A simple query like Msoft box is infected with virus will involve all the S***ty stuffs together with other requirements. I hate it when users keep complaining about virus and any anti-virus I recommend, on top of that they don't know their own machine. For me its like a minefield ready to explode.
Notation:-
boxA - infected
boxB - foreign
These are basic stuff every computer user is expected to know so that when something goes wrong it can be put to practice, but it is a big ask for user who likes using OS(msoft) for basic task. The dilemma is at the time of explaining the possible reason why its not working to "such users" - they don't even care to know and its mere waste of my time and energy troubleshooting such machine.
Even though the technological singularity is proposed keeping in mind the arrival of more intelligent machines it need not be the case. It can happen with people who are tech savvy. There occurs a difference in how one perceives knowledge/technology and there will be small pockets of individuals working with or upgrading their knowledge regardless of what happens in the ignorant general public arena.
Enough ranting, diving into how GNU/linux came to rescue. Scenario was, a win boxA when powered on boots and starts scanning for (human interface) virus(HIV), the box was a breeding ground for HIV I had to quarantine myself after visiting the box :). No application would execute. On top of that the CD/DVD drive was not accepting bootable disk (user didn't know about that). Thinking about the worst, thought even the BIOS is being compromised.. bloody miscreant may have flashed it, So took out HDD and installed GNU/linux server (CLI) as well as win on boxB, everything worked not to forget the backing up process which was done on external HDD(usb).
Now installed HDD on boxA and viola even though the config of boxA and boxB were entirely different. GRUB was shown and linux booted without any problem but NIC was not recognised. Even the external HDD was also recognised as "freecom technologies".
Now the moment of booting into win as usual it didn't but now tried to install OS on boxA but CD was not being accepted. All these times it was stupid DVD/CD drive that was faulty, only if the user had known about his/her machine all these would have been avoided.
The external HDD was recognized using following commands
tail /var/log/messages
Aug 30 07:29:39 ranjit-laptop kernel: [ 97.829390] USB Mass Storage support registered.
Aug 30 07:29:44 ranjit-laptop kernel: [ 102.828845] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access Freecom Mobile Drive XXS PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 CCS
Aug 30 07:29:44 ranjit-laptop kernel: [ 102.835131] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 488397168 512-byte logical blocks: (250 GB/232 GiB)
Aug 30 07:29:44 ranjit-laptop kernel: [ 102.835456] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
Aug 30 07:29:44 ranjit-laptop kernel: [ 102.836049] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Aug 30 07:29:44 ranjit-laptop kernel: [ 102.839634] sdb: sdb1
Aug 30 07:29:44 ranjit-laptop kernel: [ 103.478217] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
Aug 30 07:32:10 ranjit-laptop kernel: [ 248.537006] Marking TSC unstable due to TSC halts in idle
Aug 30 07:32:10 ranjit-laptop kernel: [ 248.538271] Switching to clocksource hpet
Aug 30 07:33:34 ranjit-laptop rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="4.2.0" x-pid="795" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] rsyslogd was HUPed, type 'lightweight'.
Aug 30 07:33:34 ranjit-laptop rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="4.2.0" x-pid="795" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] rsyslogd was HUPed, type 'lightweight'.
ranjit@ranjit-laptop:~$ lsusb
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0a5c:219c Broadcom Corp.
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 07ab:fc88 Freecom Technologies
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0ac8:c33f Z-Star Microelectronics Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
ranjit@ranjit-laptop:~$
ranjit@ranjit-laptop:~$ mount
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
/dev/sda2 on /home type ext4 (rw)
rpc_pipefs on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
/dev/sda6 on /mnt/sda6 type ext4 (rw)
/dev/sda7 on /mnt/sda7 type ext4 (rw)
nfsd on /proc/fs/nfsd type nfsd (rw)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/ranjit/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=ranjit)
/dev/sdb1 on /media/S P PILLAI type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=1000,gid=1000,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,flush)
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