User said he did nothing that explained his dead PC – does a new motherboard count? Friday brings the prospect of spending time with loved ones. But before we get there, The Register offers another instalment of On Call, the column that chronicles experiences from the global family of readers who have traumatic tech support tales to tell. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Michael" who doesn't do …
Do I know that kind of story.
I still have friends who call on me to help them with their PC woes. The latest tale is one who called me complaining that her Windows was excruciatingly slow. We chatted for a while and I came to the conclusion that I had to check things out for myself.
When she brought me the laptop, upon launching it I immediately saw that she had two different anti-virus products installed. When I asked her why, she answered : "but if I have two, I'm twice as protected".
If only.
I proceeded to uninstall one of them while explaining : "You hire two maids, but you only have one broom. They're going to fight over who gets the broom and, during that time, the cleaning doesn't get done."
My tech-ignorant brother asked me to help him get a PC, so I gave him an old one of mine with Windows on it. I would get monthly calls complaining that things weren't working right, usually due to a Windows update, and would go over and straighten him out again. This went on for longer than I care to admit, before I bit the bullet and converted him to Linux. There were a few months of stumbles, but after that...blissful peace. And it continued that way, through several hardware updates, until his recent demise (natural causes).
We had a new shiny Windows version of the DOS program that the software company we used had been very slowly updating for years. There were other companies who had released Windows versions ages ago but we were locked into the ecosystem of this firm. This was either during the Win 95 or the Win 98 era my memory doesn’t remember that detail from that long ago. We’d actually spent some proper money too for once, getting updated higher specced machines, which were going to be new for the roll out of the Windows version. So I have one of the tech team from the software company with me and he’s getting ready to install the software on one of these machines. First thing he asked me was where the floppy drive was, and I said that we didn’t have them on the new machines. His face became a contorted picture I will never forget until I die. He asked how were we going to do the mandatory daily backups then, without there being a floppy drive? At this point I thought he was joking and to continue the joke said that I knew we were installing the new DOS version not Windows.
He is not joking and says that we’re installing the Windows version and where is the floppy drive on this machine, “it also needs to be the A: drive”. I explained that we had servers now that could back up many times more than a floppy disc and we could just back it up there. These backups to the server can be mirrored and stored offsite too. “No” he says, like the DOS version, the Windows one backs up to a floppy drive, and we must have one. I dug out a computer with such a drive and he installs the software showing me what to do. So I then realise that the Windows version is a straight port of the DOS version including the dumb backups to floppy. This version costs extra per month but is hardly any better.
I reported this to my boss who is not thrilled about this unwelcome development given the capex on new machines. He has however been told we’re using it by the senior management so there’s no choice atnthat time. However he also tells me to quietly investigate a rival company that produces a product that was built from the beginning for Windows. Eventually we dumped the original firm and went with their competitor. They didn’t require a floppy drive for backups, could back up to a server and it was a better product all round. It also meant we could use the shiny new machines. We could also finally roll out and use the new machines we’d bought.
NET USE A: \\SERVERNAME\%DEPT%\BACKUPS\%APPNAME%\%USER%
... with all the usual caveats: use a 3rd-party DOS utility to check there is no A: drive in the box, and that all environment variables used above are properly set.
The app still sucks, but as you're stuck with it for a while ...
Yeah I’m fairly certain that there was something in their software that would have objected to that setup. It really was done cack handedly by them to get their cash cow of a product onto Windows. One suspects that they wouldn’t have even made a Windows version if competitors with Windows ready programs hadn’t popped up.
Take away the admin rights. You'd do the same if she'd be running Linux, so follow the same here. If she complains "then I have to call you to install anything?" answer "Yes, or I won't help you, even if your computer gets infected and your money stolen. Your freedom choice to keep admin rights, your freedom choice to be f-ed over.".
I try not to let on that I know anything about computers (and some would say I'm right).
Back in the days of dial-up, my mum would often call to say "the internet isn't working again".
I could sometimes get things going by guiding her to look at various settings, but sometimes a "site visit" would be necessary - which was a 350 mile round trip for me (though I did get decent food and lodging).
The cause was usually tracked down to my dad "changing things because I thought it would make it faster", which was "fixed" permanently by creating an admin account with an "unknown" password and removing admin rights from the others.
Back when I lived in the UK, my line developed a fault where there was a noise that sounded a lot like a ticking clock which obviously upset the ADSL setup. The lady from BT took some convincing that although her system said the line was fine the noise we could both hear was actually a problem...
"'Well, of course it isn't working! You're on the phone with me!'"
I have an album from circa 2000 which includes the lyric "Call me now, I'm not online". Which has aged even worse than that one from The Streets' first album, "you won't find us on Alta Vista".
I have many tales of the tech illiterate... But the best one is a friend begging me to take a look at his laptop because it was 'running slow'
Upon booting it up, which took a few minutes, I got him to log into windows and it took a few more minutes before it was fully ready.
I looked at the right side of the taskbar and was greeted with more icons than you'd ever want to see on a 1024x768 display, with even more hidden.
Everything was running all the time, programs he used once in a millenium... background service.
