It Go Bang, It Does

Please don't confuse the voltage switch on your power supply for a power switch.
Flicking the voltage switch from 230v to 115v will, surprisingly enough, make it go bang.
The individual holds the record for the shortest amount of time between buying the system and bringing it back in a broken state - about 75 minutes.

Thicks & Co

The general thickness of some people has to been to be believed.

The printer doesn't print. Why doesn't it print? Would it help if I plugged it in?

I want ink for my printer. I had it from here. It was blue.

The biggest example of thick people comes from those who do all their research online, become convinced of something, then phone up an outlet and proceed to have their theories blown out of the water. Either that or they'll just hang up.

Still, even the thickest people on the planet do learn from examples. Buying anything from the biggest computer retailer in the UK and then going back for technical support usually means they don't go back again. Result!

An Actual Conversation

User (U): "I have Windows 97 and Works. Do I need Works on a computer in order to transfer the files?"
Support (S): "No."
U: "How do I get Works back on the new computer?"
S: "Run the CD it came with."
U: "Doesn't it come with Windows?"
S: "No."
U: "But do I need it on a PC to transfer the files?"
S: "No..."
U: "does it matter I have Windows 97?"
S: "There's no such thing as Windows 97. There's Windows 95 and Windows 98."
U: "No, I'm looking at it now."
S: "Yeah but if you have the new sysem you can put your Works on, no problem."
U: "Do I need Works on the computer to transfer the files?"
S: "NO!"

Odds and Sods

pcAnywhere. Wonderful piece of software. Too advanced for some people.
Running software on your computer using data from a remote computer (through pcAnyWhere) that doesn't even have said data on it in the first place, probably isn't going to work.

Printers that we apparently sold gain the ability somehow to take separate ink cartridges when they went out using colour blocks originally. That's clever. Otherwise known as "I want ink but I dunno what I got even though I look at it daily."

"I cannot burn DVDs, why? My friend can do it, why can't I?" No, no clues. Except it involves a camcorder and a progress bar that gets stuck at 84%.

It is still amazing the number of people who buy or "obtain" software like Microsoft Office, yet when their computer goes tits up sixteen months later because somebody discovered BitTorrent, the disks apparently don't exist and calls of "can you put this on?" "Have you a licence?" "No." occur regularly. Yet when the system's been wiped and comes back in three weeks later because they've discovered Limewire, Office has suddenly appeared again, about half an hour after Limewire was installed...

Silly Question Time

"Do I need to be online to activate my Internet Security software?"

"Where do these viruses come from?" - with Limewire on the desktop.

"What can I do to a four year old computer to make it play modern games?", that does not involve the word "scrap".

"Do you need these?" - keyboard, mouse and/or monitor. A repair outlet isn't going to be much good without the basics. You don't go to a garage for an MOT and say to them, "do you need the 'How to do an MOT' book", or "do you need use of my garage?"

Freezing Short

The tragic thing about computer bits being so cheap is any Tom, Dick or Harry can buy a bunch of bits and wander off to have an attempt at putting it together. Needless to say 95% of these attempts come back in various states of condition from not turned on at all to dead and then to "dead by virtue of having the be-jesus blown out of it".

Anyway a computer freezes, fault not immediately obvious. User has added odds and sods to it and accidentally pulled out two of the power pins from a molex. Said ends were shorting out on the case.

Alternate Use For A Popular Lubricant

Please look after and treat computers with respect and they'll last a lot longer.

Please don't spray WD-40 in and around them. WD-40 might fix a lot of sticky stuff but it won't free up a dodgy reset button on the front of a case.

Stupid Question Of The Day

"Do you do computers?" they ask.
"Yes," we reply.
"What do you want to do with it?"
"I wanna buy it!"
"Okay, but..."
"A bit of everything, burn DVDs, music and *some obscure game they play that we've never heard of)* and Internet."

The conversation followed thus:
"My neighbour had one off you, a Dell and paid £163 for it." states the customer (a strange amount and we don't sell Dell anything.)
"*we reel off a list of specs and prices*"
"Does it come with a hard drive?" was the actual question from the customer.

