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Swen? Not Swen?
Last night I contacted McAfee tech support for help with my ongoing virus problem. Reaching a technician on live internet chat took only a minute. They helped me fix the problem, and my computer is now virus-free.
Okay, that was the science fiction portion of my journal today. Here's the reality:
For some reason it took even longer to reach the top of the queue in McAfee's tech support chat than before - in this case, it was nearly two hours. I reached a technician that I'd spoken to before - okay, wait. I've now dealt with four different McAfee technicians, and I have to say that I have the strong suspicion that they do not use their real names with customers. Either that, or McAfee is only hiring people with names that sounds very much like those of movie stars without being precisely the same.
Actually, it reminds me of when I was working in the porno business (I did data entry for six months as a temp, if you were wondering). Anyone in the office who had to deal with the public had a fake name, like "Vic Steele" or "Candi Boxx" (note: I just made up those names, so if there are real porno stars with those names, it's just a coincidence. Okay, I just Googled. Vic Steele was a guitarist for the Hollies, but I am amazed to see that there IS NO Candi Boxx. I can't imagine a better name for a porno star).
Mind you, the people in the office were NOT porno stars (although one girl was really cute) - they were just helping people with their orders, just like CS reps in any other office. Except the orders were for things like the "Talking Heavenly Angel with optional heat, vibration, and built-in cassette player", or the "Double Intruder".
Oh, the stories I could tell...
Back to McAfee. At this point I'd already chatted with four other agents, and tried VirusScan, VirusScan in safe mode, a special Scan program which couldn't run due to memory problems (got to wonder why, since my system has half a gig), and a program called Stinger. Stinger seemed to make some things better, but I was still getting pop-up warning boxes from McAfee about the same set of infected files which had supposedly already been deleted twenty times over by McAfee.
Anyway, I opened the continuing ticket and after two hours was chatting with a tech. He opened with the usual canned responses - okay, time for another digression.
"Hi, this is [name]. I can help you." That's one of the stupidest *^+&ing things a person can say. How do you KNOW you can help me? You don't. And that's the sort of thing that sounds REALLY LAME the fifth time you hear it for the same problem. The previous four times didn't work, so let's lay off the canned confidence, eh?
I know, they don't really have a choice. They're practically robots, after all; I know that 99% of the time they aren't actually typing anything, they're just sending pre-programmed phrases off a menu. True, the phrases have my name inserted at appropriate points (i.e. "Thank you, Peter"), but that's because at the start of the chat I'm required to enter my first and last names; it's all automated.
Which everyone knows, of course. This isn't a big secret. But I have to admit that it's a little annoying somehow. Every technician I've dealt with has used the exact same preprogrammed phrases, and it always comes off as totally phoney. They should build a little variation into the menu, just to make the techs sound human.
Actually, during some of the long waits I started pre-writing some of my own responses in a text file. I copied and pasted answers into the chat as needed. Partly, of course, I had to guess what they would ask me. More often than not I guessed right. I also saved copies of answers to new questions, for use next time if needed (and so far, they always have been). It passed the time.
"Peter, I would be happy to help you eliminate that virus."
"Okay..." Perhaps I should have sounded more upbeat, but with three failures behind me (each preceeded by the very same phrase) I think a little dubiousness can be forgiven.
So this time they had me download yet another program, an emergency bootscan program which needed to be saved to a floppy and then run in DOS mode. I grabbed a floppy and gave it a try.
I ran it for both the C and D drives, and each time it reported that it had scanned six or seven files (all clean), and for no specified reason had left an additional 26-27 files unscanned. Supposedly none of the files were infected. I restarted Windows, and things seemed pretty good.
But of course when I started up my PC this morning the virus warnings were back. Looks like I'll be chatting with McAfee for the fifth time tonight - but this time I simply won't stay up so late. Last night I was up until 1AM trying to fix this thing, the same as the night before - and I have to get up at 5AM on weekdays. I'm way too old to take three four-hour nights in a row.
Oh yeah, about Swen: the tech last night claimed that the virus was NOT Swen. I can see why, since it only displays some of the Swen characteristcs. However, he didn't tell me what he thought it was.
Of course, he probably didn't know since he wasn't able to remove it.
