'It's your fault!' Technological inept stories.

[Joyius]

Have you ever been blamed by anyone for any reason when something on their computer, printer, or phone stops working all because you "touched" it or "installed a virus"? Share your stories here.

When I was younger and this was in the days with the original sims games, my mom was starting to get mad about me playing the games and started telling me it had viruses on it and that even the computer guy had backed her up. Um sure mom, right, and it's not my brother looking up porn? You sure?

[lordlundar]

I'm a certified computer tech. You do the math.

Most obvious one had to be pin pad replacements at a local Wal-Mart. Anything that happened to the systems was blamed on the pin pads, whether or not it had any involvement with it or not. Printer not printing the receipts? Must be the pin pad, quick call over the tech! (load the roll in the proper way morons!)

I was there for at least an hour longer than I should have been because of it.

[protege]

I've been blamed for fixing my dad's computer. He thinks he's an "expert" because he took a few classes in Basic back in the 1970s. Yet, every time I'd go down there, I got to hear him bitch and moan about what a "piece of shit" his year-old HP was. Keep in mind that I do tech support, and fix things for a living.

Granted, it was a piece of shit. He spent the bare minimum on it, didn't bother with software or driver updates. Apparently, if you have antivirus software, you don't need to update it. Just *having* it is enough

Sick of the bitching, when he and my mom went on vacation last January, I "stole" his computer, brought it to my place, and hooked it up on my extra desk. I removed the dozen or so toolbars, the million viruses, and the massive amount of spyware. No wonder that thing was so bad! It was infected, and should have been shot. Took a few hours, but after I installed all of the Micro$haft updates, I had it running like new. It was still a piece of shit, but at least it no longer crashed when running multiple programs

Fast forward to June. I have no idea what happened, but I got blamed for "breaking" his computer. Seems that the work I did to get the fucking thing running properly...was enough to trash the hard drive

I had no idea that had happened, until I got a call at work...telling me not to stop by their house. Dad was still steaming over his dead computer, plus the fact that the shop he took it to not only charged him a whopping $300 to swap out and reload the drive...but they'd screwed up some of his drivers and didn't install Office. Naturally, I was pretty pissed--I could have had that fixed for about $75 and a beer. All of it--the new drive, reinstalling Windows, plus transferring his documents--would have been done right, and not taken 2 days!

So now, when he starts bitching about it, I refuse to work on it. I'm not about to get screamed at when he gets a virus. It's not my fault he hasn't updated his virus defs since about 1990

[artcurmudgeon]

FFS, you picked a perfect time for this topic....

Let me lay the scene out for you. Where we live is a small neighborhood, one way in, one way out(yes its a circle) and I live at the back end of it. My wife best friend lives up the hill from us and is in the process of moving out(She wants her freedom!!!!! don't get me started on this), and because of this we have nothing but chaos lately.

1)my wife talked me into giving her an old laptop so she would have something to use instead of going to the library, she never wanted to use it, didn't want to learn, the library was easier. I also gave her a nice laser printer as well.
2)wife said she needs internet access but doesn't want to pay for it, so I built a cantenna, but it under the front porch and pointed it up to her place and provided her with internet. I left the ssid set as "FBI Surveillance Van #14" or "C:/virus.exe" just to make the neighbors nervous(yes I know I could have turned the ssid off)
3)I haven't touched her laptop in almost 6 months. I refused to put teamviewer on it as she is a bit paranoid and commented that she didn't want me spying on her.

Sunday afternoon, I am trying to relax between the wife having a small honey-do list and me wanting to be a bum during it all. Best Friend comes over and tells me that I have fucked up her laptop and been spying on her and how I was a terrible person because of all the porn on her machine. My wife started to side with her best friend before I could get a word in at all. I tried to remind my wife that I didn't put anything on that machine to remote control with because of this. Now I would like to believe in the goodness of human nature, but I know better. I got into my router, because I used a static ip on her laptop I could look at her traffic. OMG! there was a shit load of porn traffic, I showed her the logs, at which she said that was the evidence that it was my fault. (YES THIS STILL MAKES ME MAD EVEN THE NEXT DAY). I told her that first, I could look at porn on my old computer if I wanted to, and second why was all the porn being looked at on friday and saturday nights at about 2-4am? Did you have any company over that could have used your laptop?

