text: why do people blame viruses way to often? why does people who are supposed to know a lot about computing blame everything on viruses?  i hear it all the time. when people say they have a problem, describes their issue and ask for help. techies just blame it on viruses and tells them to reinstall everything.  but way to often it is not a virus, but a simple configuration error or missbehaving software that casues the error. so why oh why does everyone blame non escisting viruses all the time!? i do hope that you're referring to phone technicians.  personally, i avoid telling customers to reinstall as much as possible. there is absolutely no reason why anyone should need to reformat their machine over a virus. absolutely none.  viruses are the easiest to blame though because everyone knows what a virus is. if a phone tech tells you that you have malware or spyware, it's going to raise a lot of questions from you about removing it that he may not be capable of answering.  phone techs are paid by the call btw, not by the answers given.