I went through everything, disabling services, getting rid of 90% of the bloat so that things would only be active when he started the software.
After I was finished, I checked his browser and found half a dozen toolbars added for various things, so I got rid of those.
I went through and cleaned up some other start up stuff that wasn't needed, disabled and removed some MS bloatware that was never used or needed on a non corporate/enterprise machine.
When I was finished, it loaded 5x quicker, and was far more responsive when doing basic tasks.
I presented it back to him, with an explanation of what I'd done... which was my first mistake.
He got very indignant and annoyed, that I'd messed with 'HIS' computer in that way, it wasn't what he'd asked me to do. Trying to explain that you don't need 25 services and background programs running 100% of the time sucking up all of your resources... fell on deaf ears.
That was the last time I ever offered to help him, and it likely won't come as a surprise to hear that I ended our friendship a year or two later after he used the recent death of my brother as a weapon to justify and excuse his own shitty behaviour and trolling on my car club forums.
Shitty people, act like shitty people and sometimes one incident is enough to bring all their past shitty behaviour into sharp focus.
Aside from my immediate family, I refuse to do tech support for friends and neighbours any more.
>Aside from my immediate family, I refuse to do tech support for friends and neighbours any more.
Same here. It appears that, for some people, "I can take a quick look" sounds remarkably similar to "I will be your sysadmin forever for free", if not "any problem this machine develops from now on will be my fault".
So, just to make sure, I do not say "I can take a quick look" anymore, preferring "You should take it to a shop" instead.
I do tech support for all my friends and family ... as long as they aren't running Redmond or Cupertino operating systems.
Strangely enough, the folks that I have convinced to run the cut-down version of Slackware that I first built for MeDearOlddMum almost never feel the need to call me for help ... and when they do, it's almost always installing a new printer, which can be handled over the phone in most cases these days.
"They" is a great gender-indefinite pronoun, if you overlook the English language defect of not having a singular-plural distinction. Which is dumb as the gendered ones don't either.
They as 'singular unspecified gender' is so old it was first spelled Þey in the 13th century. It's used that way in the many texts and probably weekly by you. For a while there was a linguistic fad to try and model Latin's definite number/gender structure with he/she, he/she/it, but languages as used need not be not so silly.
"Hey boss, my neighbor's kid was over this morning and puked all over. I'll be late."
Does boss reply quizzing about the kid's genitals, or do they say:
"Oh no, I hope they'll be okay!"
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I'm in the pub, got there late mid\late Sunday afternoon (A friend from work had done a repair on my car that morning - He was Ex Royal Marines Motor pool Sergeant) meeting my father (& others) had seen a ghost (Literally the second time he had witnessed this apparition) when the phone rings.....
Hello Mandy....
Hi I'm at Fays house
Hi Fay (I call into the phone as you do).
Fay has a problem with her computer, so I reformatted the hard drive..... now.....it wont boot.... it's asking for a boot disk.
Did you make one before reformatting?
No!
Well that's you fucked then isn't it! (Put a bit more subtly)
(Implied noises that I should do the 60 mile round trip to Fays house, but I'm on icon number 2 & rapidly heading for number 3)
What are you trying to install?
Windows 98
What version....it will be on the disc ....If its legit....
Second Edition
It is your lucky lucky day.....OK set the PC bios to boot from CD Rom, it will start to install...... & carry a boot disc with you next time.
Back sometime around 2004 I went to a customer site with a colleague. As he was directing a complex Hazard Identification meeting I got to record the proceedings on his laptop. Now even for 2004 this laptop had a tiny screen (11" IIRC). About a third of the screen was taken up by toolbars on all 4 sides of the screen including (if anyone remembers this) the MS Office start toolbar, plus about 8 Word toolbars all showing at the same time. This left me with about 3" x 6" of screen to record the meeting in a landscape Word document with 7 columns.
I swiftly turned off all the toolbars and autohid the taskbar to give me a reasonable amount of screen space.
On completion of the meeting Alan, for that was his name, (RIP) almost hit the ceiling.
"Where are all my toolbars? What have you done?"
I told him that I'd just turned them off, and proceeded to turn them all back on for him much to his relief.
I successfully trained my environment not to ask me for any PC or mobile phone issues. "I understand IT. And I do not know anything about your pesky desktop computer, modem, phone etc."
(Only exception to that might be if missus has an issue.)
"only replaced the motherboard."
That's a scoop to me: a user who is able to do that and then successfully go past BIOS onto at least trying to boot, and the same user is not aware that all internals have now changed ! Wow, what a dude ! I've never met any of those ... Surely showed some skills albeit with a tiny gap in the software department :)
"therefore often asked to help out with errant PCs."
I'd rather say rodent or ferral PCs :)
> the same user is not aware that all internals have now changed
That sort of thing can be our fault.
For the New Year, I upgraded the main board in our home server and (very) happily told anyone who didn't run away fast enough that I didn't need to change any software or settings at all, It Just Worked.
