OT: TeamViewer=Yes QQ=NO!!!

Aabeck

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Aabeck
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Feb 2013
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Detroit
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I just had to have an engineer from China get online with his machine using my laptop. They don't use TeamViewer, but instead QQ Messenger that has a remote desktop function along with a host of other things.

Right after installing it (which was all Chinese) I noticed a pop-up with the English words "Adobe Flash Player" mixed in with the Chinese.

When that pop-up went away another one appeared for another program I had installed - then I figured out it was downloading and installing Chinese versions of what it found on my computer. I closed every pop-up after that so no more programs were downloaded, but then other things started happening.

All the desktop icons were re-arranged, many were renamed, and a few were put in a gray box. I moved the ones in the box back to the desktop but could not remove the empty gray box.

When I right clicked on the desktop to stop the icon alignment the Windows menu was now all Chinese! When I right click in a folder that menu is Chinese also.

Beware that unless you want a fully Chinese computer QQ should be treated as a virus.

My only recourse now is to wipe and completely reinstall all my software, so I put a flash drive in to save my licenses and QQ immediately started going after it - I yanked it and put in an empty flash that QQ couldn't change anything on and put all my licenses on it - all other files and downloads are archived, so other than 3 days of work I won't lose anything.

The engineer was told that if he needs to get online again he will have to setup a laptop for his use and ship it here, as mine are not being subjected to this again.
 
I thought of that, but this got so deep into installing programs and changes I didn't think a restore would do.

Plus I wanted all traces of QQ off my hard drive and out of the Windows registry - so I figured a wipe and clean install was they only safe thing to do.
 
I am going to have to find a VM.

My only experience with them was Hyper-V on Windows 8 that, at least to me, had a few bugs and operational errors, so I stopped using it.

Which one(s) do you guys use? My laptops are XP-SP3, Win7 Ultimate and Win10Pro. One that could work on all 3 would be convenient to learn to use.
 
VMware Workstation. We use VMs exclusively.

If you are going to run your programs in a VM, then a Windows-XP PC will probably feel a bit slow. VMs require a bit of horsepower and a lot of RAM.
I would probably ditch the Windows-XP laptop (edit: XP is also a security risk).

Apart from that, even if using VMs, I would never let some dude install some program on my PC (edit: That is my attitude to the topic. On top of that, our company IT guidelines specifically forbids it). Even if it doesnt crash or change everything to chinese, you dont know what else it does.
What you could do with VMs is to have a dummy-VM. Then you could let the other guy install his program in this VM and it would not affect your "real" VM.
You can also use the dummy-VM yourself if you want to try a program you are not 100% confident about.
 
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Jesper,

I have to keep the XP laptop, some of the older software I have (DOS & 16 bit) won't install &/or run on the newer computers. I actually bought this XP laptop after I upgraded to Windows 10 and couldn't install older software, the Win7 laptop is a recent acquisition.

Also, the XP laptop is the only one with a PCMCIA slot for my Siemens 5512 card. It could do with a larger hard drive, so I will look at SSD's.
 
They make PCMCIA-USB adapters now, and you can virtualize XP or even use programs like DOSBox if you need to run DOS applications. Virtualization is definitely the way to go!
 
After you get everything back up and running, you may want to consider cloning your hardrive to a ext drive. I back all my important files up, but also back up the complete HD in case something happens.

Clonezilla has never let me down.
 
HoldenC,

Cloning sounds better than creating System Restore points, especially if it can be copied back to original in one motion.

LoganB,

I have a USB PPI/MPI interface, but was told by a Siemens tech it was better to keep the PCMCIA computer as there were things the USB interface, and the 5512 in a USB-PCMCIA adapter, wouldn't do in Step 7. Was he just being old-school?
 
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