A customer calls, saying her son had done somethign to her laptop, and she cannot use her word document.

 I ask a few questions, & all I can gather is that access to the file is locked.

I guess that the file has been pasword protected… Looks like I'll need a few days & a cracking program… But she says that ALL her files are locked…

This is very unusual, so I decide to pay her a flying visit, if it is a password problem, at least I can get a copy of the files in question.

Oddly, the word documents can be viewed, but not altered. I quickly find that Office keeps popping up with a request to be "activated". Also, it turns out Office was installed about 3 months ago.

This looks like an "I didn't know I had to activate Office in order to use it" problem… easily fixed: connect to the internet & 5 seconds to "activate" (and her son is off the hook).

Since this laptop never connects to the internet, I'm asked to remove Norton IS (which I do happily).