But they all get out earshot before I finish telling them the absolutely fascinating tale of reading the manuals, checking the new main board was identical to the previous one, just with the C2750 instead of the C2550, how all the SATA cables were photographed and labelled as they were unplugged, and - hey, come back, this is the fun part!
... called me out to "fix my broken Windows, please" back in the days of WfW 3.11, so probably early '95 or thereabouts.
I checked the file containing lists of family computer hardware, grabbed the necessary installation media, and my surfboard[0], and headed off to Bonnydoon where he lived. On arrival, I grabbed a beer and went into the office and flipped on the machine. Sure enough, it refused to boot ... just hung with a continuous "beeeeeeeeee", with nothing on-screen to tell me what was wrong.
Diving under the desk, I immediately discovered the problem. It wasn't the generic custom computer I had built and installed a year or so earlier. In fact, it was a rather expensive IBM model.
I looked up from under the desk and said something like "WTF‽‽‽".
It turned out that his boss had put a new computer on his desk pre-loaded with some proprietary program or other, and told him to junk the "old" one. The"old" one was only six months old, and obviously newer than the one I had built, so he brought it home and switched the two. He turned it on, it yelled at him, and he turned it off and called me.
I looked around the office, and no other computer. Lovely. I asked where the one I had built went. He said he had thrown it away ... so I bolted down the drive muttering expletives in his general direction, lifted the lid on his garbage can, and there it was, sitting on top of two weeks worth of household trash. Dusted it off, swapped it out with the IBM, and he was back in business. Thankfully.
The necropsy on the IBM showed it to be an older model, with much less ability than the machine I built for him. Some components had rattled loose on the drive from Sunnyvale to Bonnydoon, thus the hang on boot. After re-seating boards and components, and re-uniting it with its original IBM mouse, keyboard and monitor (and adding the junk speakers from the other computer) it was plenty good enough to run his Wife and kid's AOL account, so that's what we ended up doing with it. No harm, no foul, everybody happy.
[0] You'd take your board if you were driving from Palo Alto to almost Davenport Landing, right?
If anyone's interested AOL is still a thing, it's a modern program but still looks like it did about 20 years ago and still says "you've got mail". It doesn't give you internet access but it appears to be some kind of combined browser/mail/thing which sells you subscriptions to unnecessary software.
> I asked where the one I had built went. He said he had thrown it away
Why? Why do they do that?
I was asked if I had a "spare" computer for loan to one of my family's church members who had cancer (just to add the pressure, as it wasn't anyone I personally knew), he only needed it for a few months.
Ok, my Amiga A1000[1] isn't set up yet, has a word processor (as well as proper Editors for Men), spreadsheet, hard drive memory expansion, can use the lovely RGB Cub monitor. A few games ('cos we it isn't all just office work) and my small printer can be spared. It is all neatly boxed, with paper manuals. In fact, as I had just moved, it was all nicely boxed up at the family member's place, so obviously I wasn't using it...
Gave the obvious warnings (it isn't DOS), reassured that was ok. Just give us a bell for tech support, I'm a computer nerd, you'll catch me at home in the evenings.
Oh, and it is a loan. I want it back. Yes, yes, we understand.
After a few weeks, hadn't heard any complaints, called anyway.
Oh, he hadn't been able to plug it together, so he threw it all away (yes, all) and someone else in the church was looking to "get him a proper computer".
Yes. Yes, I am still bitter. I still provided and supported the family member, but they got second-hand PCs that there totally generic and replaceable, which I had no attachment to. Don't ask me what I think about giving tech support to that church.
[1] this was back in the day, the A500 was in the shops...
I'd have gone all "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."
And then given them the bill to replace the equipment that they had borrowed!
Hey AC, you've never experienced the time when linux did not yet have modules? Forgot to compile with the right driver and you would not boot. Oh you already had modules (aka loadable drivers) ? But forgot to update the initrd to include the one you need to mount /? Haha! You know, there was a time when disk and RAM were not so abundant that you could include a lot more into the boot kernel, let alone the per-modules time.
Check out Daves PDP-11 adventures to see how difficult it actually was before then. Especially his "The Hardest Thing: Building and Running the UNIX Kernel from Original Sources". Not the emulator stuff, on the real thing.
You have no idea how far those OSes and the hardware has come, and how it was "back then". I'm not saying I know it all, but I know enough to avoid speaking stupid things like you do.
Oh dear. Shot yourself in the foot there. I'm not talking Linux. I don't use Linux. I never use Linux, so I can't possibly comment on it.
> I'm not saying I know it all, but I know enough to avoid speaking stupid things like you do.
Ironically, that's the complete opposite of what you've just done. You've made assumptions that you know it all, and come out sounding stupid.
P.S. 30+ meant "for over 30 years" not "between every year since time began and 30 years ago"
I realise I should have said "30 - 35" years, because as it stands, it made you erroneously think you could quote architecture from the 70s as being a valid counter argument.
P.P.S. If you have to resort to ad hominems, at least make sure you don't sound stupid first.
AC: > > any decent OS
AC: > I'm not talking Linux. I don't use Linux.
So you say Linux is no decent OS?