"Nah, don't need them. Everything you need will just appear out of thin air as and when you need it," was the reply one probably should have said. A computer will work without a hard drive but it won't do very much.

*Bang Head Here*

Computer monitors do not run off USB cables.
PS/2 devices are not hot-pluggable, nor have they ever been nor will they ever be.
Software activates a lot better when you use the right credentials.

In unrelated matters, a customer buys a new computer, then brings it back as they are totally clueless about anything. Don't even know which ISP they're on, what their email password is or fail to understand that things just do not suddenly appear out of thin air on a computer. Their offspring put dodgy software on it and the buyer is trying to activate portions of Office that they haven't even bought.

Sometimes one wonders why we bother.

Give Me Strength...

Some people are total morons and it's a miracle sometimes as to how these individuals actually manage to do anything in life, let alone run a business. Some people are so incredibly thick you cannot help wonder how they've accomplished anything.

"I cannot activate my internet security after the computer was wiped," is a cry from people using a certain Internet Security package. It turns out the software was being activated with the email address from last year's product and this year's product was activated under a totally different email address. It might actually help if you use the same address you used first time round and not one of the THREE you "thought" it might be. I mean you don't phone up the garage just after the MOT test and give them last year's MOT number, do you?

On another note: Windows Vista in 512Mb of system memory does not a high-performing system make. The same user was contemplating sticking Vista on an eight year old machine with 256Mb of memory, an old Duron and a 20Gb hard drive which would be incredibly painful and you could probably get high on caffeine by the time it's ready to do anything.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

As previously blogged, explaining anything to anybody with an ounce of computer literacy that rapidly evaporates when it comes to using said computer, is a very long drawn out, ultimately pointless exercise and a complete waste of time.

Customer has a computer, a computer that proudly states 2002 on its front screen. So old it's amazing it hasn't already died the amount of time it spends in transit between home and our workbench. It came in because it blue-screens and generates random STOP codes.

The PC blue-screens because it has conflicting software - Threatfire, a program that "features innovative real-time behavioral technology that provides powerful protection against both known and unknown viruses, worms, trojans, etc", AVG and the real-time protection feature of Ad-Aware along with a bunch of other useless crap known as the toolbars and Registy Mechanic, Tune-Up Utilities. Therefore it's a mystery as to how this computer actually managed to get to a desktop.

Anyway the problem is solved, leave Threatfire on and put nothing else on. Customer takes it home, Security Center tells them there is no anti-virus on it, they download Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus, and therefore the entire cycle starts again. One can only wonder; if the Windows Security Center told you to jump off a cliff, would you go and do it?

The Fortune Teller

The key information is this: The new Windows 7 is, as I write, due out on October 22nd 2009. No pricing information as of this writing is available.

Customer: "How much will Windows 7 cost?"
Me: "It's not out yet so I don't know."
Customer: "It's free isn't it at the moment?"
Me: "No, it's a Release Candidate that expires next year."
Customer: "When will you know how much it costs?"
Me: "As it's not released yet, no."
Customer: "Will it work the same as Vista? Even if I replace the computer?"
Me: "*perplexed* Yes."

This was then followed by the really rather common conversation that occurs quite frequently:

"What's the biggest processor I can put in my motherboard?"
"I don't know because I haven't seen your board."
"Well I had it done here. It's a Fox Com [their pronunciation, not my typing]."
"But we've done lots of Foxconn boards. Bring the model number in and we'll have a look."

My guess is we won't see them again for a month.

Ironic...

A doctor, cannot send faxes from the fax machine. It wasn't plugged into the phone line.
A user cannot get a picture on their screen. The monitor doesn't work.
Somebody physically broke the USB ports on the case and then wondered why they didn't work.

The Case Of The Disappearing Software...

Absolutely adamant that they've had nothing to do with it, somebody's internet security package somehow went totally bye-bye. Software does not disappear on its own, so either it was uninstalled, purged or whatever. Problem is sorted, they have it back. One phone call 90 minutes later, it turns out all the stuff that's somehow deleted itself has ended up in the Recycle Bin and the missing software is there too, though of course simply restoring it back wasn't an option.

