Bulk Emails

page1

I wonder if someone can help me.

My daugher and other 4 friends got a letter from Sky saying that their internet is suspended as one of the computer is sendeing bulk e-mails.

They have been adviced to re-format the offending computer and send them a certificate to prove this. My qestion is how do we know which computer is doing this, where and how much would it cost to re-format.

jayme1

well you shouldnt bother paying for someone to reinstall the OS as you can just use the system restore discs that either came with the computer or you had to burn when you first started it up.

victor2

I assume your daughter and friends (students perhaps) share the same internet connection and one of the computers has become infected with some sort of virus. Do they have antivirus software installed? If so, can they each run a full scan in the hope it detects something? That would at least help identify a culprit.
If that is not possible or doesn't help, then maybe a friend with a bit of computer knowhow can scan each computer with some antivirus freeware on a bootable CD. Bit more tricky, but it can be done.
Once the culprit is identified, I would get onto Sky and say the computer in question has been isolated/reformatted/destroyed or something along those lines. Maybe they will then reinstate the connection.
As for reformatting, it's a litttle drastic but may be the best way to sort it out. Most systems come with either a recovery disc or partition that can be used to put it back as shipped. I'd ask them what they mean by a certificate. It might be you could get your local friendly computer shop to re-install the computer and provide a letter confirming they've done it. Otherwise, it could get very expensive and you have no guarantee the problem won't come back.

Of course, if more than one machine is infected, the problem increases....

marleyboy

I would agree with the above post, a complete reformat seems a little drastic, there are plenty of virus scanning software that could disinfect the system for you, many of which are FREE.

I cannot understand why SKY would suggest a complete format, this is something I would double check first.