> 30+ meant "for over 30 years" not "between every year since time began and 30 years ago" I realise I should have said "30 - 35" years
Which is 1990 to 1995. Linux matches your time reference frame _very_ good. 30+ years else means DOS, Win3, Novell Netware 2/3, and Win95 juuuust got its release party. This is also the time frame (i.e. 1990) where you still had to enter Cylinders/Heads/Sectors in many BIOS since autodetect for IDE was there, but not yet perfect. And LBA was not yet standard for PCs in 1990, only if you ran very expensive SCSI stuff and not DOS. With wrong CHS no boot.
> quote architecture from the 70s
A separate paragraph with a clear "how difficult it actually was before then" example to indicate the previous 30 years before your specified time frame to amplify my argument? With mentioning a well known and _decent_ hardware/OS of that time? I see nothing wrong here.
You deserve "ad hominem", since your argument is so off the mark NOT using ad hominem would be insult for all ACs, if not mankind.
"you've never experienced the time when linux did not yet have modules?"
So, sometime in 1992-1994 then?
It's been 30 years and one month since Linux gained them - and whilst 0.02 was released in late 1991, most people didn't get started until SLS in early 1992 (it was a lot easier to install than the original bootstrapping methods) - and Linux didn't really get traction until late 1995
That's because un*x is an operating system, and requires knowledge of the hardware to work properly. Most laptops of the era had very wild and varied ideas of what the hardware should look like, and so would each require a proprietary un*x kernel.
DOS is just a program loader (not an OS!), and only needs to know about the BIOS. Each machine provided a consistent BIOS interface to DOS, and then the BIOS handled the hardware "behind the scenes". That's why it was inadvisable to write directly to hardware in DOS.
> DOS is just a program loader
Every OS is just a program loader. That is their purpose. *nix, *nux, Windows, DOS, and all those in between are nothing more than program loaders. Some tiny differences are from the capabilities below for high availability or multitasking and a few APIs, but the purpose is the same.
That's why it was inadvisable to write directly to hardware in DOS
My first reaction was: that is inadvisable for any software! Then I remembered what I grew up with - optimising assembler routines for performance or memory - long time before we could throw shitloads of processing power at any problem.
Ah yes the days of W95 in the corporate environment where users could (and, ahem, I did) do literally whatever they wanted. In particular, I could run Windows Update and install the graphics driver it said it needed. Wrong, wrong, wrong, so wrong it caused a BSOD. That taught me never ever to install drivers off Windows Update to this day. Luckily I was on good terms with the IT department so we just put it down to something I should never do ever again.
The last time I worked full-time in an office was 2008. The desktop PC supplied was fairly well locked down; it wasn't bad, but the company ran Lotus Notes (for shared user data and email). Part of my work needed software that wasn't part of the corporate suite, and access to websites that their security system blocked (and no exceptions were permitted). So I had my own laptop on my desk beside the company PC; of course, that one wasn't allowed to connect to the company network, so I had a data card and SIM plugged in. Actually, personal laptops weren't, strictly, allowed either, but my boss needed the work done and, not only turned a blind eye to my personal hardware, also covered the SIM contract on my expenses (usually under "mileage" as that didn't require receipts). Files were transferred between my laptop and desktop (to access the printers) was via floppynet (USB sticks were frowned upon but 3.5" stiffies we redeemed OK)!
One of the jobs I had to do was to redocument the company accounting system in preparation for an audit to permit US public listing (I had less that two months to do it and the only way to meet the deadline was to use a proprietary process mapping package a friend of mine had developed). I handed over a folder with around 40 process maps to the financial controller just over a month later - who then told me that they'd decided not to list after all (but that decision wasn't to be made public just yet). A month wasted? Not really: I got paid for the work, my pal got paid for the software and we had proven how much time and money was being wasted on the big consultancies.
That was well off-topic...
> A month wasted? Not really: I got paid for the work
Funny enough, one of the interview questions at my current workplace was "so if you work for 3 months on something, and then it's canceled and all the work is thrown in the trash, what's your response?"
I said "do I still get paid for the work?"
"Yes"
"Well then, it's your software and you're free to do as you please with it!"
I was hired. And they actually haven't ever done anything like that.
Funnily enough I used that as an example for my beginners' "digital inclusion" group this week. The programme we vaguely follow with them* includes how to get to Windows settings ( some of which they might actually need, I guess)
*I tend to skip over much of the pretty useless to beginners stuff that's been put it and do a lot more on building confidence with basic good practice.
I have a friend who admits he is 'computer-literate' but knows his limits. Apparently my experience is superior and my suggestion that he update his very old computer was met by "Can you just have a quick look at it?" I didn't need a quick look but he persisted. Eventually this was causing some friction between us so my son who was just starting his career in IT (another story) volunteered to review the old computer and he took it away for a complete inspection.
My son is a better diplomat than I am. At his own cost, he replaced the motherboard and updated the software but in keeping the carcass it was ostensibly the same PC. He didn't mention the new internals. Response: "I said it only needed a clean-up."
Twenty years on, that PC is still in use, monitoring his wildlife cameras.
In about 2014, a friend popped down to visit from Scotland, a 250m trip each way.
