Had a customer that does their own I.T. including never updating or patching. Fortunately they did pay me to setup their backups for the servers.
So they get cyrpt-ware. I'm able from command prompt to del *.aes_ni /s the drives and restore from the A.M. backup.
On another server something else is messed up because needed services for SMB and Network Browsing won't start and of course doing a system state restoration doesn't help. Do a clean install, setup Terminal Services, ThinPrint, Office 2003.
That last one is a problem because: Telephone and Online Validation no longer work. They purchased 7 Office 2003 pro DVD's in 2005. One has been opened in the past to facilitate installation.
I call M$ up and they say the product key has been validated too many times. So we take a still shrink wrapped DVD, uninstall , reinstall, and same issue: It won't validate online.
Give them the new key and tech says it's been validated too many times. So @ this point I know it's B.S.
Had the customer get on fleabay and get Office 2007.
Big middle finger to M$.