The Ashimmy Blog: Microsoft is going to have to do better than this if they want my security dollars

Blogging this while waiting on the phone for a Microsoft Live One Care technical support person. I have been on the phone for about 25 minutes, oops someone just picked up, hold on. OK I am back. The friendly Microsoft technical person, David has me on hold while he researches my problem. He doesn't sound like a Dave though. I know that outsourced call centers like to have their people use Western sounding names to make us more comfortable, but frankly I always feel like I am talking to some dancer at a strip club who tells me her name is Kitty or something. I would perfer they use their real name. I am a big boy and can deal with it.

Anyway, back to the story. I had installed (and paid for) OneCare on Bonnie's computer a while back. For the most part it has been fine, but frankly Bonnie doesn't get into many high risk activities on line. I knew I was in trouble though a while back when I asked my youngest son Bradley (5 at the time) what he was doing on the computer and he told me he was "Googling". Then just a few weeks ago, my oldest son Landon told me about this cool 3-D screen saver of fishes he can get for free. I knew we were headed for trouble.

Anyway tonight I noticed the little green one care icon was no longer in the tray. My security center was in the red with firewall and AV off. When I manually tried to start OneCare I got an error message that said to restart the machine. I did that, same problem. Then I uninstalled OneCare (another reboot) and installed it again. Same problem. When I tried to start the service I get another error message. So I log onto the OneCare help site and follow the automated FAQ, useless. I then try to do a live chat with support after figuring out how to log in to my account (they don't make it obvious). The chat asks to run a diagnostic to help which takes another 10 minutes. Then the chat client loads only half way and freezes. Back to go, don't collect the 200 bucks!

Now I log back into help and pick 24 hour phone support. Same diagnostic gathering takes another 10 to 15 minutes and they give me a phone number and case number. 25 minutes minutes I am on the phone on hold and finally Kitty, I mean Dave gets on to help. Dave tells me he is going to log into my computer (BTW I find out Dave's name is Jesus, I would have been fine with that). He logs in with my permission and after 3 or 4 or 5 reboots and checking he confirms it was a corrupted file that he had to reinstall which he did. Bada bing, badda boom, we are all fixed and good to go. We than rechecked everything and its all good. While we are on the phone I talk him into downloading Cobia and playing with it, hey ABC (always be closing).

So while the whole thing took over an hour and a half, Dave from Manilla did a heck of a job. What started out as bitch rant about Microsoft's OneCare support doesn't end that way and as they say in Manilla we have a "happy ending". Now lets hope it keeps the computer protected from the next thing my kids play with!