When he arrived, he had a computer with him, a large beige box... His boss had given it too him, and he wondered if I'd take a look and see if he could upgrade it as it was rather slow.
I opened the side panel, looked inside and laughed.
It was a Pentium II, probably a 350mhz... the one with the Slot A processor... I was about 18yrs old at that point. I don't think they'd even started using AGP slots for graphics at the time, and SD ram.
I told him to either keep it as a time capsule of old computers and run windows 95-98 on it as a retro gaming PC that was never to be connected to the internet... or junk it.
Over the years, I have kept him supplied with PC gear as I upgrade and replace parts... Some I sell at bargain basement prices, others I simply give him. He's usually about 4-5yrs behind the curve, the last 'upgrade' I gave him was an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X a couple of years ago when I replaced it with a 5600G in my mediaserver. He's still running that and my old 5700XT GPU to this day.
My younger brother brought me an ex-workplace desktop Dell PC to look at. Looked quite nicely built, and he said it was a decent spec. (at least compared to what he was using at the time).
I opened it, and had a quick play, trying various things to get it to start, to no avail. Would not start from another disk, or from optical media. Did not even get into the BIOS IIRC, even with another power supply.
I decided that the Mobo had failed, and then looked to sourcing a replacement. I took a quick look at the config and size of the board, and then did a double-take. Everything on the board was in the wrong place, sort of mirror image to that on an ATX motherboard!
Turns out Dell used BX motherboards, something I didn't even know existed. At the time (and probably even now) replacement BX motherboards were like hen's teeth, so I recommended replacing the whole machine including the case, possibly keeping the disk to aid with data recovery if there was anything on it he wanted to recover, and the memory if it was compatible with his new system.
Weren't there Dell systems that were a dreadful trap for the unwary, in that they used standard ATX power connectors, but wired in a non-standard way, such that if you replaced either the PSU or the motherboard, but not the other, with a non-Dell item, first power up would always kill the board? And maybe the PSU too? Dell proprietary (non-standard) ATX design, I think you would call it. Around 1998-2000.
There were indeed. I had one (XPS system of some spec, long forgotten the details) and had to replace the lot when I was forced to upgrade* because nothing was standard. At the time what grieved me the most was having to throw out the case, which on the model I had was stylish and well engineered other than for its lack of compatibility with everything, despite its outward appearance as a nice ATX tower.
* Remember those days when the software got better but then you had to upgrade the hardware? Who says the old days were good?
Yup same here, new company owners decide that IT equipment needed an upgrade (we were mostly compaq 286/386 machines ranging from DOS (Novell network menu front end) to some NT3.x CAD systems)
Got a job lot of DELL PC's, absolute minimal spec running windows 2000 + word 97, they ran like dogs.
Was asked to look at them and I found the same, non-standard components everywhere, complete scrap. I was not aware of the BG boards in those days!
But they were cheap, shiny and new!
Simply don't give them the root password. Don't even tell them it exists. What they don't know can't hurt them.
Or give it to them, but do it vocally ... "And your root password is 4r5t6y7u[0], don't forget it!" They hear "blah, blah, blah, ::insert technical stuff here::, blah blah blah" and promptly forget you ever said anything. Anyone who takes the initiative to actually write it down can probably learn the basics and not break too much.
[0] Not a real password. Hopefully.
But there are limits to that course of action. I have a non-techie mate I've known for 55+ years who paid a local company to build a Windows PC to his very own specification. Why? I have no idea. He does very little on it other than play a few obscure D&D games, and browse the internet (watching porn, according to his missus!). While chatting to him on Jitsi, I mentioned that my system runs Linux, and I no longer experienced any of the issues that he had with updates, anti-virus etc etc. So then he asked me if I could upgrade his machine to run Linux...
I thought long and hard about it, but decided that it was going to be a fool's errand which would only end up with us falling out. Instead I advised him to go back to the local shop to help with his issues.
Part of me knows that was wrong, and I should have embraced the challenge, but the other part of me values his friendship far more.
(There are many other mitigating issues, such as his inability to use Libreoffice to type a simple letter, preferring instead to pay for the latest MS office. Then paying for a PDF creator when LO already had it, and free versions were available. No. It had to be Adobe. Then there is that fact he only has one functional ear, coupled with selective deafness in the other. I think I made the right choice, bless him!)
I was part of a team supporting a world wide games event. We got a text saying one machine is slow to the point of it takes seconds for the mouse to catch up. We then got a text from our manager, and our manager's manager etc up the chain, because "an alert had been generated to the organising committee of the game"
It took an hour to get to the venue. The person at the venue said both these machines were slow. This one has your product - this one does not... and they are both slow. We reported your product as the culprit because we knew we would get great support. This was a clue
My colleague looked to see what was going on. It's anti virus scan was running continually and hammering the I/O. Instead of once a day at midnight, the people at the venue thought it would be "safer" to run antivirus scan continually.
The scan time was reset - and the problem went away. We did get a public apology from the head person!
"Surely your statement is true for all time?"
