Help protect a friend’s PC with Windows Live Messenger
Are you the one your friends and family call when they need help with their PC? Hang up the phone. With our scanner and Windows Live Messenger, remotely diagnosing and fixing everything from viruses to hard-disk fragmentation just got a whole lot easier and faster.
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Get Windows Live Messenger
In order for you to scan and fix another person's PC, both you and your friend will need to download and install Windows Live Messenger 8.0. It's free, and in addition to the scanner it comes with lots of other cool features, including new winks and emoticons, file sharing, and no-cost PC-to-PC calls.
Send a request to scan
Once you both have the new version of Messenger up and running, you're ready to send your friend a request allowing you to run a remote scan on his or her PC. Here's how:
1.From your Messenger contacts list, select the friend you're helping and open a conversation window.
2.Click Activities in the top navigation bar (look for a picture of a movie reel and music note), then select Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner. This will automatically send your friend an invitation to start the scanner.
3.Once your friend accepts the invitation, the scanner will pop up to the right of the conversation window, and you're ready to begin.
Choose which scan you want to run
You'll have the option of running a Complete Scan, which checks for viruses, wasted disk space, and a secure Internet connection, or a Quick Scan, which checks only for viruses in specific areas of your friend's PC. We recommend a complete scan. How long the complete scan takes will depend on the PC's speed, the amount of memory it has, and how many issues the scanner finds. about the differences between a complete and quick scan.
Begin scanning
The scanner in Messenger works just like the scanner on the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner site. As it checks your friend’s PC, it’s looking for common PC health issues. You'll both be able to see what the scanner is doing each step of the way.
You'll also both be able to communicate via Messenger while the scanner is running, and at all times during the process, your friend gets to make the key decisions about letting you fix his or her PC. Once everything is fixed, you can both view a summary of what the safety scanner has done.
Keep them safe all year round
The scanner in Windows Live Messenger is a fast and easy way to clean up and tune up your friends' PCs. But for always-on antivirus protection and PC optimization, point them to Windows Live OneCare, a self-updating PC health service that runs quietly in the background on their computers. It offers persistent protection against viruses, hackers, and other threats, and helps keep your PC tuned up and important documents backed up.
