A lady calls with a problem connecting to the internet (cable internet with telstra).

Sounds like another spyware problem. I get there & its a severe infection. I try to boot to safe mode, but it cannot read the CD… Try to boot a bartPE cd, but the boot sequence seems to be HDD before cdrom, so no CDs can boot… Cant go into the bios (password protected & nobody knows the password), so I open up the PC & find the clear bios jumper & short it out for a few seconds. Reboot & I can get into the bios at last.

I notice the P4 cpu is running at 76 degrees… Hmmm, thats awfully hot. I’ll look at it later, first I change the boot sequence (floppy, then CD, then HDD).

I’m told that the PC was very dusty, so they recently cleaned it & installed an exhaust fan into the case.

Boot from bartPE & do a quick spyware scan & it starts finding lots of spyware.

By this stage, ive been working at the computer for about 1 hour & the customer doesn’t want to spend much money (still paying for christmas & hubby lost his job for a few weeks), so I offer a capped price if i can take the computer back to my office & work from there.

Back at the office, the computer runs for maybe a minute or two, then suddenly loses power. I leave it off for a minute & try again, but it just won’t stay on for more than a few minutes.

Remembering what I saw in the bios previously, I remove the CPU fan & heatsink, & I notice that the heatsink & cpu have very dry thermal paste. I guess the cpu has been “baking” for quite a while… I remove all the old paste & put a thin layer of new paste onto the cpu.

I also notice the “exhaust fan” is sucking air into the case… hmmm, fan is just below the power supply unit, so guess what happens: PSU blows out warm air, then case fan sucks in the warm air, which gets warmed up even more by the CPU & PSU, then the PSU fan blows out even warmer air, etc etc… not good!

I reverse the fan so that it blows air out (just like the PSU).

Once re-assembled, the cpu is running at 62 degrees (thats better!) and the system doesn’t suddenly shut down.

I remove all the spyware & install some antispyware to complement the existing AVG software, then return the PC to a very happy owner.