Absolutely not. The Norton Utilities was a mandatory installation on DOS machines up until the early Windows days, when even the calm and level-headed Peter gave up, sold out to Symantec and washed his hands of the matter. Would that we had all followed his example.
Sensible man, Mr. Norton.
I still have my Server 2003 package to force-activate the standard MS-drivers for IDE/SATA (and a few other well known). Needed it quite often after a P2V migration done the wrong way around or with the wrong tools, or out of the backup since the original hardware fell over.
At least, with Win2k/XP/2003 it was possible. For NT 4 and before the art gets REALLY dark, or blue to be more exact.
Back in the day when overdrive processors were a thing, we had a user who tried to install a clock-doubled CPU onto his motherboard, paid for with his own money. The problem was that it already had a clock-doubled CPU out of the factory, so this didn't do anything. In order to try to wring some extra performance out of the computer he started fiddling with things on the motherboard, and decided it would be a terrific idea to remove all the jumpers. Unsurprisingly, the computer did not work at all after that.
Deciding it was now an IT support problem, we got a phone call. We found the computer with all the jumpers in a little pile next to it. User demanded we fix it, we refused since without knowing the correct settings it would have been near impossible. User was very cross. We walked away.
Overnight the cleaner came into the office where the computer was, found all the jumpers binned them. I don't think anyone ever did get the computer working again.
"Overnight the cleaner came into the office where the computer was, found all the jumpers binned them. I don't think anyone ever did get the computer working again."
I'm more surprised the jumpers were still available to be binned. Most users who mess with stuff will do their best to hide the evidence and deny all knowledge of how it might have happened :-)
Nobody to blame, but ... There was a huge project on the go at a previous employer in early 1990's. Everybody involved in the project got new PCs and the rest of us got their broken carp. So there I was, outfitted with my 386SX, running WFW 3.11 and some terminal emulation thing to connect to a Unsys A-Series painframe. One day the computer started working very strangely; it was as if the clock speed was halved. Pressing the Turbo button switched it into glacier mode. Tech support was able to verify the problem by running some advanced diagnostics and speed testing software that came free with DOS 6.2. It was called "GORILLA.BAS". After satisfying themselves that the exploding bananas were indeed flying somewhat sluggishly, even for a 386SX, I got a replacement (386SX) machine.
So I was working for this place in the 1990's. So after I got upgraded from a 386SX to an eggciting new Pentium-66 NEC thing (that did not have video drivers for whatever hardware they soldered onto the motherboard and it had to run in 16-colour VGA mode at dismal speed). So the new box shipped with WinNT 3.5 and Win95 had just been released. A friend outfitted me with a software of sorts that would make WinNT 3.5 look like Win95. As bad luck would have it, the PC rebooted with just blue background and a mouse cursor. Tech support chap investigated for a while, couldn't figure it out, and decided it would be be best to reinstall Windows because the thing wasn't very stable, etc. (I think I did admit to the guy eventually that I may or may not have installed some software that could have contributed to the OS instability).
I've done a full brain transplant on Windows twice, first time was a bit of a hassle because back then AMD's CPU software apparently didn't bother to check that it was trying to actually run on an AMD CPU and failed to fail gracefully, instead stopping the boot midway. After that it was normal "install new drivers, uninstall old ones". Second one went better.
of all the times I'd be in the office/hotel/restaurant/pub, at the other end of the country when I'd get a call from home telling me that the computer wasn't working. So a tortuous question and answer session wold follow (luckily the family were reasonably computer literate) until whatever problem they had was fixed. Also did a reasonable amount of support for friends.
Then there was the time when I was between my old career as a bean counter and becoming an IT consultant. I was temping for a company and ended up doing a bit of support for my manager and also for his friend. Mainly setting up new PCs and installing various progs (and me "donating" some games for the kids). Somehow, despite me trying to be professional with an hourly rate, Ithey always seemed to get away with underpaying me. But as it was in cash, I didn't complain too much. Revenge was to be mine when, having moved on to a career in IT, I got a call from a frantic ex-manager. He, and his friend, were owners of a currently nursing home somewhere in Surrey. Their admin clerk had just formatted their hard disk instead of the floppy. Could I fix it? Tomorrow (which was a Sunday)? "No problem" said I as I had Unformat in my toolbox, and informed him of my charges. After an hour or so drive, I arrived at what appeared to be a mansion and was met by the admin person (who was understandably distraught) and shown into the office. At which point I was left to get on with it. I pooped my 5.25 in floppy disk into the drive, typed A:Undelete and watched as the magic happened. After a few minutes I recreated the FAT for the root files (happily not too many of those). Checked it all looked OK and then formatted the hard disk again. After a while my ex-manager turned up and asked how it was gong, I said it was coming along fine and shouldn't take too much longer. Another wait and then I fixed it again and let folk know it was all back to normal. I figured the delay in fixing it recompensed me for:
a) being underpaid previously;
b) because it was a bloody Sunday;
c) because it might teach them to be more careful and to take backups!!!
BTW should anyone recognise themselves as that ex-manager, the above is a work of fiction. Honest!
bringing back all the PTSD from 'supporting' friends and family with IT woes.
