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Unplugging it won't fix that!

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  • Unplugging it won't fix that!

    So, my family is one of those that's had computers in our homes and businesses for the past 30 years. You would think people with that much experience, would know, you know, the basics. But what's the fun in that?

    So this morning I get a text -- which in itself is a shocker, but anyway. It... you know, here, you can read the messages for yourselves.

    Aunt: How do you get a computer to stop hibernating? It won't stop hibernating and won't come up to the main screen
    Me: You mean it boots up and hibernates immediately?(Not the brightest question, I know, but it's pre-coffee, on a Sunday, and Aunt, while being a frequent laptop user, has never really been one to use hibernate/sleep/standby when shutdown works just fine, in her opinion.)
    Aunt: Grandpa put it on hibernate when he went to bed last night now he wants to use the computer and it won't move from the hibernating screen. We've unplugged it twice but when back on it's still hibernating with the little circle going around.

    And this is where I remember, my aunt is visiting her parents, who have a laptop for their household computer. A laptop that they keep plugged in, so unplugging it will only fix the hibernate problem if she also pulls the battery, or waits 2-3 hours. I literally had to describe the process of a hard reset by holding in the power button, including things like "to restart, press power, but don't hold it down this time." To a woman whose first computer, she had to write programming for it before she could use it. I must have been switched at birth, there's no way I'm related to these people.

  • #2
    Quoth patiokitty View Post
    Having been a tech in the past there are things I *know* how to do and what should be first on the list of troubleshooting. However, quite often I over-think the issue and automatically skip the absolute basics -
    Yeah, but I would hope that you'd never think that unplugging a laptop from the outlet would be the same thing as rebooting it.
    My Writing Blog -Updated 05/06/2013
    It's so I can get ideas out of my head, I decided to put it in a blog in case people are bored or are curious as to the (many) things in progress.

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    • #3
      Question: did you tell them to try pressing a key on the keyboard before moving to the hard reset?
      I AM the evil bastard!
      A+ Certified IT Technician

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      • #4
        Quoth lordlundar View Post
        Question: did you tell them to try pressing a key on the keyboard before moving to the hard reset?
        I did not... didn't even think of it. I kind of assumed that if the circle had been just spinning round and round, the whole time it took her dad to try to fix it, then her, then them to text my cousin, get my cell number, and text me about it, that chances were pretty high that it was frozen. Always a chance that was incorrect, no matter how safe an assumption it may seem to be, of course.

        Yeah, I know everybody including me does some really silly things once in a while, and I would rather my family ask, than believe their neighbor's cousin's nephew who found out that four drops of orange soda in the RAM slot fixes a frozen computer, but some days, my family still drives me nuts. I'm glad she texted instead of calling so at least she couldn't hear me rolling my eyes, because I know next week it's going to be me making the silly mistakes. And it is! Today, my sister-in-law's computer is doing something I've never seen before, and what do we do first? I'll give you a hint, it wasn't a reboot.

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        • #5
          Fist pound it repeatedly while screaming RAWR!! My brother does that. The other one used his last 2 laptops as frisbees and drove over them in a 4x4 in a fit of 'it's not working dammit!'. No wonder Dad refuses to fix their stuff now. My family should be a rage comic, it's unreal.

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          • #6
            Do not feel bad - a woman I know STILL refers to her computer as a ''hard drive'', even after 7 plus years and being corrected on a weekly basis by myself AND her 4 grown children.

            [sigh] the wheel is spinning, but I am afraid the hamster is dead.

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            • #7
              I use hibernate all the time on my laptop, and desktop, I just have to press my power button and it boots up. My problem is when it goes into sleep mode, it takes forever to respond, but hibernate is just the computer saving everything to an image to boot up to when you turn the computer back on.

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              • #8
                my old laptop would sometimes do that. i learned that i had to sometimes give it a few seconds of mouse/trackpad tapping first. only once in a while did i need to hard reboot.

                which i did usually by holding the power button down for 5-10 seconds

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