Then best friend got ignorant with me because, yes she did have company over. Turns out the BF is a lonely 40+ year old who wants to friends to the kids in the neighborhood, because of the way she was treated and she let 2 teenage girls spend the night with her. Sorry, maybe I am getting old fashioned in my old age, but that is just asking for some kind of trouble.

I knew the parents of these kids, so I drug everyone up to the first house and as soon as I showed up at the first house, said hi to the parents and kid and held up the laptop, this little pos had a 5 start melt down about how it wasn't her fault and it was the other girl. I explained what had happened and how I was trying to be blamed for it and how it was the kids who had done it, and gave the parents a copy of the logs as evidence. The second kid was just the same as the first, it was the other one. wah wah wah.....I think what sent me over the edge was when BF told my wife that these were really good kids and they would never do anything like that. BULLSHIT, the only thing that was really wrong was that a 40+ year old woman who lives alone lets the neighborhood kids come over and spend the night, and when something went wrong tried to blame the husband of her best friend rather than the little darlings. She stomped out of my house for the night.

My wife didn't speak to me for almost 3 hours, She said I was not wrong with what I had said, just how I said it.

No apologies or anything, I got up this morning to find her laser printer and the rest of her laptop stuff on my front porch. I don't care in truth, I am going to enjoy my last day off and have a pleasant day.

[Jay 2K Winger]

My parents are tech savvy enough to know that if it's at all complicated, to ask me to help out. They also realize that if something goes wrong with their tech stuff, it's not my fault, because we all have our own computers now and no one uses each other's laptop or phone or tablet or whatever.

When stuff inevitably went wrong with our old desktop, it was more likely to be Mom's fault than mine, because ... well, she's a walking techbane, but she knows it and is more apt to blame herself.

The one tech problem that possibly is my fault? Mom's Macbook. When we bought it for her, she had to check into the hospital for one of her (at the time) usual cellulitis flare-ups. I took it upon myself to set up her laptop for her and then brought it over to her hospital room. I had to set a master password, which I dutifully wrote down and gave to her.

But now that master password doesn't work, and neither she nor I changed it. This wasn't an issue until she wanted to update the OS, which needs that password. She needs to update the OS so she can connect her laptop to our wireless printer.

This means she has to schedule an appointment with the Apple Store, which means I need to be available to translate the technobabble into Mamanese. I've told her repeatedly, "Make the appointment. I'll be up and ready to go, and I'll call out of work or go in late or whatever to make it happen." She still hasn't made the call. (Although we're about to go on vacation, so it'll be at least two weeks anyway.)

[mathnerd]

I refuse to help my mother with her computer for exactly this reason. Granted, I'm not an expert, but I've got enough knowledge to do basic troubleshooting, basic maintenance, and know when to call in the experts.

[wolfie]

When I was a kid (Radio Shack Colour Computer was new), my family went to a computer show. I stepped up to a CoCo that didn't have anything loaded, stepped away about a minute later, and a middle-aged woman demanded to know what I'd done to break the computer. What did I do? Typed in a 2-line BASIC program.

10 print "I am broken. Call a repairman."
20 goto 10

[Ophbalance]

Once upon a time I used to like working on computers. In fact, I thought it'd be a good way to make some extra cash when I was still in college. I was very quickly proven wrong with the first PC build I did.

It was the halcyon days of the Celeron 300a, which I had one of, and figured that I could build machines with overclocked CPUs for folks. I didn't hide this fact, they knew that they were paying absolute bottom dollar on CPUs/GPUs with the hope that overclocking saved them some change. I didn't take into account folks would be using these things in places like the third floor office that got ALL the afternoon sun. Heat is a bane to overclocking and as such I spent a LOT of free time working on that machine to fix oddball things happening. I gave up making PCs for others after that.

The other hard learned lesson was... unless you plan to be someone's tech support until the day you die, never ever ever help friends and family with their kit. I still occasionally clean an infested machine but I try to avoid it at all costs. They seem to forget you're doing this for FREE and on your schedule, and as such they cannot treat you like a wage slave.

