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It would go in sighting but no one was really sucky, just a sucky situation with tech thrown in. I am not a tech person but I am usually good at troubleshooting and fixing odd problems, hence the phone call and he called when I was having a pissy migrane day, oops.
My flatmate decided to go to his mum's for a few weeks and bought her a new dlink wireless router modem as she only had a basic modem and he wanted to use his Ipad while there. Think this would be easy thing to do right? Her internet is set up for a simple swap, should be no problem. NOT.
1st mistake. Buying Dlink (more on that later)
2nd mistake. He didn't check the box in store. As it turns out it was missing the antenna and he wondered why it was taped up, not shrinkwrapped *pulls out some hair*
3rd mistake. He didn't test the modem before he travelled 300km away. I could have run it on my system as dlink has some quirky quirks. They are good if you get a good one but all that I have run into are duds in one way or another. I'm not kidding.
As it turns out, the modem was a P.O.S that has a huge software error thus rendering it useless to connect to the internet. Thankyou to whomever returned it without the ariel and not telling the store about it being a dud and a big thankyou to the store for not checking that the box had everything it was supposed to have and checking if it was a dud. That was so nice of you.
So I get a phone call asking for help. At this stage we don't know what's causing the inability to connect to the internet. I get him to switch the origional modem back and he can connect so it's not the providers' end so switch and go through setting up the new one. Nothing but it is broadcasting. Confirm by ipad. Great. Check online to see if the dlink is compatible with her system and provider yep, should be good to go. Get him to describe to me what he has done in setup and go through the usual (side note I LOATHE how fiddley the dlink setup software is).
Get an odd error this time 651 I think, which is pointing to a win7 issue *rubs forhead* so as he's dickering around I read up. Oh HELL NO I am not ordering a system restore or porting code, I don't think it's been backed up for a year. That's swatting a fly with a car, not worth it and I'm hardware inclined, not software. Me dicking around in the directories will be fatal.
So I tell him to do a hard reset of the modem and start again. Run through again. It's broadcasting a signal but not connecting. Hmm. Tell him to try bridging the modems (meh, I'm not going to blow it up trying this). Somehow he tries to plug the new into the old completley wrong so I walk in through step by step. No, phone line into OLD modem then ethernet into NEW modem. No, it won't work the other way because the old modem has only ONE ethernet port. Yes I know because I'm looking at the manual online. The old modem is not a router! That worked and he got it and he got it set up. I tell to unplug the ethernet to the new moden b/c we have to set up the old modem first for bridging. Why? again I'm RTFM!
We find the bridging selection and it won't got through? Bwah? He askes is it because he didn't unplug the new modem *rips out more hair* Remove. the. new. modem. from. the. link. OK try the bridging setup again. Success! it goes through but still not connecting to the net. Tell him to restart the system while I study further on dlink issues. Restart successful, modems boot all green and good to go except...again it cannot connect to the internet. Grr, damn thing. Tell him to unplug the new modem from the setup and test the line again with the old modem. Works fine. Ok it's confimed, you have a dud modem and the wonderful internet backs this up. Stupid dlink. Off to another store where he is this time to get a netgear and a refund.
I've left out a couple of parts where we went round and round and round and a few restarts. This took about 90mins before we gave up.
How the hell does tech support do this over the phone on a daily basis without hitting the bottle? And my friend is actually competent in computers and he was all over the place but he was feeling rather ill that day, poor guy.
My sympathies to all the people in phone support. On ANYTHING.
My flatmate decided to go to his mum's for a few weeks and bought her a new dlink wireless router modem as she only had a basic modem and he wanted to use his Ipad while there. Think this would be easy thing to do right? Her internet is set up for a simple swap, should be no problem. NOT.
1st mistake. Buying Dlink (more on that later)
2nd mistake. He didn't check the box in store. As it turns out it was missing the antenna and he wondered why it was taped up, not shrinkwrapped *pulls out some hair*
3rd mistake. He didn't test the modem before he travelled 300km away. I could have run it on my system as dlink has some quirky quirks. They are good if you get a good one but all that I have run into are duds in one way or another. I'm not kidding.
As it turns out, the modem was a P.O.S that has a huge software error thus rendering it useless to connect to the internet. Thankyou to whomever returned it without the ariel and not telling the store about it being a dud and a big thankyou to the store for not checking that the box had everything it was supposed to have and checking if it was a dud. That was so nice of you.
So I get a phone call asking for help. At this stage we don't know what's causing the inability to connect to the internet. I get him to switch the origional modem back and he can connect so it's not the providers' end so switch and go through setting up the new one. Nothing but it is broadcasting. Confirm by ipad. Great. Check online to see if the dlink is compatible with her system and provider yep, should be good to go. Get him to describe to me what he has done in setup and go through the usual (side note I LOATHE how fiddley the dlink setup software is).
Get an odd error this time 651 I think, which is pointing to a win7 issue *rubs forhead* so as he's dickering around I read up. Oh HELL NO I am not ordering a system restore or porting code, I don't think it's been backed up for a year. That's swatting a fly with a car, not worth it and I'm hardware inclined, not software. Me dicking around in the directories will be fatal.
So I tell him to do a hard reset of the modem and start again. Run through again. It's broadcasting a signal but not connecting. Hmm. Tell him to try bridging the modems (meh, I'm not going to blow it up trying this). Somehow he tries to plug the new into the old completley wrong so I walk in through step by step. No, phone line into OLD modem then ethernet into NEW modem. No, it won't work the other way because the old modem has only ONE ethernet port. Yes I know because I'm looking at the manual online. The old modem is not a router! That worked and he got it and he got it set up. I tell to unplug the ethernet to the new moden b/c we have to set up the old modem first for bridging. Why? again I'm RTFM!
We find the bridging selection and it won't got through? Bwah? He askes is it because he didn't unplug the new modem *rips out more hair* Remove. the. new. modem. from. the. link. OK try the bridging setup again. Success! it goes through but still not connecting to the net. Tell him to restart the system while I study further on dlink issues. Restart successful, modems boot all green and good to go except...again it cannot connect to the internet. Grr, damn thing. Tell him to unplug the new modem from the setup and test the line again with the old modem. Works fine. Ok it's confimed, you have a dud modem and the wonderful internet backs this up. Stupid dlink. Off to another store where he is this time to get a netgear and a refund.
I've left out a couple of parts where we went round and round and round and a few restarts. This took about 90mins before we gave up.
How the hell does tech support do this over the phone on a daily basis without hitting the bottle? And my friend is actually competent in computers and he was all over the place but he was feeling rather ill that day, poor guy.
My sympathies to all the people in phone support. On ANYTHING.
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