D
Detlev Dreyer
Kelly said:It depends on the environment of the user. For a home user, there is
no need to seek professional help, if the user can help themselves. I
have never, in my years, had to do a flatline nor advise one to do so
under these conditions.
Well, like Ron said - for a company it's economic to rebuild a system
from scratch rather than spending time for searching the cause of a
problem. For a home user, it's an absolutely no-no to flatten the system
if this is not really necessary. In fact, *all* of my countless home
systems (desktop systems, notebooks) still run with their original
Windows installation the oldest one since 1996. BTW, upgrading from XP
Home to XP Pro doesn't count as a re-installation. During many years
posting to newsgroups, there were very few cases only advising to do a
flatline as the last resort.
However, things look completely different when there are security issues
involved. I personally would never ever resume working with a system
that was infected with 68 (found) trojans. Therefore, there is no reason
for me to give a different advice here other than flatlining the system
and rebuilding from scratch. Beyond this, the user should change his
behaviour completely since catching at least 68 trojans is not easy to
manage. Otherwise, the next infection will be just a matter of days.