Argh - Family PC Expert Rent !!

[fossyant]

I hate being the family PC expert.....argh....just spent 2 hours messing with relative's PC after something had gone wrong with internet - well it was working last week when I installed the router....... went of........ then the messing started..... Oh we've had a go at fixing it ......someone has buggered up IE as I can connect to their router from my laptop....no...no...no.....

Still off.....will go back when I've got a new version of IE and Firefox - nearly the whole evening wasted - downloading IE and firefox now..... but back home...bugger !!

 

[domtyler]

I quickly learned to leave any friends or relatives machines at the:

NTLDR is missing
Press any key to restart

...prompt when asked for advice or help fixing a small problem. Say my mum wanted me to help find the word count option in MS Word, she would end up with:

NTLDR is missing
Press any key to restart

If a mate needed a new graphics card installing:

NTLDR is missing
Press any key to restart

It has worked for me, I haven't been asked for any IT help, wife apart, for years.

 

[Crackle]

yep! Worse thing I ever did was install a home network and give everyone a PC. It's like a corporate environment in miniature but really up close and personal.

I only did it to get them all off my PC. Now I'm so cheesed off, that I couldn't even be a*sed to finish off my own new PC and am still using one I bought 8 years ago

The anti-virus has just expired so I need to update that. The wife's laptop seems to have been cursed prior to leaving the factory. I have to find some proxy software to stop the kids playing games on theirs (I don't know why PC games are so bloody addictive, they don't have a problem controlling their time on x-box etc.) A bluescreen of death has just appeared on son no.2's laptop, though it seems to have self-healed now and I'm being pressured to buy two new graphics cards so they can play Rayman flaming Raving rabbits which the wife bought without consulting me. Cue 'if you'd asked, I'd have told you I didn't build them to run games!', conversation.

That's not to mention the number of times my services get volunteered

I'm gonna follow Dom's advice - Thanks Fossyant, I needed to get that off my chest

 

[fossyant]

Nightmare isn't it - still got to go back and sort the bloody thing - meddling teens me thinks -oh I went in there - not one of them has any idea.....

I'm IT support to my 2 sisters laptops and wireless connections, my mum/brothers wired router connection and PC, my father in laws laptop and desktop plus router, sister in law's wireless pc set up (with two fiddling teens) and our own 2 x PC's and Laptop......FFS managing my own mini company ere......argh...rant over !!! Off to bed...... gonna be a long night with this wind....

 

[alecstilleyedye]

without wishing to start the mac/pc thing:

dad had an old pc, which my bro in law (who lives in newcastle, hundreds of miles away) has had the chore of fixing from time to time. when time came to get a new one, i recommended a mac (inevitably), especially as he mainly wanted something good with digital cameras, which iphoto undoubtedly is.

anyway, he went the pc route as bro in law does not have as much knowledge of macs. i pointed out that i'm local, a mac professional, and that i have so few problems with my heavily used macs so he'd have no bother.

i could almost see the penny drop

bro in law wishes dad had bought a mac too…

 

[Trillian]

yep! Worse thing I ever did was install a home network and give everyone a PC. It's like a corporate environment in miniature but really up close and personal.

I only did it to get them all off my PC. Now I'm so cheesed off, that I couldn't even be a*sed to finish off my own new PC and am still using one I bought 8 years ago

The anti-virus has just expired so I need to update that. The wife's laptop seems to have been cursed prior to leaving the factory. I have to find some proxy software to stop the kids playing games on theirs (I don't know why PC games are so bloody addictive, they don't have a problem controlling their time on x-box etc.) A bluescreen of death has just appeared on son no.2's laptop, though it seems to have self-healed now and I'm being pressured to buy two new graphics cards so they can play Rayman flaming Raving rabbits which the wife bought without consulting me. Cue 'if you'd asked, I'd have told you I didn't build them to run games!', conversation.