All that stress trying to get granny to understand anti-virus etc etc etc etc.
But I have a simple solution now, I simply say "Unless its a 5 ton industrial robot that gone tits up , I'm not supporting it", but alas, things are not that simple, you see the boss knows I'm a bit of a knowledgeble type and will quite happily talk to other widget makers, then put them onto me when theres a problem with their 5 ton industrial robot....
Aaaiieee will the nightmare ever end.....
... re changing a motherboard.
A couple of decades ago my daughter was at University of Sussex and I got the inevitable: "My computer isn't working" call. I failed to fix it over the phone so that weekend saw me drive from Oxfordshire to Brighton for a bit of on-site support. The details have long since dropped from memory but the fix was to replace the motherboard. Put it all back together again and booted up. Windows XP reported that it couldn't boot as this was not the PC that it was registered to. So I obviously tried booting it again a few times with added expletives but to no avail.
Next job was to phone M$ support who informed me that I must have changed more than three(?) components in the PC and that counted as a new PC and I'd have to buy a new version of Windows. I explained that I had only changed one thing, the motherboard, and the fact that modern technology meant I no longer needed separate components wasn't my problem. Alas, that logic was lost on the poor support assistance person AKA sap. So after a few minutes of arguing with the sap (at least the saps were all human back then, albeit soulless) I said I wanted to talk to their manager. Again, back in the old days that was always possible.
To cut a long story short I argued my case up the management chain until someone actually agreed with me and arranged for a new copy of XP to be delivered to my daughter. RESULT!
Devine icon because that's how I felt beating M$
(Forgive me if this has been mentioned in the comments but I haven't the time to read through them at the moment).
It's trivial. And Windows copes now.
I've literally just done it moving the SSD from a Lenovo laptop to a Dell Mini Desktop for a POS* that my fiance uses.
There were no blue screens. No complaints. Nothing. It booted and just worked.
And that was using a 2.5" SATA SSD in place of the original Dell's m.2 SSD.
And it isn't the first time I've done it - not even with that particular SSD - it was originally in an aging NCR POS.
Now 20+ years ago, when you had to use tricks to inject drivers into the running OS before moving it - yeah it was a royal PITA, but not anymore.
*Point of Sale, not Piece of Shit :-)
Is he providing support for someone technically capable enough to replace a motherboard? And apparently did it correctly, as the PC booted far enough to complain about missing drivers, rather than having BIOS beeps.
Sorry, once you expose that level of competence the days of "free immediate family tech support" are permanently over lol!
I've been the family tech support for decades, and even though I work in IT, I have long since moved on from the front lines of direct user support. This of course means nothing to my family. However, I was overjoyed this year when my niece and nephew decided to gift grandma with a new iPad, and then proceeded to do ALL THE SETUP FOR HER! This means she won't call me! Happy day!
I was happy when my mom needed a new cell phone since hers was being obsoleted by the 2G shutoff a few years ago, and I dragged my feet on that enough that my brother got her one. I definitely did not want to become her Android tech support when I don't use Android. I'm already her Windows tech when I don't use Windows I don't need another thing I'd have to learn myself to help her with lol
20-30 years ago I was "the" person everyone went to for tech support.
Freinds, family, everyone knew that I knew about PC's and how to "fix" problems.
Gradually, as I got older, things quietened down, computers have got easier to use and I rarely get asked except by the in-laws.
Then in a Whatsapp group someone was struggling with something a couple of weeks ago and my wife posted a comment "Oh, you should ask my hubby, he knows all about computers" & someone from the past piped up "Yes, he fixed mine for me"
Since then...Gaaaaagh!
There's a simple solution to that - delete Whatsapp, and tell people you only use Signal. Most 'normal' ** people won't be able to bring themselves to do that, meaning they can't contact you and you get to live a quieter life.
** by 'normal' I mean those who tolerate advertisers tracking their internet use, enduring and watching adverts, paying subscriptions for everything ... yada yada. Those of us who know, simply don't.
....says my better half, who currently lives 500 miles away. As a result, spudgers, thermal paste, a small toolkit and a Ubuntu boot USB got packed in my luggage when I was heading over a week later.
Yep, it's thermally throttling. Ah, it's spent a while downloading stuff sat on a mattress.
Lenovo legion laptops do a very good job of sucking lots of dust up if you use it on a bed all the time.
Cue a hour or so pulling it apart and removing all the dust "worms" plus clean and thermal paste application. Lenovo have some really good service documentation publicly available on their website, wasn't long later I replaced my own gaming laptop with a LOQ 3 from the sales. Once again rather easy to work on for what it is!
Ha. My work laptop (also a Lenovo) sits on a nearly big enough piece of shelving, on my left on a couch in the sun room and shares a 50" monitor with my 2nd work laptop which sits on its original box on the table on my right-next to my ashtray. My 3rd work laptop, the newest one, that I only ever remote desktop into, sits in the back bedroom on a desk..
I'm glad to hear about the online docs!!!
