Yep, I did similar around the time. Can't blame people for being mad that the thing they bought is damn near unusable (and was destined to be, but they didn't understand that part). If someone buys a new bike, even if it's cheap, it shouldn't roll like you're on gravel after a couple weeks and become impossible to pedal within months. But damn, there were a lot of horrible machines sold in those days.

And then of course, the least fun part of that era, the guys who would bring their machines back weekly despite very stern warnings to stop visiting "those sites".

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 9 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

And then of course, the least fun part of that era, the guys who would bring their machines back weekly despite very stern warnings to stop visiting "those sites".

Hey, they were good for business lol

Lady he's putting my kids through college

[–] Benjaben@lemmy.world 4 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Definitely not wrong! Especially once you've dialed in your routine of anti-malware utilities to run on pretty much everything. It's like an antibiotic cocktail, lol. Or did you prefer the "back up and nuke on sight" approach?

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 5 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I'd usually start with my suite of cleanup tools, do some manual cleanup if needed, apply all the software and security updates, and then give it a day with some light test usage. Then I'd re-run the tools to see if they picked anything back up. If not, I released it back to the customer. If anything at all came back, I'd backup their data, pull all the product keys I could (Office, Photoshop, etc), nuke the OS, and reinstall what I could as close to the original as possible.