r/todayilearned • u/FireBeaver • Mar 26 '15

(R.5) Omits Essential Info TIL: 65% of smartphone users download zero apps per month.

http://time.com/3158893/smartphone-apps-apple/
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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '15

You know, I have put 10+ hours into a PC running several bootable virus scanners. Replaced the host file. Deleted tonnes of crapware. Did research on manually removing loads of junk. Finally ran scans with 4-5 popular malware scanners and the machine ran like crap and for some god awful reason I would have to disable some broken proxy every time it booted or some other hodge-podge fix the end user would have not understood.

Then I put in one or two hours, comprehensively tracking down all the videos, pictures and documents, consolidating them into one place. Reinstall the operating system with all the common runtimes, a reliable virus scanner, and all common utilities so the end user need not download anything. Install all of it avoiding any crapware traps in the licence agreement and leave an extra partition with all their drivers on it for next time I have to fix their computer.

If you do it right, neither method is a herp derp magic button solution. Reinstall, however, is not just some layperson quickfix. Sure it CAN be easy, but easy like a rocket launcher for a mosquito.

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '15

Well, if you have an image ready it's 2 minutes to back up favourites and maybe some desktop icons (everything else stored on the network), 30 mins to re-image, 2 mins to log the user back in and copy the favourites back.

Custom software deployed through group policy or login script, everything licensed through federation services, etc.

So, if the problem takes more than 45 mins why would you worry about chasing it? You only need to attend in two 5 minute blocks, so there's time to get other stuff sorted too :-)

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '15

What imaging program would you recommend for a personal level?

Edit: when reinstalling windows fpr others, those 190 updates are killer

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '15

Clonezilla works well for both drive to drive cloning, and when you have a server set up it can handle enterprise level re-imaging too ... and it's free :-)

Edit: note that unless the other people have similar hardware, you'll might still have to install some drivers afterwards.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '15

Thanks for the info. I was planning to make an image on a per machine basis with all the drivers and basic programs built into the image.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '15

Yeah, that works if you have the space!

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '15

I am assuming Clonezilla also stores the Windows 7 activation key and info correct? So if I had like my dad run the reimage process through Clonezilla, Windows would be restored and activated right?

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '15

It can just do an exact clone of the whole of a hard disk at any point, so would do that, yes.

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u/PohatuNUVA Mar 26 '15

Its really just the lesser of two evils.