Now I remember why I stopped doing tech support

RJM62

RJM62

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Jun 15, 2007
Messages
13,157
Location
Upstate New York
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Geek on the Hill
Here's an excerpt from a transcript of me trying to help an old friend of mine deal with some malware on her PC.
Angie Babe: what free program do you use now to clean spam and such from your PCM?
Angie Babe: Pc
Angie Babe: One of my boys accepted a download from optimizer and it won't let me uninstall it,, any ideas?
Rich the Geek: you probably should have a professional remove it.
Angie Babe: Ya think
Rich the Geek: yep
Angie Babe: Is it gonna hurt my pc
Rich the Geek: yep. well, it actually depends on which one. there are several programs by that name... some legit, some malware.
Angie Babe: How much is it gonna cost me
Rich the Geek: i have no idea. the technician will set a price.
Angie Babe: I doubt I can afford it right now
Rich the Geek: You can try combofix. But sometimes it breaks things.
Angie Babe: Last night I kept getting a black screen with the cursor only on it and figured out with the time change for some reason it was an hour faster then it should be so I fixed the clock and that helped some I haven't gotten on it today
Rich the Geek: faster?
Angie Babe: Well it was getting an error screen ever time I booted it up and I'd have to let it run thru a fix it series after I fixed clock it booted up without that problem
Rich the Geek: whet version of windows is it?
Angie Babe: Not sure its downstairs I'm moving down there then ill tell ya
Rich the Geek: ok
Angie Babe: Ugh it doesn't work again I have a black screen with nothing but the cursor on it
Rich the Geek: is anything plugged in to it, like a flash drive or a printer?
Angie Babe: No just the electrical plug and if I shut it off and turn it back on it will come up with another screen
Rich the Geek: and what does the screen say?
Angie Babe: It's my laptop
Rich the Geek: and what does the laptop screen say?
Angie Babe: It's black with white letters
Rich the Geek: and what do the white letters say?
Angie Babe: Launch startup repair
Rich the Geek: is it vista or win 7?
Angie Babe: 7 I think
Rich the Geek: and you already ran the startup repair once?
Angie Babe: This is about the 4th time
Rich the Geek: okay... if it didn't work the first three times...
Rich the Geek: never mind.
Angie Babe: It says now do you want to restore your computer using system restore
Rich the Geek: probably not. if it's infected system restore usually won't help.
Angie Babe: But it works as soon as it runs thru this
Rich the Geek: for how long?
Angie Babe: not long.
Rich the Geek: right. which is why i say it's probably infected.
Angie Babe: Guess ill take it to cable they will fix infected pc for $20.
Rich the Geek: or you can try combofix... or maybe mbam. mbam is less likely to break anything.
Rich the Geek: i used to charge about $250.00. but i made housecalls, and my clients were rich folks.
Angie Babe: I can handle the $20.
Angie Babe: For $250 I could almost buy new atop
Rich the Geek: it also could be hard drive corruption, something like that... registry issues... the kids use it, so who knows. probably porn surfing.
Angie Babe: Yea I'm gonna have to ban them from it
Rich the Geek: there are several roguewares by that name... combofix will remove most of them, but once in a while it breaks things in the process; and if you don't know how to fix them, then you're up the creek.
Angie Babe: I can't seem to keep them away from my iPad or my laptop. If I knew somebody I could trust
Rich the Geek: for what?
Angie Babe: To fix this every time I trust people I get screwed
Rich the Geek: it's not brain surgery. the problem is that it takes time, and people don't want to pay for it. is there a college near you?
Angie Babe: Yes
Rich the Geek: If you talk to a comp-sci prof (or whatever they call it there) on the q.t., they might have smart college kids who do stuff like that on the side, and on the cheap. it's kind of routine work. kimberly can even do it.
Angie Babe: Then why. If a kid can. Can't I do it
Rich the Geek: kimberly has worked with me a lot. she's picked things up.
Angie Babe: Well I've been working on my own for how long with advice from you what maybe 5-10 years
Rich the Geek: it's not the same. there's a feel you have to develop. little things that don't feel right...
Angie Babe: So if they can't get this to boot up do they have a way to clean it
Rich the Geek: i have no idea. it can be done, but i don't know their setup.
Angie Babe: My iPad is much more limited to what it can do
Rich the Geek: yep
Angie Babe: If I have to buy a new laptop it will be a smaller one
Rich the Geek: why?
Angie Babe: I cancelled my weight watchers and I didn't renew my membership to the rec
Rich the Geek: ok...
Angie Babe: I'm so disgusted with myself
Angie Babe: Ok I got it to boot up and this optimizer thing says it partners with Microsoft
Rich the Geek: did you try just uninstalling it?
Angie Babe: Keith got really mad at me cause I told jayden , "I'm a nerd and your a turd I live in a hutt and you live in a butt"
Rich the Geek: ...
Angie Babe: Yes it told me yesterday that it couldn't remove it if it wasn't there but it is there
Rich the Geek: have you tried running the virus scanner, or doesn't it work?
Angie Babe: My jasper sky just expired a couple days ago
Rich the Geek: what is jasper sky?
Angie Babe: When I go into uninstall and click on it I get a boc that says cannot install does not exist
Rich the Geek: what is jasper sky?
Angie Babe: Makayla is doing better finally gained some weight
Rich the Geek: what is jasper sky?
Angie Babe: Was supposed to say jasper sky
Rich the Geek: what is jasper sky?
Angie Babe: It changes it
Rich the Geek: ...
Rich the Geek: what is jasper sky and what does it change?
Angie Babe: Kasp persky
Rich the Geek: jasper sky changes kaspersky?
Angie Babe: This iPad changes my words
Rich the Geek: ah, okay.
​
-Rich
 
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Jeepers. I would "click". Sorry, connection must have gone bad.

