We're talking about the type of person who gets a popup that says, "Your computer is infected! Click to fix!" and they click it. Then when prompted they dig out out their credit card, "Because my computer told me I had to."

We're talking SIX toolbars in the browser with an, "I don't know how they got there."

We're talking a seven minute boot time that they accept as "normal".

At one point his IE looked like that. He'd download and install every single free program PCMag recommended without unchecking all the extra crap that went along with them. He had six registry checkers, multiple virus and malware programs, and lots more junk.

He never turned his computer off because it'd take as much as 45 minutes to finish booting what with all the scans etc.

After he died, it took me two days to clear all the junk programs off, then I spent a week trying to get him off all the mailing lists he'd hooked into. He was getting scam 150-200 emails a day - no wonder he never saw the emails from his kids and grandkids!

I shouldn't complain. At 90 he was still doing stuff on his computer and trying to keep up as much as he could, right up to the very end. I hope I last as long.

Pardon me for the late comment..I have time today to wander thru this group.

I KNOW people who would do this
but I have never actually seen it.

wow......

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someone brought one to me that took over 5 minutes to boot from power on to the desktop and ready to go.
It had 250Mb of free space on a 120Gb hard drive with XP on it.
The Windows/Temp folder had 60,00+ files in it dating back to 2005.
Just emptying that freed up 16 Gb drive space. By the time I cleaned out all the Temp and Temporary Internet Files folders it had 29 GB free space.
Once I finished getting rid of the junk, including all the original "trial offers", etc., the drive had over 40 Gb free space on it and it booted up in 45 seconds.

I use Paragon Total Defrag. Even the trial version can optimize and shrink the MFT by wiping out all of it's history and using just the current contents. I had one go from 45GB to 250MB.

I am convinced Windoze was designed to be spyware. Back when Gates and Jobs were starting up in their crusade against IBM they used pirate symbolism. Some day it will come out that everything a business does is visible to them including the CEOs collection of dogsex videos. I can't wait to see the sheer comedy when companies realize the shades were up on those windows and they were undressing in a glass house.