you need to prevent it from getting on your PC in the first place which is why you need some kind of security softare probably with regular updates so it can deal with new threats.
This is another in a long line of pretty lame
Allchin is repeating his story because he is now marketing a product to prevent you from getting infected with the spyware in the first place. It is a great product for him to market since it entails an annual subscription and Microsoft really wants some steady subscription revenue. Its also great for Microsoft because its another instance where they are going to use their monopoly power to destroy companies(Symantec, McAfee, etc) that built businesses providing this service when Microsoft failed to deal with the problem years ago. Microsoft is going to transfer some of the billions consumers currently spend on Symantec and McAfee in to their coffers and it should cause a nice little bump in their revenue unless their service completely sucks. And of course Symantec and McAfee are now competitors instead of partners, which is tough for them,
story is impossible (Score:5, Funny)
Re:story is impossible (Score:3, Funny)
Re:story is impossible (Score:4, Funny)
Those are called "groupies".
Clicky [m-w.com].
Re:Chairs everywhere! (Score:5, Funny)
I hardly see how licking a tongue-lash injury is going to help the matter.
*over the years* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:*over the years* (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:*over the years* (Score:2)
Trust me, cleaning the computer is by a magnitude faster.
Re:*over the years* (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:*over the years* (Score:3, Insightful)
Anecdote:
I've set up Windows XP computers at work LITERALLY thousands of times. If I let a Windows computer install by itself while plugged into the network (with Internet access) so it finishes the install while I'm at lunch (for one hour), it will be infected with a virus by the time I get back from lunch. That's how great
Re:*over the years* (Score:5, Interesting)
Cleaning a computer, at least in my book, requires the following (not necessarily in order): Backup important files, Windows update, add/remove programs for p2p and other annoyances (with reboots), spyware scan, reboot, spyware scan, hijackthis, virus scan, (if virus found, reboot and scan again), registry inspection, reboot with chkdsk. And that's all I did if they just had some popups. Hopefully all that cleaning didn't cause the machine to loop BSODs at boot-up too! A truely thorough cleaning takes at least 5 hours, and that's assuming everything goes well.
So, in my expert opinion (5+ years in tech support), reinstalling usually is much faster. Of course a good ol' Ghost image only takes about 10 minutes, and if you ghosted properly, it'll have all your precious settings!
Re:*over the years* (Score:5, Interesting)
I am the IT guy for a small network of 25 PCs and about 6 Macs... I have images on hand for every model of machine. Users know damn well that anything stored on their local computer isn't backed up or safe from deletion, so when they have issues, I double check with them that they don't have anything important that we really, really need to save, and then I use one of my images, install any additional software I don't have in my image, and then give them back a healthy machine about an hour later.
If I think solving an issue on their machine is going to take more than an hour, it gets an image replacement. Saves both on my time getting the machine back up and running, and the user has less down-time.
Re:*over the years* (Score:4, Informative)
Rootkits CANNOT be reliably cleaned up.
Regardless of whether its a Linux system, OpenBSD, Windows, or whatever; once your system is rooted, you CANNOT fix it without booting from known-good media, and either testing MD5 sums of each executable, or a wipe/re-install.
There simply isn't any other way to look at it.
Re:*over the years* (Score:5, Funny)
1) Adult brings computer in for me to clean up.
2) I remove all the crap their kid installed on it.
3) Computer works fine, I get paid, Adult goes home.
4) Within 2 days their kid has reinstalled all their crap onto it.
5) ???? --- either Adult screams that I didn't solve anything, or they bring it back in, but don't reprimand their kid for effing up the computer again.
6) Wash, rinse, repeat.
Re:*over the years* (Score:4, Informative)
Re:*over the years* (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:*over the years* (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact should one of my Debian Stable systems ever get compromised, I probably wouldn't sleep soundly until I fully wiped & reinstalled it as well as any systems that might theoretically have been compromised through the one affected. What if someone planted an 'obvious' virus/rootkit/... as well as a small sneaky backdoor, with the former being placed mainly to distract from the latter?