After a basic explanation of how the Windows Recycle Bin's "first in, first purged" ideology worked, customer now decides they won't delete anything from it "in case it screws up the internet security". Any program that's running from the Recycle Bin isn't going to be running very long, though surprisingly this system is still running, but how long for is going to be anybody's guess as it'll only be a matter of time before key files end up in the Recycle Bin as well.

Ink

Typical conversation:

Them: "I want some ink for a Lexmark (printer model). It looks like those (pointing at some non-Lexmark cartridges)".
Us: "According to Lexmark they don't make that particular model."
Them: "Oh. (one phone call later) It is a Lexmark ".
Us: "But that model only takes ribbons or toners. Not 'normal' cartridges."
Them: "I'll go have a look, be back in five."

Twenty minutes later:

Them: "It's a Lexmark (printer model that's totally different from the original request)".

This conversation has been known to occur during purchase of ink for a printer the customer doesn't even have. Apparently Epson ink fits inside Canon printers, etc. The strange thing is printers have their model number stuck on the top, on the box, flagged up everything you print something... and they don't even know what brand of printer it is never mind model.

Pay Attention...

People who clearly don't know what they're talking about or who don't read what they're given should realistically write things down before they come to a computer technician, otherwise they paint pictures that seem ridiculous to those who actually know what they're talking about.

Such as the user who actually said their motherboard cost £1500, it was a "board manufacturer" who don't make motherboards anyway and they've bought a new one on eBay - apparently Acer make motherboards. Technically they do

The other query of the day was the user who bought a laptop in wanting to know why the Outlook 2007 wanted a product key when they'd bought a licence for it. It turned out they had Home & Student which doesn't include Outlook which was why the code hadn't unlocked it. "How do you know that?" they ask. Well it's written on the front of the box. "Oh."

Useless Pieces Of Crap

Many potential items could be listed here, however a particularly common scenario is the user who can't get Internet Explorer to work. One look at the computer and it's hardly surprising why the browser doesn't work; the user has every toolbar under the sun and then some more.

The amount of screen space these useless pieces of crap take up is so high it's often a miracle that the user is able to see any web pages at all. Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, eBay, Windows Live, etc. Add on all the spyware crap such as MyWebSearch and friends and that's a good third of the screen totally wasted.

It's scary really because you don't drive your car with a third of the windscreen covered up do you? So why do people insist on browsing with hundreds of toolbars they don't actually need?

On another theme of useless pieces of crap, software like RegCure and "System Optimizer 2008" and other similiar products turns up on a lot of computers. All of the "errors" that these programs flag up aren't real errors, and if somebody's registry really was screwed or corrupt then you'd have known about it by the time you get to RegCure, I'd hope anyway.

This goes back to the saga of people attempting to fix their own computers. Does anybody who isn't a mechanic take the car to pieces?

What The...?!

Quite possibly the strangest concept I think I've ever heard in the history of anything:

Customer brings laptop in having done something unique to it involving a battery. We take it to pieces to fix it, they take it home and take it to pieces again to check the work. Needless to say the laptop is now scrap as they broke it.

They then come out with possibly the most ludicrous statement ever made: "Do you do any laptops that can be used while jogging?" Their reasoning for this was in case they were called up by the boss to do any work. The idea of the customer running down the street with a laptop in front of their face was... different, yet the entire concept was pretty foolish.

People...

(Thick) people who have computers who think they can fix it themselves generally can't. Either the problem gets worse, it develops into another problem that itself gets worse, or the entire computer stops working. If your car develops a major fault you take it straight to a garage, you don't lift the bonnet and start trying to fix it yourself, do you?

People who bring computers in for repair and mutter the immortal phrase "my mate's had a go" usually mean one of two things: 1) They've screwed it up even further, and/or 2) they've wiped it and put a dodgy copy of Windows on it.

That being said, people who bring computers in with issues regarding to web-based email always fail to provide their email addresses or passwords to get into them. Unless they think we have access to every email address in the planer or can find it in two seconds flat like they do in the movies.

I Don't Care!

If you take your computer to be fixed, please don't dress up your stories of "what it was" with every little detail going of how it's ended up in that state because we really couldn't give a toss one way or another. If it can be done in three sentences, do it in three sentences, give us your number and then go away. The more you talk, the longer it'll take to get the system back and while I'm sure Auntie Mable in Scunthorpe was upset that she couldn't see you waving at her on the webcam, I'm sure she won't throw herself under a bus in the meantime.

