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I'm out of town right now for a well-deserved (but too short) vacation.
Hours before I am to leave for the airport, I get an email from the son of a woman I did some work for (installing Office 2007 and installing some more memory in her ancient computer so it would actually run).
"I tried to install antivirus [which I already did and the client knows this] and now there are no icons on the desktop. Can you come out tomorrow?"
I politely say that I'm about to go out of town for a week but would come over when I return, and list some things that he could try in my absence to fix the issue. I also ask what was installed and suggest that he uninstall it and see if that helps (mentioning that the computer already had antivirus in case what he installed was conflicting).
Get a reply days later "I don't know what happened [I know what happened, I asked what you did right before it happened] and my parents don't have another computer to check their email [how are you emailing me? please don't say you're XXX miles away] when can you get here?"
I again reiterate that I'm out of town until the 20th and say that I can try to remote in and for him to tell them to leave the computer turned on and logged into Windows. Which I soon find doesn't work because...the target computer isn't turned on.
Hours before I am to leave for the airport, I get an email from the son of a woman I did some work for (installing Office 2007 and installing some more memory in her ancient computer so it would actually run).
"I tried to install antivirus [which I already did and the client knows this] and now there are no icons on the desktop. Can you come out tomorrow?"
I politely say that I'm about to go out of town for a week but would come over when I return, and list some things that he could try in my absence to fix the issue. I also ask what was installed and suggest that he uninstall it and see if that helps (mentioning that the computer already had antivirus in case what he installed was conflicting).
Get a reply days later "I don't know what happened [I know what happened, I asked what you did right before it happened] and my parents don't have another computer to check their email [how are you emailing me? please don't say you're XXX miles away] when can you get here?"
I again reiterate that I'm out of town until the 20th and say that I can try to remote in and for him to tell them to leave the computer turned on and logged into Windows. Which I soon find doesn't work because...the target computer isn't turned on.