Scanning and updating problems

NoraHensl

A few days ago, my 5 y.o son was playing with my husband's computer without permission. Later I found out that he installed some games, programs, and antiviruses (we already used F-secure at that time). So I tried to clean the computer and delete all the unnecessary programs. After that, I discovered that some pages of my project's website I'm currently working on (BackyardStyle), stopped opening. I used to have almost the same problem with the Avast browser extension on my computer at work, but it got fixed by itself. Moreover, after that, my husband said that now F-secure's real-time scanning doesn't work, and the app doesn't want to update. Maybe it was me, or my son, who deleted something, that shouldn't be deleted?

Simon

Gosh, he's pretty good for a five year old!

Have you considered doing a System Restore back to when the PC was working properly?

Otherwise, a reinstall of F-Secure might fix that problem.

NoraHensl

https://community.f-secure.com/en/discussion/comment/123880#Comment_123880

It worked! Thank you so much! I did both, restored the system and reinstalled F-secure. It took me 2 days to fix everything he did for an hour. The website and scanning are now working.

NoraHensl

And it's not his first time installing something 😀

Actually, I haven't thought about restoring a system back. Thanks for the idea! I will try it

NoraHensl

Maybe in this case you can suggest some programs to avoid such situation? Some parent control or something like this?

Simon

I'm not an expert on parental controls as I don't have an inquisitive five year old lol!

F-Secure does have parental control functions but they are based on Windows profiles, so I believe you have to lock down the user account on Windows for the parental control to work effectively.

Maybe, if it isn't already, password protect the computer so that it needs a password to log on, and remember to log off / power off when the machine is not in use?

NoraHensl

I guess, I'll just have to create a new account for him without any access to the Internet or some important programs and files; otherwise, he'll do something way more interesting 😄

Anyway, thanks for your help!

Simon

As far as I understand it, if you create an account for him, you can put certain limits on that account, and if he were to install anything, as long as the account doesn't have Admin rights, it wouldn't affect the whole computer. But you would also need to make sure the adults account DOES have Admin rights, and is password protected on login.

But as I said, I'm no expert on this stuff.