Okay, that was the science fiction portion of my journal today. Here's the reality:
For some reason it took even longer to reach the top of the queue in McAfee's tech support chat than before - in this case, it was nearly two hours. I reached a technician that I'd spoken to before - okay, wait. I've now dealt with four different McAfee technicians, and I have to say that I have the strong suspicion that they do not use their real names with customers. Either that, or McAfee is only hiring people with names that sounds very much like those of movie stars without being precisely the same.
Actually, it reminds me of when I was working in the porno business (I did data entry for six months as a temp, if you were wondering). Anyone in the office who had to deal with the public had a fake name, like "Vic Steele" or "Candi Boxx" (note: I just made up those names, so if there are real porno stars with those names, it's just a coincidence. Okay, I just Googled. Vic Steele was a guitarist for the Hollies, but I am amazed to see that there IS NO Candi Boxx. I can't imagine a better name for a porno star).
Mind you, the people in the office were NOT porno stars (although one girl was really cute) - they were just helping people with their orders, just like CS reps in any other office. Except the orders were for things like the "Talking Heavenly Angel with optional heat, vibration, and built-in cassette player", or the "Double Intruder".
Oh, the stories I could tell...
Back to McAfee. At this point I'd already chatted with four other agents, and tried VirusScan, VirusScan in safe mode, a special Scan program which couldn't run due to memory problems (got to wonder why, since my system has half a gig), and a program called Stinger. Stinger seemed to make some things better, but I was still getting pop-up warning boxes from McAfee about the same set of infected files which had supposedly already been deleted twenty times over by McAfee.
Anyway, I opened the continuing ticket and after two hours was chatting with a tech. He opened with the usual canned responses - okay, time for another digression.
"Hi, this is [name]. I can help you." That's one of the stupidest *^+&ing things a person can say. How do you KNOW you can help me? You don't. And that's the sort of thing that sounds REALLY LAME the fifth time you hear it for the same problem. The previous four times didn't work, so let's lay off the canned confidence, eh?
I know, they don't really have a choice. They're practically robots, after all; I know that 99% of the time they aren't actually typing anything, they're just sending pre-programmed phrases off a menu. True, the phrases have my name inserted at appropriate points (i.e. "Thank you, Peter"), but that's because at the start of the chat I'm required to enter my first and last names; it's all automated.
Which everyone knows, of course. This isn't a big secret. But I have to admit that it's a little annoying somehow. Every technician I've dealt with has used the exact same preprogrammed phrases, and it always comes off as totally phoney. They should build a little variation into the menu, just to make the techs sound human.
Actually, during some of the long waits I started pre-writing some of my own responses in a text file. I copied and pasted answers into the chat as needed. Partly, of course, I had to guess what they would ask me. More often than not I guessed right. I also saved copies of answers to new questions, for use next time if needed (and so far, they always have been). It passed the time.
"Peter, I would be happy to help you eliminate that virus."
"Okay..." Perhaps I should have sounded more upbeat, but with three failures behind me (each preceeded by the very same phrase) I think a little dubiousness can be forgiven.
So this time they had me download yet another program, an emergency bootscan program which needed to be saved to a floppy and then run in DOS mode. I grabbed a floppy and gave it a try.
I ran it for both the C and D drives, and each time it reported that it had scanned six or seven files (all clean), and for no specified reason had left an additional 26-27 files unscanned. Supposedly none of the files were infected. I restarted Windows, and things seemed pretty good.
But of course when I started up my PC this morning the virus warnings were back. Looks like I'll be chatting with McAfee for the fifth time tonight - but this time I simply won't stay up so late. Last night I was up until 1AM trying to fix this thing, the same as the night before - and I have to get up at 5AM on weekdays. I'm way too old to take three four-hour nights in a row.
Oh yeah, about Swen: the tech last night claimed that the virus was NOT Swen. I can see why, since it only displays some of the Swen characteristcs. However, he didn't tell me what he thought it was.
Of course, he probably didn't know since he wasn't able to remove it.
no subject
I would expect MacAfee to do a better job with their own software when dealing with a virus. Has anyone yet suggested reinstalling Windows? That seems like the favorite reposnse of numbnut tech support gusy everywhere when confronted by this type of issues.