@elizafox I think it was a few years ago I reached the point where I thought supporting Windows users was no longer a good idea. Windows is high maintenance and has an increasing number of proprietary problems which aren't solvable by a technician, but mainly I just don't want to help maintain the Microsoft hegemony or be linked to that company in any way.

So these days if someone comes to me with a borked Windows laptop in an update boot cycle or overloaded with malware I tell them that I can help get them going again by installing a GNU/Linux distro (something like Ubuntu MATE LTS), but I can't help them with Windows.

The only exception I'd make to that is that if someone is willing to pay a good amount of money then I might consider helping them with Windows, but that rarely happens in practice as money is becoming generally scarce around here.