Try using a USB boot stick to boot into Linux and just save whatever you need from the machine and then reformat it. Since this way the machine won’t automatically connect to Wi-Fi and potentially cause more issues.
That’s the quickest, simplest way without needing to try to diagnose and dig into the system to see what is affected and trying to fix it.
Also what is the computer doing when it boots up? There’s not really enough information being given to be able to provide any other advice.
Because your 0$ per month after dropping them doesn’t hurt their bottom line.
Corporations generally weigh the risks and the benefit often wins out and they make more money because there are enough people that either reluctantly cave into the fee increase, forgot about their subscription or just don’t care that it’s going up.
It’s fairly seldom (but seems to be increasing over the years) to see so much backlash that a company walks back on what they were planning to do.
Whoosh
You are right, it’s really not cut and dry in today’s age.
Could be something like the way I have my son’s tablet setup. If he tries to install something, I get a notification to approve it on my phone.
I can disable or enable the device at any point and have active times setup on it so it automatically does that if I’m not manually managing it.
BUT, that requires the parent to be actively engaging in what their kids are doing while trying to not be helicopters over them. You can setup home networks to block stuff like that also, but that requires some technical knowledge that a lot of people may not want to deal with. Also, that has no bearing on what is done outside of the home.
Also the age of the kid is a huge factor, a 13 year old is going to have a higher ability to get around those restrictions.
So now we’re at the point of basically saying, there’s not a really good defined way of doing that. However, if we ask for a copy of your ID, that’s adds a decent protective layer. BUUUT, that’s going to throw up red flags to everyone who wants to protect themselves and doesn’t want their info out there like that. Which we all know there are data breaches and bad actors out there (like Tesla employees sharing videos from people’s cars) so it’s reasonable to not want to provide stuff like that.
Now at this point we’re kinda back to square one what can be done to manage this, be secure, and appease both sides of the table?
Hopping on a live USB to recover files is your safest option.
It will also give you an opportunity to scan files (with something like clam av) while running from a system other than Windows, so you’re less likely to encounter any further infections. Not that Linux can’t be infected, it’s just much less likely and you’d be running from a flash drive and off network anyway so it’s about as safe as you can get.
You would need to connect the live USB to the Internet to install clam av on the USB stick or something similar, but that can be done while using a separate machine before actually plugging into the affected machine.
I can’t really offer any advice on using any software for scanning as I keep personal things on separate drives segregated from the network so if something ever did happen I’d just wipe and start over.
May be a good idea to take though. Get him a USB drive that he can store files on and disconnect when he doesn’t need it.
Just some thoughts from someone that works in desktop support and has been tinkering for a little over 20 years.
Good luck!