Troubleshooting

Fernando owns the store and rents out the DVDs, so of course he is also fully aware of the inner mechanical workings of the electronic devices that play them. While Fernando does have a modest bit of general knowledge on the functioning and upkeep of DVD players, he is probably not the guy someone should approach if his or her player gives up its ghost and is in need of professional repair or outright replacement.
Nevertheless, this does not stop people from calling Fernando up or stopping by the store for troubleshooting advice on not just DVD players, but all sorts of electronics ranging from VCRs and televisions to laptop computers.
One mid-July day one of Fernando's most regular customers enters the store with a battered laptop that looks to have seen its fair share of food and drink spillage and Odin knows what else. "Hi, Fernando. Do you think you could help me with something? My ex-wife wanted to get rid of this laptop and instead of letting her throw it out I figured I could take it, have something for the kids to do. But every time I started it up a window appeared telling me I need to update my antivirus. I clicked the link and now it doesn't hardly work anymore."
Fernando palms his face at that. "It sounds like you've got some kind of virus, probably picked up because you followed the recommendation of the so-called antivirus program."
"Oh. Well, how do I fix it?"
Fernando shrugs. "That would depend on how finicky and annoying the virus in question is. Some of them can be fixed relatively easily by finding the file in question and deleting it straightaway. Others are assholes in that they make you scan your task manager for unnatural programs that refuse to close themselves, which you jot down so when you boot up in safe mode you can troll your hard drive for them and hopefully delete them while they're inactive. And then you have to hope they're not one of the asshole-asshole ones that leave nuggets of themselves elsewhere to repropagate should the 'mama'"--here Fernando makes air quotes--"file be missing."
But all of this went straight over the head of this middle-aged man cradling his laptop. "Could you fix it for me?"
Fernando is ever such a nice guy. "I can try, I guess." And so Fernando and the customer come to an agreement that Fernando will travel to the man's nearby residence that Saturday morning before opening to see about fixing things.
Saturday comes along and it turns out that the virus in question is the sort that only needs a quickie boot in safe mode to have its surface annoyances scoured. Ten or so minutes later, Fernando sits back as the laptop churns away on a coffee table and partakes in small talk. "Ok, I think things are all better. I've gone ahead and run a malware program to scoop up the bits that might be left behind, and I've also gone ahead and installed ClamWin for antivirus, and that should update automatically and will hopefully catch most of these things before they can cause any trouble. I'd just like to know how your ex-wife managed to get the initial virus on this thing in the first place. They don't just jump out of nowhere."
"Well," says the man, "she told me it started acting up after she went to a website that offered up the new Twilight movie for download."
"Oh, New Moon?" Fernando asks a bit naively, thinking it was some streaming Netflix or whatever.
"Eclipse." Which, of course, had just been released in theaters about two weeks prior.
Fernando sighs and bows his head. And this is why you shouldn't pirate movies, people.
But Fernando was paid $20 for his trouble, so it wasn't all bad.