The ironically named System Progressive Protection repeatedly warns that one's computer has been invaded by a virus. A credit-card payment to SPP would supposedly remove the "virus" but really just de-activates the bogus warnings. Worse, the protection payment itself opens up the victim to identity and credit-card theft.
There are various legitimate programs that would eradicate SPP, but I didn't feel like purchasing and adding yet another program to our creaky five-year-old Dell Vostro. Because we had been regularly backing up the Dell to an external hard drive, it was possible to fix the problem the hard and perhaps better way.
Erasing the internal drive and reloading Windows XP from a set of original 2002 CDs was fairly easy. However, it took three days to download and install the various updates, including lengthy "service packs", from Microsoft. After we reloaded other software, such as the Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) suite, the backup drive restored the data.
The whole episode is not something we would go through voluntarily, but at least by clearing away leftover code and unused programs the PC is working better than it has in a long time. We won't have to replace it this year after all.
[Note: Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP, and it's not clear how much longer the service packs and updates will be available for download. The Dell has maybe two more years of useful life.] © 2012 Stephen Yuen
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