[blas]

My mom's computer skills come from during the mid 80s, when computers were still relatively new. She and my brother constantly get into it over how to work on and fix computers.

I work in a factory where most machines are ran by computers, namely Windows XP (I know, they're fucking cheap and outdated, believe me).

I work with some of the most disgruntled, ageist people a little older than my parents and beyond, who think that anyone in my age group is lazy and stupid, yet they have no idea how to use a basic computer function, like restart, shut down, ctrl alt delete.......too funny. It always brightens our days when we have to help them with their computers.

[lachesis]

Oh yeah, I've learned not to volunteer my services ever again. My best friend acquired an old hand me down xp desktop from someone she worked with a couple of years ago. That person did not clean up any of their junk, so I went in and took out all of the bloatware, spyware, toolbars, and illegal mp3s, installed an antivirus program, a couple of browsers she wanted, etc. Recently (yes this was TWO YEARS LATER) I was at her house and asked her if I could check something on google. She said no and proceeded to berate me for screwing up her computer the last time I was on it. Say what? Literally, the last time I was on that computer was when I updated it for her...

[ComputerNecromancer]

I found a great solution to the folks who wanted free tech support as soon as they heard I worked as a computer tech.

I swiped it from a story I read about a lawyer who got tired of being asked for free tech support at parties.

Seemed appropriate since a lot of the requests I got were at the parties a friend used to throw.

"Hey, I've got this problem with my computer. Can you..."

Hold up hand. "My rates start at $40/hr. One hour minimum."

Oh yeah, at one of the parties back in the 80s, the friend had shown us this neat new mahjong solitaire game. It was shareware and lots of copies of the disk got made.

I got home, installed it, and shortly thereafter got a virus warning. Fortunately, the system I'd installed it on was one I'd picked up specifically because it had DOS in *ROM*. So I booted from the ROM instead of the HD, and ran the AV off a write protected floppy (back in the days when you *could* fit an AV program on a floppy).

Boot sector virus on the install floppy for the game. And, of course, on my HD. While I fixed my HD I called my friend and *he* got to call everyone and tell them they'd been infected.

[Cooper]

I'm kinda my family's repairman. Every time my sister touches a computer it turns to a virus-riddled hell-hole.

I literally, every night my sister used my mother's computer,--her's was broken--had to remove the same goddamned virus. It was a fake antivirus that was like "antivirus 2012" or something like that.

It got the point where I handed her my flash drive, said "Run this program, then this program, then that program." You fuck it up, yo ufix it. XD

But at work, I was the only one to consider checking for viruses, and putting virus scanners on the computers. One time I did a normal virus-scanner run and updates, and was banned from doing anything else with the computer.

Because apparently installing a MalawareBytes update made the computer run slow, and delete a program they were using.

[Crossbow]

I've had to fix my brother-in-law's PC so many time on family holidays that I I finally gave up on one of my orignal rules. Screw being nice to family and friends. You want me to fix your PC? Pay me. Standard rates, and I'm not fucking cheap. You take it to Worst Buy and they screwed it up? Fine. I'll correct it, once you pay me.

His kids kept infecting the damn machine so much with all their downloaded crap that I finally rebuilt the machine and immediately made a restore image on a lockable USB drive. Any time they say there's a problem with the machine, I insert the USB drive and reboot. Instant restore.

What about their data? Sucks to be them. Stop fucking up your computer. Get your own USB drive and save everything to that.

He did eventually learn enough to get the kids their own PC. At least his isn't getting infected every other day.



More like once a month...

[Ophbalance]

I gave the kids an ultimatum. Hose the PC one more time and it's getting Ubuntu. It only took 3 months . In the year on Linux things are running just the same as the day I installed it.

[Chromatix]

My mother is a perfectly typical example of "can't learn, won't learn" when it comes to computers. She's the type who keeps a book full of detailed instructions that she uses whenever she needs to know something - and she insists on writing it herself after seeing it demonstrated *and* repeating it herself.

One particularly memorable occasion was when she couldn't figure out how to turn on the computer. The computer she had used successfully many times before. THIS computer: