Like I said, we are a tier 1 tech support. What I do is work for a university. We also do tech support for another university (contacted out to us), and that other university is a 2 year trade school in Indiana.
Our service is mainly troubleshooting simple and mild problems, and escalating difficult issues to the relevant departments. A problem like spyware is a constant in our job, causing problems ranging from system instability to mal-rendering web pages.
Ideally, a backup/wipe/reinstall is the idea solution here, BUT these are regular non-tech-savy users. The computer is a means to an end here. "It goes beep-blip-boop that my teacher wants" is the kind of thought. Explaining that a reinstall is ideal is ignoring the fact that this operation would cost ~200$ at Best Buy or similar place.
Frankly, I use what tools I can. If that means manually uninstalling what I know is spyware, rebooting in safe mode and running Malware Bytes, I'll do exactly that. At least it triages the problem until next week when the user goes and downloads something Adfly or Softonic... again.
Our service is mainly troubleshooting simple and mild problems, and escalating difficult issues to the relevant departments. A problem like spyware is a constant in our job, causing problems ranging from system instability to mal-rendering web pages.
Ideally, a backup/wipe/reinstall is the idea solution here, BUT these are regular non-tech-savy users. The computer is a means to an end here. "It goes beep-blip-boop that my teacher wants" is the kind of thought. Explaining that a reinstall is ideal is ignoring the fact that this operation would cost ~200$ at Best Buy or similar place.
Frankly, I use what tools I can. If that means manually uninstalling what I know is spyware, rebooting in safe mode and running Malware Bytes, I'll do exactly that. At least it triages the problem until next week when the user goes and downloads something Adfly or Softonic... again.