People who introduce the phrase "I'll tell you what it was" towards the end of a conversation need shooting. These stories tend to be incredibly tedious, boring, irrelevant and involve some other person being out of their depth. The stories rarely have anything to do with the computer that's just been dumped on the desk - on the rare occasion that they do they tend to involve mundane issues that could be solved in two seconds flat by Google or by pressing F1.

Everything But The Kitchen Sink...

A potentially scary aspect to the "I want a computer/my computer's foobarred" saga is the user who phones up, has a twenty minute conversation about computer-related stuff and then doesn't take in anything of what's been said.

The discussion was along the lines of I've got a computer, I want to upgrade it, I want to do this, that and the other under the sun with it, oh by the way will I notice a difference between this processor and that processor when I'm typing into Word? You can probably guess where the rest of the conversation went after that.

The foll0w-up conversation is a clear indication of people who go online, have access to copious information about any topic you care to mention, then phone up a computer shop and suddenly forget how to use the Internet. The customer wanted more memory (see a previous entry on the usual discussion of how the "I want more memory" routine plays out) but wanted to know if it could be done without taking the side of the case off. It can, but I mean you don't take the car around various garages to find out what sort of engine you've got, you either lift the bonnet up or look in the manual...

Listen Already!

The majority of problems are self-inflicted, that's for sure. When somebody doesn't listen to the very people they're paying to solve their problem, it makes you wonder why you bother sometimes.

Kaspersky anti-virus software is not a bad program for what it is. It, like in conjunction with most other malware protection programs, is designed to be used on its own. No matter how many times you tell people, "one system protection software per computer", there's always one that thinks they know better.

This person has Kaspersky on a computer. They then decide to put AdAware on it, the newer version with real-time protection. Computer freezes. Individual removes AdAware, computer's fine. Individual then decides to put AdAware back on again, computer freezes again, and the invidiual doesn't quite seem to understand that the problem is being caused by AdAware fighting with Kaspersky. This conversation is repeated three times over in two days over the phone and they still don't get it now.

Telephones

When you provide phone numbers, please provide phone numbers that actually work.
Many a time work cannot start on customer PCs because we cannot get in touch with them, then they have the audacity to phone back saying they've heard nothing from us when it turns out the number was either wrong in the first place or was disconnected six weeks ago.

It's weird how people don't know their own mobile number. They'd have had to give it out to friends and family enough times, you'd have thought, or rang their own number to find out where they'd left it on occasion. This concept never happens with landline phones and people rarely forget their house phone number which, ironically, they'd have had to give out just as many times as their mobile.

Software Solutions

Problems with software are usually caused because the user is thick (deliberately or otherwise) or doesn't properly read what is on the screen.

If you have a need to activate a piece of software over the Internet (pretty much the norm these days) and it asks you for a piece of information that you don't have, please tell the software you don't have it, otherwise it'll constantly badger you for something you don't have. The back button is your friend. Surprisingly the problem is solved if you click the Back button and click the "I do not have a client number" option followed by Next. Some people wouldn't get it if it came in a large bag marked "It".

Complaints of "faulty software" are common. Very rarely is a problem caused by the software, for what most people use it for anyway, and 99.9% of all computer problems exist between keyboard and chair. The other 0.1% of problems occur because the computer gets bored waiting for Joe The Plumber to figure out what on earth they want to get done today.

Microsoft Office tends to make matters worse with some people. Word is easy; load it up and start typing. Excel tends to stop people in their tracks until they think of it as a big fancy calculator. Powerpoint makes people think they have a flair for design and talent (which they don't), Publisher is the best thing since sliced bread (until they take their file to work and find out their Publisher 2007 file won't work in Publisher 2003) and Access is the only Office program that everybody asks, "can you show me how to use Access?".

Wireless Woes

If wireless works in the computer repair place but doesn't work at home, kindly be advised that it cannot be a driver error because if it was a driver error it would have done the same thing in the shop. And it doesn't, therefore as far as we're concerned there's nothing wrong with it. Flicking the front button probably isn't going to solve anything and the problem is usually caused because something else that uses the same part of the Spectrum (electromagnetic, not the ZX81) is also in use, most probably next door.

