Friday

Friday's client had a problem I see all too often. They have a pair of desktops in the common areas of the house. The kids can get on pretty much any time they feel like it. The teenage son downloads with wild abandon, and hilarity ensues. Lots of spyware, a few viruses that AVG killed. Some of the security apps I installed on my last visit were missing. Hmmm?

As an added bonus, their back up hard drive had slipped off into the afterlife some time ago. I wouldn't have noticed either, if not for the PC taking about ten minutes to boot. The system logs showed a repeated error in which the device was not responding in a timely fashion. Once it finally finished startup, I tried to read the volume and couldn't. Restarting the device didn't help. She's dead, Jim.

So that brings up two points: Security apps are worthless if not maintained, and backups are worthless if not verified periodically.