Tools should not be involved with unhooking a computer

[technical.angel]

Staff member came by, complaining of viruses on her home machine.

We gave her a disk with our corporate AV, Spybot and Ad-aware.

She, of course, couldn't run in.

So, I told her to come by to pick up business cards for two businesses in town that work on PCs.

While she paced outside finishing her cig, I filled in the dept head, who told me to tell her to bring her PC into us, and we'll see what we can do.

She cheers.

I get a call from her from her house. She says she can't get the blue cable (monitor) unplugged.

This is where I make my worst mistake.

I tell her that there are indentions in the part that you turn. If you use a screwdriver for a turn or two, it should loosen up enough to get it the rest of the way loose.

I didn't get to it yesterday, and attacked it first thing today.

She apparently smokes in her house, so when I plugged in the power, the fan kicked on, and blasted dust and smoke smell in my face. I'm allergic to smoke. Headache.

I get our student workers to hook up the air compressor and blow it out while it was still dry outside.

They do, they bring it back in, I plug in the power, I plug in the network cable and USB for the mouse and keyboard.

I plug in the video, and the port wiggles around loose!!!

Of course, the monitor doesn't recognize the computer AT ALL.

I take a good look at the ports on the back on the computer. It looks like she tried to pry off the face panel!!!

So, with the video port disconnected from the MOBO, the dept head wants me to dig around our supply room and see if I can track down a PCI video card.

[LostMyMind]

tell her that it's screwed and she will have to take it to a repair shop because she don't have common sense. Not to mention that she'll complain that her monitor won't connect to the computer now, because she'll still have that mobo part attached to her monitor plug.

And you should tell the department head, that unless he's going to have a disclaimer form for people to sign saying that you will not be held responsible for anything that goes wrong with the computer while it's in your possession. Because I wouldn't be surprise if after you tell her she too stupid to own a computer, she'll blame you and demand that you fix her computer for free.

You should also add a line to the bottom of that form, "If your computer smells like cig smoke, I have the right to smash it into little pieces."

[technical.angel]

What does the dept head do when I tell her that we have no PCI video cards in our supply room?

She has me start pricing them.

It's now an hour after my lunch time. GRRRR.

[technical.angel]

Well, the dept head was planning on talking to her when she came back in.

She came in about a half hour after the dept head left.

I gave her her options about a new video card.

She finally decided to buy a new computer.

So, I had to find a computer for her to buy.

[protege]

So, I had to find a computer for her to buy.

I'm thinking of something by Etch-A-Sketch, or a scrap 286 that's cobbled together with duct tape and bailing wire. In other words, something that she can fuck up, and it won't cost much

[technical.angel]

She wanted to spend less than $350, so, pretty much.

[Soulstealer]

She wanted to spend less than $350

They make computers that cheap? That is one expensive paper weight, the flashing lights shouldn't cost that much more.

[smileyeagle1021]

They make computers that cheap? That is one expensive paper weight, the flashing lights shouldn't cost that much more.

in all fairness emachines aren't that bad of computers... hell, I use one mainly because it is a computer that I can take apart and put back together as many times as I want and not have to worry about destroying it because it is so cheap to replace. that and at the time I bought it they were the only company that made machines with Athlon 64 processors in my price range. It's lasted me so far 3 years and 3 moves... and it has had quite a bit of use and abuse and is still ticking just fine. Wish I could say the same about the HP that I replaced with this.

[wolfie]

I tell her that there are indentions in the part that you turn. If you use a screwdriver for a turn or two, it should loosen up enough to get it the rest of the way loose.

I plug in the video, and the port wiggles around loose!!!

So, with the video port disconnected from the MOBO, the dept head wants me to dig around our supply room and see if I can track down a PCI video card.

I've had a similar situation happen to me a few times - the nuts which the cable screws into are actually spacers. If the screws on the cable are slightly misaligned when you screw them in, it's easier to unscrew the spacers from the card than it is to unscrew the screws from the spacers. Since the spacers double as screws to hold the "D" connector to the back panel, of course it'll be loose. Expecting a non-technical person to realize this, and correct for the problem (i.e. grip the spacers with needle-nose pliers to make sure the unscrewing happens at the right point, then screw the spacers back in) is asking for trouble.