Wireless is a very fickle thing; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's no more dangerous than cordless telephones, satellite signals and TV signals and its very prone to atmospheric conditions, in the same way you can sometimes pick up ITV Yorkshire on terrestrial TV when you live in Oxford. One customer came in before Christmas and proudly decreed they didn't want wireless anything as it was dangerous. The fact that they were practically living in a world of wireless transmissions anyway didn't seem to occur to the customer - even cable TV is essentially a relay of satellite broadcasts.

Priorities

People attach a sense of urgency to a computer. Businesses use them day in day out, generate lots of money through them and understandably get a little upset when their computer keels over one day and dies. People who need a computer non-urgently will bring the PC in first thing as soon as it dies wanting it back ASAP, while those who's lives depend on it will bring it in as three days later and want it back yesterday.

As soon as they are notified, those who need it urgently you don't see them again for three days, all sense of urgency having evaporated. Yet Joe Public wants it back now so he can stick Limewire back on it and finish downloading Nickelback, not realising this is what screwed it up in the first place.

Virus Scanners

Computers actually work better with only one anti-virus package on it. Not two. Or three. Lots of blue screens are caused because the computer has multiple anti-virus packages on it and the user hasn't removed the one that came with it when they bought the system.

They also work better with a decent anti-virus package on it. Blueyonder/Virgin PCguard does not count. PCguard is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard and it's always amazing why people use it when the system has more pop-ups and "system" announcements in two seconds than I've had hot dinners in twenty years.

Norton is only very slightly better than PCguard, on the basis that it at least flags up a tracking cookie. McAfee on the other hand, is so useless these days you have to wonder whether people who write software reviews are using the same version of McAfee that are protecting other people's computers. Introduce McAfee to a computer that is choked and it will find absolutely nothing wrong infection-wise with it. Why do people persist in using it?

Printer Ink

There is no ink cartridge that can fit in every single printer ever made. People think they can go into a shop and say "I want a cartridge for my printer, it's an Epson." Aside from the fact Epson made dozens of printers that take dozens of different cartridge numbers of different dimensions, it's kind of hard what to say at this point. Going "You know what it is, you sold it me" doesn't really help the situation especially when you then mention you haven't been in for months on end and have only just noticed the shop's been painted (twice).

A printer that takes any cartridge you care to throw at it is anybody's ideal dream, just so they can go in a shop and say "I want some Epson ink". Which isn't as much fun as saying "I want some ink for my Epson, I don't know what the model is but I had some last time and they cost *some ludricious figure that probably wasn't right in the first place*"

Printer Problems...

Printers that do not print typically do not print for one of four main reasons: 1) They're out of paper. 2) They're out of ink. 3) The printer/system is defunct. 4) The user is defect. Typically reason 4 is the sole cause of reasons 1 and 2.

Customer brings a printer in, claims it doesn't print black. Turns out all the cartridges are empty, which might explain why it doesn't actually print anything. They claim they put a new black cartridge in which, according to the Epson Status Monitor, is virtually empty anyway and they paid £7 for an almost empty cartridge assuming they haven't spent hours cleaning the heads.

Four new ink cartridges later, oh look it'll print anything I throw at it.

Buttons and Switches

Monitors do not power on a computer. If a technician asks you to press the Reset button on the computer case, please do not start pressing buttons on the monitor and asking whether V-Setting or Clock or "color settings - warm, cool or custom" will do the same thing because it won't. Believe me, I've tried.

Obvious exceptions to this rule include those Sony/Advent units where everything is built-in to a huge monitor (very nice but a pain in the arse to fix when they break) and branded computers that don't have reset switches. Reset switches are probably a computer user's best friend since Windows does tend to show you a blue screen for no apparent reason whatsoever. Yet Dell must get support calls saying "I pressed Reset and it started coming on again" which may explain why they took the reset buttons off their cases.

One of the most ugliest phrases you hear is when customers use the phrase "coming on". How can a computer be "coming on"? Either it's on or it isn't, or your computer is flirting with you. If your computer is flirting with you (or vice versa) something is very wrong somewhere.