About 20 years ago, my Dad jokingly suggested that I re-install XP on my techno-phobic Mom's computer, because they never saw me anymore now that she's running Slackware. I took it as a non-joke, and the Wife and I started making sure t alternate visiting my Great Aunt (also running Slackware) and my parents on a regular basis. The only difference is that I got to visit with them, instead of working on their computers while my wife visits ... Auntie is gone now, but I'll always be glad Dad spoke up when he did.
As far as I am aware, this should not be possible whilst windows is running - but it definitely happened.
My (in her 60s at the time) aunt had gotten one of those new fangled computer things to help out with her business. Windows 98se era. She was in general one of those people that would fall in to the "good user" category even without the plateS of delicious food she would insist on stuffing me with every time I went over.
She signed up to some training course that the local college was running to teach people the basics of using a computer. Always backed up her files to a zip disk and verified they were there at the end of every session. etc.
One day she calls up, her computer won't boot. I pop over to take a look and sure enough as reported it hangs somewhere around where the windows logo boot screen thing is meant come up. So I boot from the windows install CD I had brought with me, but in to the command line, and just check the drive is OK by switching to C: and doing a dir.
No windows directory.
I ask her "umm, What did you do last time you were using the computer?". She initially answered "just the same things I normally do". When I told her that the windows directory was missing she remembered something. In this week's how to use a computer class they had showed them how to use explorer to look at the files on the hard drive. When she got home she looked on her computer and there were a load of files that had "somehow gotten on to her computer" that she "didn't recognise", so, well...
Come to think of it, the paranoid backing her files up to a zip disk at the end of every session thing might have started after this incident! (However none of her data was lost, she didn't delete those files!)
worked wonders for virtually zero onsite tech support :)
use partition manager 8 to shrink windows partition
boot from same floppy and use ghost to create a windows image in the free space
configure bios to boot from floppy first and configure the ghost to autorun and restore the backup image onto the windows partition
easy fix over the phone for when things went really really wrong
floppy was labelled ... "DANGER : you will lose all your files.... back them up first", same pause 0 message in the batch file :)
Oh, dear god, I have a machine just like that in the other room. I acquired it along with the widow with whom I'm currently in a ten+ year relationship, after having worked on it several years before she was widowed. I don't remember where they got it, but I think it was someone who sold home-built PCs out of the back of his car in downtown Atlanta...
I generally don't do "home IT" for folks - more trouble than it's worth. Except last night. A really nice guy I know, from my local, had asked me about helping him sync his iPhone and Mac.
Long story short - all sorted despite the fact he took a few tries to remember the right passwords and passcodes for the right phone so we could get it done. Plus he took ages to get the Touch ID working - he's a stonemason, his fingerprints are degraded to buggery.
He buys me a couple of beers for my efforts. And he mentions my efforts to another friend in the pub who butters me up with her "my phone hasn't been getting my emails since November but my iPad and laptop work fine". Delete the email account from the phone, add back in with the right password, and she's happy as Larry.
TL;DR - helped two pub friends out with IT issues, had four beers and paid only for three :)
These days the only people I'll help with their computer are my wife, one neighbour, and one close friend. There's a good reason: I remember helping my Dad buy and install his first (and only) computer, using W98 or XP, can't recall which one.
It worked fine for over a year, then I got a call saying that various things "just don't work any more" or "the mouse goes too slow" and so on. He was in the U.K., I lived in Europe so it wasn't a question of merely "popping down the road". He was a very clever man, but more with mechanical things and with material science - not with computers or electronics and certainly not with software. So after asking questions and suggesting things it was clear that I'd have to visit him and 'fix' that system.
Turned out that he'd let my brother's kids play games etc. on it and being more 'computer literate' they'd installed stuff and altered various paths and local device names which f-ed up the standard set-up. I explained all this, flew back home, and all worked fine until 6 months later after another visit from the kids who'd done the same thing.
This was repeated about 5 times until one time I was in hospital having a hip replacement (at just 46 due to pulling too much G in both parabolic test-flight [work] and aerobatics [hobby]). Naturally I couldn't quickly fly over and fix it again, plus after recovery I had to go back to work (hey - I wasn't 'on call' to my parents, I had a job!).
In the end, I couldn't 'fix' his system just before he passed away, and my stepmother very angrily called both me and my wife repeatedly, blaming me for his discomfort in his last days - and continued to do so well after he passed.
That was the final lesson for me - before the P.C. was commonplace (excluding my own 'P.C.' at the time, a PDP-8/e with 2 Pertec mag-tape drives & massive[!] 30Mword hard drive, 8-inch floppy, teletype with paper-tape reader & punch, a V.D.U, and dial-up modem for BB's) I'd have friends asking if I could fix their T.V.'s or video recorders and suchlike and I'd often say yes... I gradually stopped doing this since once you start 'helping out' this way you very rapidly end up with absolutely no free time for yourself at all, not to mention the complaints you get when either repair isn't possible or when it needs expensive replacement parts.
Better to refuse such 'help' even to friends - citing "I don't have the equipment it needs" or "I don't know anything about [this software / that processor / the hardware]" or "I'd likely damage something in it" - even when you'd like to help them out. You still have a life that way!
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