4 ms·
It's amazing how easily a child could accidentally infect a PC with malware in those days. Consider this common workflow, which would infect a computer in a fe
by gitgud 4y ago
It's amazing how easily a child could accidentally infect a PC with malware in those days.
Consider this common workflow, which would infect a computer in a few minutes:
Open up Internet Explorer, type "free song download", click first link, popup ads begin, malware begins...
- userbinator 4y agoI wonder how many learned how to remove malware and/or reinstall Windows too, thus gaining quite useful practical skills and becoming more comfortable with tinkering with the OS. I've read plenty of stories about kids accidentally doing so on their parents' computer, then while desperately attempting to fix their mistake, learned about such things as the registry (in particular, the location of autorun keys...), batch files, the command prompt, etc.
- Waterluvian 4y agoYup. I was wiping and reinstalling my PC by age 10 or 11.
- rootsudo 4y agoThat's what I did, now shy of 20yrs later, I'm thankful for it as it was a great door to an ending era of computer fluency and troubleshooting/learning. Nowadays, it's different. Less poking and proding in an OS and that is sad.
- allset_ 4y agoYep. About once a month after I broke something badly or got malware for the millionth time. Shoutout to my friend's dad who worked in IT and gave me their WinXP corporate serial number so I could reinstall without having to phone Microsoft! Still have it memorized to this day.