Re:*over the years* (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're really on the ball, you do regular backups.
This means that you can compare your current system to your backups and then you need only examine the files that have changed.
Re:*over the years* (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:*over the years* (Score:4, Insightful)
The first thing I do is to create c:\data, c:\mp3 and c:\work directories (and c:\home for cygwin)
Re:*over the years* (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:*over the years* (Score:2)
Not futile or impossible: If thought about. (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) Boot into another OS which can read and write to the infected filesystem but is immune to the malware.
(2) Do a complete check of all the OS files and any drivers/DLLs called during boot and delete/replace as necessary.
(3) Do a complete virus/malware scan on the rest of the files.
(4) Clean the registry thoroughly.
(5) Reboot the newly cleansed system.
It's a pity that Microsoft don't produce a bootable image with a version of MSDOS containing a basic NTFS filesystem driver and some automated tools to do all of the above. It's technically possible.
Trying to clean a compromised OS while it's running is a losing battle. It's not even worth bothering to try.
Re:Not futile or impossible: If thought about. (Score:2)
s/while it's running//
UBCD (Score:3, Informative)
It builds on Bart's PE. Bascially it's a Windows Live CD, similar to something like Knoppix only with terrible hardware detection and support*. It includes several virus scanners and Ad-Aware and Spybot. Works quite nice for scanning an infected computer. It also includes tools for reseting passwords, etc. It's very useful if you're stuck dealing with Windows m
Re:*over the years* (Score:2)
Perhaps the difference is that in years of running Linux I've never encountered a "kernel trojan"? And I would need to run as root to install such a thing in any case, but running as root hasn't ever been necessary to run end-user applications under Linux.
Re:*over the years* (Score:2)
Re:*over the years* (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:*over the years* (Score:5, Interesting)
How is this any different than a kernel trojan on linux?
Windows spyware exists?
Excuse me if there actually is some sort of trojan kernel floating around, but I've never even heard of such a thing. It's an interesting concept, though... seems like it would be hard to write a script to automatically install it, given the wide variety of boot configurations (lilo/grub, kernel params, boot partitions that may be unmounted at runtime, etc.). It might be easier to trojan some module in a part of the kernel with a very stable ABI. Or maybe not.
Compromising userspace seems much easier.
Getting back to your point, I agree that the safest thing to do with a compromised machine is wipe it and reinstall, particularly if it's infected with software that actively tries to prevent its removal.
Re:*over the years* (Score:4, Informative)
Unix rootkits? They most certainly do exist. Most have patches out there, or take advantage of "social" hacking. It doesn't always take a remote exploit to get root access, you know; sometimes the best exploit is the "user" exploit.
Don't even come close to thinking I'm saying that running Unix systems are risky. However, it is an _excellent_ principle that if your Unix system is compromised, you _must_ boot from read-only known-good media, and either reinstall, or verify MD5 sums of all your executables.
As Windows anti-malware tools do neither, they are not reliable, and should not be trusted.
Re:*over the years* (Score:4, Informative)
Re:*over the years* (Score:2)
Well, 'linux' is a little unspecific, but using debian as an example, I can boot from a CD, and use dlocate / dpkg -S / -L to check that md5 sums of binaries on the system & compare them to the md5 sums they should have.
You're left with a small number of binaries of items you've installed by hand or compiled yourself. These can be checked/replaced with known good items by hand.
Personally, I would reinstall 'cause it's a little easier - but its cer
Re:*over the years* (Score:2)
And... (Score:2, Funny)
missing piece of information (Score:2, Insightful)
Man, I can't get enough of these Microsoft execs. Gawd they're funny! Why the heck aren't they on NBC's "Last Comic Standing"?
The story would be more interesting if there were a time frame for the "amusing" (ha ha ha) anecdote. It's important to know as it likely exposes the lie that is Microsoft's improved security.