Before you ship the new computer off to this user, ask them to take a close look at the screws on the video cable, and make sure there isn't a hexagon-shaped piece on the end that screws onto the computer. If there is, this is what happened - and the spacer needs to be unscrewed before they try plugging the cable into their new computer, otherwise it won't work (spacer will hit before the plug engages).

[technical.angel]

Before you ship the new computer off to this user,

Thanks, Wolfie, I wouldn't trust the luser to check, but I'll make sure the spacers are still on the PC.

Interestingly enough, the only thing she's worried about is losing out on all the money she's spent on her granddaughter's Webkins' addiction.

[LostMyMind]

she's spent on her granddaughter's Webkins' addiction.

webkins are

My mother and older sister are hooked on it, which of course got the nieces and nephews. I've been living on my own for over 20 years to give you an idea of how old my sister and mother is.

Damn marketers, got them spending money for stuff animals and clothes to go with em just so they can have a new kind of pet/clothes on the website.

[powerboy]

Emachines, is great. My family got theirs because the other computer completely died. And they didn't have that much money to spend on computers. I have a Dell that I have by paying by the month for it. Another 4 months and it is mine.

[Shabo]

OH GOODNESS! THE CRAP COMP! IT BURNS MY EYES!

Seriously. WTF. I tell people when they ask me what kind of computer they should get that the "best" brand of computer is debateable, but to get a computer that is mid-range and therefore costs no less than $800 (unless it's on sale or has a rebate). If you are looking for a cheap computer like that, you are going to get what you pay for. That thing is going to be so slow- (read: Vista Home with 1 gb of ram and a 1.6 ghz SINGLE core processor... *whimpers*). Not to mention it's probably built from refurbished parts, so chances of it breaking quickly are high. Yeesh. These people do it to themselves.

[technical.angel]

Okay, so the (almost) ending of the story.

She goes to Best Buy, with the peice of paper I printed out for her. They kept trying to talk her into a $700 computer. She left.

She talks to her daughter in law, who works for Microsoft. Apparently, MS gives her a new PC every 18 months. So, after bribing me with food, she wants me to go ahead and order a new video card, so she can have a functional computer until her daughter can get her a new one. She brings over her CC, and I order a card from NewEgg. It doesn't process that exact minute, and doesn't ship out the day she expects.

On Friday, she calls, when I was on one of our remote campuses, pissed beyond belief that she spent allllll that extra mone ($10) on 2nd day shipping, and it wasn't in yet.

I get back to campus, track it, and find it's sitting over in the campus's post office. Soon, the new card and a second stick of ram (bringing her up to 512) are installed, and I finally boot the thing up. I'm not exaagerating this, you click something, and it takes 5 minutes for it to happen. For some reason, the CD for the card wouldn't recoginze the card, so I had to get drivers from the internet. She had both McAfee and AVG installed. Of course, the McAfee install was corrupted, so I had to find a removal tool.

At 4 pm, I finally have our AV installed, and get a disk defrag going, she has to come over to see what's going on, and bugs me, until AFTER 4:30, when I leave.

I wasn't a happy Jenni.

So, even though it's Saturday, I'm going to run up to work, toss on two pieces of software, (Counterspy and Spysweeper) and get a virus scan started in safe mode. I'll probably stop in tomorrow, and get another scan going, so Monday morning, I have one scan and it's over, and I can finally WORK ON ACTUAL... WORK!!!!

[LostMyMind]

Shabo, some people just can't afford those nice gaming rigs that most of us have

And most people just do word processing, email, and web surfing on their computer. Maybe a card game or two. For that, a cheapo will work fine.

As far as brand names go, I have a list of do-not. It's a much shorter list.


Sorry, Techie. Well, maybe if you take the department head job you can make the rule of "We don't fix your computers, unless you bribe us. And any computer that takes us more than 3 hours to fix will become a nice paper weight." Yes, I'm