When will they learn?
I picked up a machine from a client a couple of weeks ago. It was reported that it could not boot up and they thought it had a virus. I took the HD out and mounted it via external USB to another system and began an epic Viral fight. I ran approximately a dozen avscans using a variety of tools, from AVG to McAfee's Stinger. Further I loaded up the Windows defender and scanned it time and time again.
Ultimately there were over 100 viral variants and general malware on the system. Then I spent about 2 hours on the phone and online with hardware support to discover that the memory stick was bad. Eventually I replaced the memory and viola, it booted up.
So now, having replaced the memory and returned the Harddrive to the system, I begin to do general maint. on the system. It's AV was out of date as of June 2005, and Anti-Spyware installed, and Service Pack 1 for XP was installed.
Finally after updating the system at Microsoft Update and installing updated AVG and Windows Defender, I run disk clean up and defrag. All in all the system went from 'crawling or non-responsive' to back to normal. All this on a system that originally cost $1700 2 years ago. Simple maint could have saved a $500 bill, but unlike their car, they just did not understand the costs of maint. They could have gotten low/no cost regular service measures but instead ended up sinking almost 1/2 the cost to replace the system in fixing the current investment.
oh well