Consider that the "amusing" (ha ha ha) incident was fairly recent -- it probably was sometime in the last couple of years. That being the case it puts the time frame well past Microsoft's
Re:missing piece of information (Score:2)
obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Cue the snarky Linux/MacOS comments, (Score:4, Informative)
But seriously, If you must stick to Windows, the only way to insure your safety is to make an image of your clean system, and periodically restore from that. I used to remove malware from systems for a living, and unless the infection was trivial, the solution was always back up the data and reinstall the OS and apps fresh. It's amusing that Ballmer and his boys had so much trouble with that malware-laden system, but it's not terribly surprising. What is surprising is that Ballmer and his boys actually tried...knowing what they know, they must have known they were on a fool's errand...
Re:Cue the snarky Linux/MacOS comments, (Score:2)
Nonsense. By using alternate browsers and keeping the Windows Firewall turned on, I haven't had any spyware/virus problems whatsoever with Windows XP Professional. I run as an administrator because it's my computer and I know what I'm doing. I don't like being told what I can't do or that I need to re-enter my password, as in OS X. Of the 6 computers in our office
Re:Cue the snarky Linux/MacOS comments, (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cue the snarky Linux/MacOS comments, (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't mind that at all; the dimming out kinda grabs your attention. Entering in a password more than once per session, however, is redundant and annoying for me (plus, it raises the issue of the password entry box being
Re:Cue the snarky Linux/MacOS comments, (Score:2)
I guess the systems I've kept uninfested for years without reinstalling are just figments of my imagination ?
Re:Cue the snarky Linux/MacOS comments, (Score:2)
People like Steve Ballmer don't have friends! (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Either all Microsoft brass... (Score:2)
They should have called Microsoft support. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They should have called Microsoft support. (Score:2)
Nothing new here - please move along...
So obviously there is a long way between reality and M$ Management. Considering all those commercials that M$ puts up right now about them "stopping viruses" and so on - It's on the level of almost being as good as a Monty Python play. Just consider that IE 6 (whet about earlier versions?) has been rated among the top-10 worst technologies provided to t
In their own little world (Score:3, Insightful)
"This really opened our eyes to what goes on in the real world," Allchin told the audience.
Countless millions of customers have complained about spyware and viruses for years but it takes an MS exec to fumble before their eyes open? No wonder people get disenfranchised with big corporations.
English Nazi (Score:5, Informative)
This story was planted by the MS PR machine (Score:4, Insightful)
Increasingly, Slashdot is suffering from more and more of this.
More than 100 pieces of malware and spyware? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you were asked by someone in your Linux-only organization to clean up their machine after they had installed every single program they ever ran across, including several rootkits and Gnome, you'd correctly identify the problem as a PBKAC. Same thing here with Ballmer's friend's bride's father's computer.
Microsoft MSDN KB-1d10T. Problem: customer's computer has become unusable due to malware. Solution: sell the cusomter more support.
Re:More than 100 pieces of malware and spyware? (Score:2)
On Linux you'd have to do it yourself, intentionally. And you'd have to do it as root.
The monkey isn't helping (Score:2, Interesting)
"This really opened our eyes to what goes on in the real world," Allchin told the audience.
So I guess their Honeymonkey project [wikipedia.org] isn't working as well as they would've liked...
What I would have used.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What I would have used.. (Score:2)
I'm always amazed by people wasting their time and ignoring fundamental security practices by fumbling with hosed Windows systems.
Re:What I would have used.. (Score:2)
Autoruns [sysinternals.com] is THE 1337
Oh, and btw, after removing all the malware (in safe mode!! without network!) make sure the desktop image is NOT a web page, I lost 2 hours looking where the fuck a spyware was loading after removing it. I got the hint when saw that each time windows started the desktop image sort of went blank for a second before putting the backgroudn image.
The problem is (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What I would have used.. (Score:5, Informative)
If you can't do a reformat, the best thing to do is pull out the drive, hook it up to a computer (externally or internally) that isn't infected and run anti-malware tools from there.