Seriously, I do the net mgmt and try to keep the test center up to min. specs, for the FBO in which I reside. It has gotten to the point of, "I respect your minimal capital expense requirements. But when I tell you you have to spend $350 you have to. Seriously, unless you want to do it yourself again. And, that worked out real good, didn't it.????"

At times it's almost a charitable enterprise....
 
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bbchien said:
Jeepers. I would "click". Sorry, connection must have gone bad.

Seriouslyi, I do the net mgmt for the FBO in which I reside and it has gotten to the poitn of, "I respect your minimal capital expense requirements. But when I tell you you have to spend $350 you have to. Seriously, unless you want to do it yourself again. And, that worked out real good, didn't it.????"
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I told a guy who fired me a few years ago and had someone else rebuild and maintain his site. He called me two weeks ago to re-hire me because he hasn't gotten a sale from the site since. It's invisible to search engines because of bad coding and bizarre menu scripts.

I have to rebuild the site from scratch because I delete the backups after two years. I gave him a $2,400.00 quote, which is very low considering the amount of work I'll have to do.

He told me that the other guy only charged him $500.00. "And how has that worked out?" I asked.

Mind you, this guy's average ticket is about a grand, and he hasn't gotten a job from the site for three years.

-Rich
 
Have had that conversation before. Numerous times.

A number of them, with my mother.

Those convinced me of the value of putting remote access software on her machine and doing maintenance on it remotely, so I didn't gouge my eardrums out.

Today's fun... The EE college-educated customer-facing sales engineer who got all butthurt that three non-degreed engineers, our Manager, our Director, the Director of Security, and the VP of Operations ALL had to tell him NO...

... That he can't keep sending sensitive data to customers with Google Drive, and the sub-set of highly sensitive data he's sending, MUST be encrypted for a specific HUMAN before it leaves our network.

Oh and yeah, we have a nice SFTP server all sittin' pretty on the public side for this kinda stuff already. He just doesn't like it. Poor baby.

He shopped it around, looking for a Yes-man all day. Little did he realize we other humans actually communicate and knew he was coming.

I think by 3PM two Directors were ready to kill him. They'd decided to lock him in a room with the Security Director, last I heard.
 
LOL. I am right now putting a new LCD in the ex's laptop. The same laptop I gave her brand-new when we divorced along with the "we are not married now and I am no longer your tech support" speech.
 
This is why I have a Mac. Life's too short to be screwing with this stuff. And for the people who say Mac's are too expensive how many trips to the computer repair guy to wipe viruses and malware does it take to make up the difference? Not many.
 
What you are about to read is a true story. No computers were harmed in the re-telling...

We take you back in time to when very few people had their own computers and IBM had released their PS/2's. I was working as a help desk kid in the Texas A&M computer lab that provided access so students could write their reports and run spreadsheets.

We had just gotten our allotment of PS/2's with color screens, removing the older PC-AT's and the monochrome screens. The 2nd night after we got them up and on the line, a PhD student working on her dissertation (she had been in the lab many times prior) shows up and signs in to use a computer with Word Perfect on it.

I told her she was in luck, we had just gotten the newer computers and she would like how much better and faster they worked, that having a mouse was really easy to use, etc, etc.... But what I didn't realize is the impending sabotage I had created...

As I watched, she went to the system I assigned her and spread out her things, including the plastic disc case of 5-1/4" floppy discs that contained her research and word processing files.

She took out the disc that had the dissertation.... Looked at the PS/2 with its 3-1/2" disc drive. Looked at the larger disc in her hand.... Looked at the drive.... Looked at the disc again.... arrives at the conclusion that one is bigger than the other.....

Then arrives at the perfect Texas Aggie solution.

She folded the disc in half, and slid it into the disc slot.


The other gem was getting a call from the dorms about a problem getting a DOS computer up and running. I and my buddy were willing to help and I told her to bring a copy of the disc she used to boot her computer. She shows up 30-45 minutes later with a single piece of paper.... that's a photocopy of a floppy disc.
 
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I get calls from friends/wives of friends like this...

"My game won't run, why not?"

"Uhh... I don't know, is there an error message?"

"Says I either need drivers or an accelerated graphics card. "

"Ok..."

*walk her through screens and determine that the video card isn't apparently good enough*


"Ok, so where can I download a new one?"

*facepalm*



Although it's not much better being a developer. Our users seem to think we can just whip up new code on a moments notice and tend to call us as an afterthought for some project they're working on.

Or there's our tax guy who often doesn't know how to file taxes and drops it on the programmers to do it... since we create the electronic files. Yeah uh, I can put a number anywhere you like, dude but you need to tell me what goes there, my degree is not in accounting.
 
Well, I closed my rebuild deal. I had to finance him over four months, but hey, money's money.

-Rich
 
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