That's not to mention the number of times my services get volunteered

I'm gonna follow Dom's advice - Thanks Fossyant, I needed to get that off my chest

i'm sat ready for that happening sometime next deccade

i'm on a mac, you need a password to install stuff on it. it will be daddy's computer for work, if you bu99er it up then you'll have to pay for it to be upgraded due to it being obsolete, like daddy likes it

i've a windows machine that was not intended to run games (it was apparently intended for graphics work as i was given it to do my course on by disabilities support, in the past three years it's died due to hardrive and psu faliure when running photoshop it's also caught fire

now used purely for games and i just backup the game files and re-format if there is a problem.

as yet, i'm unmarried and no kids so i'm fine

 

[domtyler]

a mac professional

I thought a mac professional was someone who drinks lots of skinny lattes and can do the Guardian Quick Crossword in less than two hours?

 

[alecstilleyedye]

I thought a mac professional was someone who drinks lots of skinny lattes and can do the Guardian Quick Crossword in less than two hours?

how dare you! i like my cappo full fat thanks very much

 

[Trillian]

I thought a mac professional was someone who drinks lots of skinny lattes and can do the Guardian Quick Crossword in less than two hours?

nah, they can be found doing binary su doku:

(Image coppyright R.Munroe www.xkcd.com)

 

[Dayvo]

fossyant!
Say that you will no longer offer a free computing service to friends or family, but you'll happily cut their hair for them!

 

[frog]

I've given up being nice to people with computer problems. A couple of years ago there was this really nice chap at work who looked like he had bowel cancer and he asked me to have a look at his PC as he'd be using it a lot when he got out of hospital.

Took a look at it and told him I'd build him a new one, at just cost price and put various bits of software on as well. I had 4 60 mile trips to the computer shop, two weekends building and installing it and then I took it round to him and transferred all his stuff onto the new one.

After a week it started to 'go wrong'. He, and his grown up kids, were loading all sorts of crap on it and, quite rightly, it was running like a dog. Then he installed AOL and that brought it to it's knees. Instead of calling AOL to get one of their techies to talk him through he called me, 22:30 on a Saturday night, to come and sort it out as he wanted to talk to his sister in Australia that night before she went on holiday.

I took it away three times and cleaned it up and returned it to have it buggered about again by that tribe of idiots. The final straw came one Friday night, my daughter lives in Somerset rang to say her front door lock had just disintegrated as she put the key in it and she couldn't lock her door. Could I come down the next day and put a new one for her? Ten minutes later the computer owner rang to say I'd loaded some software on his PC and it was taking ages to boot. Could I come and have a look at it. I explained I was going to Somerset tomorrow to help my daughter and his reply was 'Can't she wait until Sunday?'

 

[fossyant]

To Mac owners - add in the factor of two teenagers and a mother who knows nothing about computers - merrily clicking and ticking boxes...... I know this because they told me - and found the teenage girls hotmail address typed in the use automatic script on the networking properties . - I'm pretty sure they have buggered up the settings as my laptop connected no problems to their router - although it should work automatically, I think they have knocked the gateway setting off - will have to go back....

Despite telling them, she's installed P2P software...add in she knows nothing about how it works, or what she can get (virus) - I've said, if you need something speak to me..... PC's are dangerous in the hands of people who know nothing about how they work, and then install all sorts which leave loads of stuff running in memory....

 

[alecstilleyedye]

that's where everyone having their own account comes in handy. very good on the mac, and i believe windows has a similar idea. the kids can only use certain applications and cannot alter the system settings. and your email stays private.

 

[Carwash]

that's where everyone having their own account comes in handy. very good on the mac, and i believe windows has a similar idea. the kids can only use certain applications and cannot alter the system settings. and your email stays private.

Windows does indeed have 'a similar idea'. The problem is that a lot of programs ignore it, meaning that some things won't run unless you're logged in as an admin user. I understand that this may have been fixed with Vista though.

 

[trustysteed]

over the last three years i've supplied three pc's to my brother and his family for internet and games. pretty good spec yet they manage to break them and then buy rip-off second hand dogs of machines from neighbours instead and then keep ringing me for help on how to get them working.

why did i bother?