If that isn't an option get something like Winternals ERD Commander and add some modules to it, like adaware, spybot and spysweeper. Plus some little things like stinger, hijackthis & rootkit revealer. Then an antivirus scanner - clamwin and AVG both run fine off of a live CD. All of these should be up to date. Windows defender won't run in ERD commander or off any live cd - it needs a full Windows environment. Then boot to live CD and run the tools. It works wonderfully. If you don't want to shell out for ERD commander, roll your own live windows based cd with BartsPE builder. I've heard of people doing it with Windows CE too, I just don't know how.
If the MiniPE liveCD wasn't infringing dozens of copyrights and wasn't a highly illegal set of warez - it would be the champ IMHO. It is a highly effective and well done set of tools.
Safe mode is good too, but a lot of scanners won't run in safe mode (like windows defender) and more imporantly, some malware embeds itself in system files. As such they often get locked (you can't delete them) even if safe mode.
Linux live CDs can handle viruses pretty well with clamAV, but they really can't find other sorts of malware very well. Plus they can't touch the system (if it is NTFS), so they aren't terribly useful for anything other than backing up data before a clean sweep (which is the best option after all anyway).
Malware is tricky, but you can get it if you try hard enough. Come on Ballmer you can do better, I'm not even an MCSE!
Bend over please ... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you wouldn't accept this as an adequate solution for an unreliable car, why would you accept this as an adequate solution for something many of us arguably spend more time in front of? Why not try switching car brands to something more reliable if your current vehicle is so problematic?
* Ford was just used as an example and have nothing against the company itself.
Re:Bend over please ... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, Mr Kuzak had never performed any basic maintenance tasks on his vehicle, nor taken it for regular servicing, always left it parked outdoors in conditions ranging from sub-zero cold to fry-an-egg heat and sandstorms, never locked the doors (often leaving the key in the ignition), used incorrect sized tyres, was unable to operate the clutch, regularly drove the car (a small hatchback, approximately twenty years old) over kerbs, through hip-deep water and down heavily-rutted offroad trails, and didn't even hold a driver's license.
Not too funny really (Score:2)
But Windows (Vista) is still implementing thes
Heh (Score:2)
Seriously, just switch from Windows and you'll have NoCares.
I think I know what happened... (Score:2)
On the other hand, I stumbled upon Microsoft's Shared Computer Toolkit [microsoft.com]. It seems you don't need Vista to get your registry sandboxed after all.
Vista astro-turfing? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the point is? (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, the mention of "Microsoft's top engineers" makes the whole thing look very fishy to me. I seriously doubt that MS actually got their top stars just to fix some guy's computer. That a bunch of top engineers would also be utterly unable to save a computer -- if nothing else, just backup all the important files and reinstall -- ranks up there with belief in Santa or the Tooth Fairy.
It's, again, the stuff crap elitism is made of: the belief that surely you're the smartest guy out there, and even MS with all their money couldn't hire someone smarter. And funnily enough, the less skilled one actually is, the more he loves to believe that kinda crap. People who once wrote a 5 line script, or once even managed to compile Linux... using someone else's script, love to pretend that verily, they're so cool that they could singlehandedly re-write XP _and_ Vista in a week and make it better than all those MS monkeys.
Basically even as MS bashing goes, this kind of fairy tale is a new low.
Re:And the point is? (Score:3, Insightful)
While we can turn this into an MS bashing post, the engineers at Redhat/Sun/IBM/whatever should have enough pride in their OS that they will try to fix a badly corrupt system without resorting to reinstalling from scratch. Surely we should give MS the same credit?
in the old days you could restore from tape (Score:3, Interesting)
now, I just RESTORE my drive to an external periodically. when the internal drive died, I just booted off the system DVD and did a RESTORE back to the newly-installed drive. presto, had MY machine back.
those of you who rotate three disks into two bays on a machine set up for RAID mirroring have a chance in MSland. nobody else does.
