My mom's laptop crashed. 30 seconds later, an Indian man claiming to be from Microsoft calls our house

He states that he's from Microsoft Information Protection and that he noticed that one of our laptops crashed from a large virus package. He asked my mom over the phone to start accessing Internet Explorer's settings and change some things around, at which point my mum calls me and asks for my help because I know more about that stuff than she does. As soon as I pick up the phone my bullshit detector goes off and I ask how he can see our computer ('Every computer goes through our International Router Service') and how he got our phone number ('We have a very large database of customers') at which point I tell him to take his shit elsewhere and hang up. What the fuck? How did they crash the laptop and simultaneously call our house phone? What precautions should I take?