The sound of rat-a-tat-tat grabbed my attention and I looked through the window towards the front door, a neighbour was there. I got up out of my favourite chair in front of the computer, opened the door and said "Hi Bert, what can I do for you?" - name changed to protect the guilty :). "My computer won't start," was the reply. "Well it will but it crashes out without ever allowing me to access anything, could you take a look?" Bert is a nice guy, always helpful. I slipped my shoes on and walked with him down the road to his house.

The symptoms he had described were correct and after a few attempts his machine - running Win ME - managed to stay afloat long enough for me to have a look around the system. 29% free resources, it was a modern miracle it was running at all this time!

His son is a music fan and had been downloading, ahem "free music" from a well known warez site; and a ton of stuff he no doubt didn't think he was getting. Spyware running everywhere on startup, hence the problems Bert was experiencing. Could I remember the URL of search and destroy? Could I heck as like. MSN Messenger to the rescue.

I noticed the little green guy in the systray and opened him up and logged in. A quick scan down my contacts and I could see Laurie and Patty Ayers online. I sent a message to both of them asking for the URL I couldn't remember. Both came back with the excellent search and destroy URL. I thanked them and logged off. A voice behind me could be heard to say...

"Bloody hell, I've never even used that, where does it get the answers from?"

"Which, Bert?"

"That little green guy, how did he know what you needed?"

"Oh, right. They were friends I was contacting for information."

"Really!"

Bert is amazed at this point...

"That's bloody marvellous, technology hey, amazing what they can do these days, bloody amazing!"

Bert went quiet....

Then...

"How did they know you were here?"

It took a little while to explain, and he now has me as his only MSN Messenger contact. :) Poor guy, me of all people!

Anyway, back to the machine, he had over 200 instances of various spyware running on his machine. All are now happily in spyware heaven - hell? who knows? - and his resources are running at 70%. Not great, but better, and the machine is usable again. It was a fun hour, a few brews and a good laugh along the way.