Clueless or Astroturf (Score:2)
Hmmm, clueless execs & engineers or a OS that is impossible to maintain. I don't think either scenario m
Windows Live OneCare (Score:5, Funny)
You mis-overheard someone talking about Ballmer.
Re:Windows Live OneCare (Score:2)
Maybe, just maybe... (Score:2)
It's very blatant that Balmer (and, I'm sure, a good deal of his managers close to him) is by lightyears out of touch with the reality of computer problems, and what really moves and shakes, what really bothers and annoy
Hourly fee (Score:2)
I'm not alone, and WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
1) If Steve Ballmer can't even go to a friend's wedding without getting the "Hey - you know a lot about computers, can you help me?" tired old line, then I don't feel so bad when it happens to me (and it happens to me a LOT).
2) So, the whole jist of this article is how neither Steve nor some of the best minds at Microsoft could fix a malware infected computer... So they create Microsoft Live OneCare? And this is suppost to be some kind of great thing? What a horrible endorsement of the service, "Use Microsoft Line OneCare... our best engineers can't really fix it either..." I guess when they sign up customers, Steve Ballmer will be running down the hallway saying, "Hey! We've got a Live one!"
Re:I'm not alone, and WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
no $50/year subscription = No OneCare
Whoever thought up this name is genious, it shows the true feelings of the company that creates the OS that the subscription fixes.
Avoid the internet and Windows is secure (Score:2)
To bad they are so Anti-Linux (Score:2, Informative)
Spybot SD
Adaware
When the first two snag everything they can snag, reboot the PC with Knoppix and if you know what you are looking for, start deleting the spyware DLLs, hidden folders and other nastiness from the spyware makers.
Reboot the PC and things could be fine.
It has worked very well for my job
Re:To bad they are so Anti-Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
This is too bloody difficult. No, I'm not being sarky.
Finding all this hidden/tucked away crap is far more difficult than administering a Linux system. I won't do it anymore; people tell me Windows takes less time to administer, and Apple's are too expensive;
Well, fix your own damn computer (it doesn
Viral Marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy fix (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I have discovered Debian Sid, the "unstable" developpement version of Debian. Everyday an upgrade of many many programs, some programs disappear some new come in the box. Everything has been working flawlessly for 5 years thanks to a database-based packaging system (something MS should be inspired of IMHO)
OneCare (Score:4, Insightful)
The question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait a sec.... (Score:3, Funny)
Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Ballmer was asked to clean spyware on a PC.
Couldn't do it.
So he took it to MS engineers who spent days trying to do it.
Then he thought: "How do we make money off this?"
Does anybody else here think that the thought should have been: "How do we fix this for our customers?"
MS is clearly not thinking of benefitting the customer but only how to enrich themselves from their own mistakes.
Lessons for Microsoft's OS engineers (Score:3, Insightful)
MagikSlinger's good lessons for Microsoft:
Re:The Solution (Score:2, Interesting)
If the man at the top and a team of Microsoft's best engineers faced defeat, what chance do ordinary punters have of keeping their Windows PCs virus-free?
That's when ordinary punters turn to Linux, Unix, BSD's, Macs.
Re:They should have called me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
So do I. And I don't do executive management for a living. It's an amusing situation, yes, but an unfair one. You don't expect an auto mechanic do also do the accounting and sales for the dealership; neither should you expect the comptroller to do a valve job.
I'm reminded of Michael Moore's bit where he goes to various companies and tries to get executives to do the things that the line workers do. Kudos to Ford Motor Company, where one of the execs came down and changed the oil on a Ford pickup.
Is it beneficial when the execs know the line work in some detail? Absolutely, but I don't think it's right to expect people who do one job to be able to do another. To those who will respond with, "But those execs get paid so much money, they should be able to do the line work!" -- the solution to that problem is to not pay execs so damned much money.
Everyone at ford must first work in the factory. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They should have called me out... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that you are being overly generous. Steve Balmer was only called on to do something that an end user of his (consumer!) product would want to do. A better analogy would be that you shouldn't expect an executive at a car manufacturer to be able to drive the company's cars. But of course you would.
