Okay, I'm a computer geek. I admit it. Sad thing, most of my friends know the same thing. "Jeff is a computer geek" - it's not that I'm complaining, but I'm often called upon to help when some dork in India or the Philippine Islands working for a cheap ass company messes up a friends computer..

Tonight was such a night. A few days ago, one of these low cost know-nothing outsourced idiots instructs a customer (my friend) to allow them to take over the computer. They then proceeded to edit registry setting, and managed to put the computer in a permanent "safe mode" boot loop. Not only that, they updated the call log "issue resolved" and denied to help my friend any further. She was told that she needed to spend 300 bucks at a local computer shop to backup and restore her computer.

When I arrived, the computer was locked into safe mode. I resolved this easily, but then the internet was locked to "local only" and the internet was not available. The hardware was fine, the network was fine, the network was seen without issue - the computer was simply "local only" and no matter what I tried, it was thus stuck.

But then, I got smart. I remembered that Nortan Antivirus and Vista suck. That's right. I said it. They S U C K. I found the microsoft knowledge base article on the topic (common issue with vista and norton AV) and found the issue was due to an incomplete or corrupted uninstall. I then found Norton's resolution and removal tool. I downloaded the tool and ran it from the desktop - and the issue was resolved within 5 minutes.

I had told my friend to "ditch norton" and installed Avast (free version) on her computer.

Her computer now has a running AV, the internet works, and she didn't need to spend any money to get it done..

And to the idiot in the Philippine Islands who wasn't brave enough to take care of the customer - you just cost your company 4 licenses. Congratulations. Loser.