I was reminded today of an issue I see all the time and that’s what happens when you click on those cute photo-essays about why your dog follows you into the bathroom or “You Won’t Believe what the Feral Kid from Mad Max looks like”!
I have a dog that follows me around so in a moment of weakness I clicked on one of those links and a few images in I got the dreaded “Contact our certified Windows Technicians for Immediate Assistance” windows that prevents you from closing your browser an warns it will “disable your computer” if you try to. Well, I usually use a Mac, so that’s no biggie, but the browser’s still frozen.
Don’t worry, they can’t disable your computer. The trick is to get you to call and get your credit card number so they can pretend to fix your PC or Mac, in some cases installing key logger programs on PCs so they can steal your banking info.
There is simple way to disable that problem on Macs and PCs without calling though:
On a Mac:
- Hold down simultaneously Command-Option-Esc which will bring up the “Force Quit” menu.
- Select the browser you’re using that’s frozen and click on “Force Quit”.
- Restart the browser while holding down the “Shift” key to get back to browsing without the warning page (this starts the browser with a fresh cache, if you don’t hold down Shift the same hacked page will reappear).
On a PC:
- Hold down Control-Alt-Delete at the same time (on some keyboards it might be Control-Shift-Esc)
- This will bring up the task manager. Click on the app that’s frozen and select “End Task” to close the app.
- Restart the browser while holding down the “Shift” key to get back to browsing without the warning page (this starts the browser with a fresh cache, if you don’t hold down Shift the same hacked page will reappear).
The trick is to force the app to quit and then re-open the browser with a cleared cache onto a “new” page.
As far as why your dog follows you into the bathroom, just click on this link!
JoeL