Oh please... (Score:5, Interesting)
That some idiot "wants to do" something is hardly a criterion for classifying something as the normal operation of a product. People "want to do" stupid things they're not qualified for every day. Some want to repair their TV and get zapped by a still charged capacitor. Some want to weld an acetylene tank to their roof while doing repairs there. Some want to run in a drag race with a solid rocket booster strapped to their car. Darwin Awards [darwinawards.com] is full of people who thought that arc welding a grenade to a chain is normal consumer business. It doesn't automatically make it so.
It _is_ possible to operate a Windows PC for years without ever having to remove a single item of spyware. _That's_ the equivalent of driving a car. Or you can be an idiot and drive your car against the wall, or install Claria and everyhing else in sight on your Windows PC. Getting either your car or your PC back to good as new is already a repair job, not the day-to-day business of a normal consumer.
Basically the whole exercise isn't like expecting a BMW executive to be able to drive a BMW. It's more like asking a BMW executive to come fix your paint and tyres after you drove the car through a bed of roses. It's just not his job.
"A better analogy would be that you shouldn't expect an executive at a car manufacturer to be able to drive the company's cars. But of course you would."
Even then, I wouldn't. E.g.:
- most car manufacturers also make trucks (e.g., check out some of the big Mercedes Benz ones), cranes, bulldozers, etc. Acting like it's the exec's job to have a license to operate each of those is just stupid. A lot also make special F1 or rally models. I _don't_ expect them to be able to drive those either. E.g., I don't expect a Honda executive to be able to drive a McLarren-Honda in the F1 races. It's just not his job.
- I also don't expect Boeing executives to be able to fly a plane. Not even a small consumer one, like the Cessna. If he can, kudos to him, but if not, it wasn't his job to start with.
- I don't even expect a console maker to be a l33t console gamer. (And it's a consumer product, right?) Nintendo, for example, used to have someone at the helm who took _pride_ in never having played a video game. The guy used to spew such highly insulting stuff about the gamers, as that RPG fans are losers playing in the dark in their parents' basement. Yet it's the company which pwned the market in the NES and SNES days.
Etc.
Who cares? It's not their job to personally do those things, nor even to personally understand those things. His job is to hire someone who does. _The_ most important thing about management -- and often the difference between a good manager and a PHB -- is knowing when and how to delegate. You can't personally know everything and do everything.
Re:The fr**king chair .... (Score:2)
(Being rich and all.)
Re:Fixing you're friends computers (Score:5, Funny)
Bob: Hey, Dilbert, would you mind stopping by my house after work and seeing if you can fix my computer?
Dilbert: Sure. And while I do that you can be at my house cleaning the grout in my shower.
Bob (looking horrified): That's crazy talk.
Dilbert: Hey, I'm not the one who majored in comparative literature.
Re:A tribute to the techs cleaning up after M$ (Score:5, Interesting)
You should; otherwise you, and countless others, are subsidizing Microsoft by lowering their effective TCO.
If you include the cost of your time & effort, I'd argue that Mac Mini's are significantly cheaper than anything else other there.
In order to not seem heartless, I've decided on the following rule for any of my associates/friends/family. If you ask me for advice when purchasing your computer, or if I've warned you about the hazards of Windows and my standard of not supporting it, and you decide to go ahead and purchase a Windows system anyway, I won't support it.
I continue to support "grandfathered" systems, and people who don't know any better. But I make it a point now to warn everyone around me, and I make it a point for them to truly understand that if they go ahead and purchase a Windows system they should allocate funds to hire service technicans to clean out there system, or to pre-protect their system in advance.
I won't do it; my time is worth something, and the difference between a Mac Mini and a Dell crap-box is less than the worth of a few hours of my time. These days, I even tell people I am more than willing to help them setup a boot camp system, and/or a Linux system. But I won't help with Windows problems, because my life is too short, and I'm not interested in covering the hidden external costs of an MS system.