Sasser sedition

I'm at J's cousin's place right now, after a harrowing session of tech support. As to be expected, the Sasser worm struck, and struck hard. It's a stroke of luck that the XP system updates had already been downloaded and were ready to install; else I'd be running late into the night trying to fend off new worm attacks.

As it happens, more than one virus was resident, along with various adware/spyware/malware nasties. IE was (and still is) totally b0rked, it won't load a single thing. I had to do a manual FTP to the mozilla.org site and download/install Firefox 0.8, at least that's working. Grabbed a fresh copy of Ad-aware, which blew away another 276 lingering creeps. Flushed the Netsky virus too. NAV subscription has expired, so goodness knows how many other menaces are lurking under the hood.

The system looks stable enough so far, but without a functioning IE, a lot of other stuff doesn't work properly (like Y! Messenger Beta's installer, Windows Update, et al. fehh). One of us will have to swing by later with the standard firefighting kit and attempt a repair. Some other day.

Urrgh. Bloody malware. Bloody viruses. Get a Mac!