Just had an unpleasant time on phone with a man on the Support Desk for my primary virus checker. I have a few of these programs and one, which ran overnight, told me I had a no-no on my system. The program is supposed to automatically repair or delete such things but in this case would do neither. I ran a couple of other virus scanners and they didn't notice anything wrong. Then I rebooted and ran the primary one again and the infections were still there, it said.
I decided to call Support for the primary checker, the one that had found two instances of one infection. The wait time was 19 minutes and when a human finally came on the line, he was obviously not on the same continent as I, nor was English the language he knew best. I could have settled for not knowing English well if he'd known his own product well but 'twas not the case, either. I asked why his program could locate this virus but not remove it. He explained the program was a scanner that was designed to prevent viruses from getting onto my computer, not a program to remove them once they were there.
I pointed out that, first of all, I was looking at a screen of the program that listed the two infections, gave me several options including "Repair" and "Delete," but wouldn't do any of those things when so directed. So, yes, the program is designed to remove them once they are there. Secondly, since they got there, the program hadn't done the part of its job he admitted it was supposed to do. Anyway, he made a few suggestions of the "well, you might try this" variety, then recommended that I have him hand my case off to "The Engineers," another department which allegedly knows something about fixing what I needed fixed.
That would have been fine except for this: Though I pay an annual fee for this virus program that promises to keep my computer free from viruses and to remove them if they do get on there, I have to pay an additional fee for The Engineers to assist me. How much? $179.00. I decided, not out of cheapness but principle, I didn't want to do that.
That was the end of the line with this guy. He said to me, "Is there anything else I can help you with today?" I replied, "You haven't helped me with anything so far" and that was the end of that call. I decided to try one of his suggestions, which was to run his firm's virus scanner in Safe Mode. That, he said, might allow it to remove the infections. I rebooted into Safe Mode, ran his program…
…and discovered that his program won't run in Safe Mode. Or at least, the part of it I needed to use wouldn't run in Safe Mode.
So I got out of all that and went back into what I guess you'd call Unsafe Mode. I then did a System Restore to restore my system to the configuration of a week ago. Then I ran his virus program again…and the infections were gone. Howcome he didn't suggest that instead of the $179.00 Engineers? I'm guessing that (a) he was just reading scripts on his computer screen and that's what they want him to suggest…and (b) I need a different primary virus checker.