Brands

You can use different brands of stuff inside a computer, no problem at all.

There is no concept of "a CD unit for a Dell *insert model number here*" or similar concepts for pretty much all hardware. The only exception is the memory and some Dell power supplies - older computers may not like certain types of memory and Dell power supplies have been covered before. Oh yeah, Dell motherboards are unique as well. No you cannot put them in another case.

Brands are of no consequence, it's no different to having a JVC television and plugging a Panasonic video player and a Bush DVD player into it, then connecting a Sky Digibox made by Grundig. People are happy to mix and match on any other equipment that can be plugged into something else but seem insistent on having a like-for-like replacement inside the computer like it makes a difference.

The car goes along the road regardless of whether you put Dunlop tyres on it or Mitchelin tyres on it. The engine really doesn't give a toss. Most computers really don't care that the hard drive is made by Western Digital or Seagate - long as it can boot from it, it makes no difference.

File Associations

One customer said their computer didn't print stuff off the internet properly and kept asking about File formats for Windows or MS-DOS. It turned out they were loading PDF files into Word, which was probably not a good idea. Apparently the computer's three months old - with date stamps of 2005, 2007 and 2004 on various bits inside. It probably came from Cash Converters as a refurbished machine. Why do people do silly things like buy stuff from Cash Converters of all places?

Programs are not transferrable between computers (many years ago when it was all fields round 'ere, it was possible to do that for programs that actually fitted onto a floppy!), yet people think you can copy a bunch of files across from one computer to another and expect it to work. Believe you me, if we could do that with Windows Microsoft would never sell another copy of Office.

Cosmetics

Please don't buy cases with fancy front lights and fans and what not. Or if you are going to, at least buy one with enough connectors to run everything.

Many PC cases come with cheap nasty power supplies. They typically only come with enough connectors to power four devices, the board and maybe a fan. Somebody wanted to run two CD units, two hard drives and, for reasons that were never discovered, FOUR fans and two lights. It later transpired they bought the case purely for the lights, not realising everything else had to take priority so there were no molexes left!

Y-Splitters (power adaptors to effectively split two power molexes into one) are available but not really advocated unless there is no other solution. Bearing in mind any decent power supply should make splitters pretty much un-necessary anyway, things were explained when the computer was powered on and the words "Advent" came across the screen. Yes I'd want to hide its origins too :)

Advent machines are sold through the Dixon Store Group range, namely PC World, Currys and Aldi are fond of selling them. The fact of the matter is they are cheap pieces of crap that people buy for £200 and then try to play World Of Warcraft on them with on-board graphics, then baulk when told the machine is not upgradable because it has no graphics expansion slot as it was cheap.

Perils Of The People

Thick people are a pain in the arse to deal with. Especially when they do not want to change their level of thickness to "ever so slightly less thick than I was before". People who go by what their mates say are typically thick anyway because if their mate jumped off a cliff they'd probably go and do it too.

A customer bought a computer in they had recased themselves. Fortunately they had not fired it up otherwise it would have been tears before bedtime. Their mate had said it was easy to recase a computer, which it is if you know what you're doing. A strange concept people seem to have is that they can take a computer apart because the sides come off. When did you last take the car to pieces because the bonnet comes up?

Anyway this user did a good job of recasing. Aside from mounting the board in the case with two screws instead of nine, three stand-offs instead of nine, plugging front USB connectors into the FIREWIRE take-offs (not a good idea), closely followed by not bothering to plug the front panel in (lights and switches), they did a good job. Not. Fixing this required taking the entire lot out to put new stand-offs in, as they were sitting UNDER the board. Surprisingly, the equipment still worked after we'd de-botched it.

For the unitiated, please don't put stand-offs under the board as they'll only cause it to short out and it's as much good as not having any stand-offs at all. The whole point of having the stand-offs is to keep the board off the metal plate to stop it shorting, plus it grounds the boards and stops it moving around.

The other "perils of the people" scenario:

"You wiped my computer and dumped all my stuff in a folder. How do I move it?"

"Where do you want to move it to?"

"I don't know."

"Well where it is now?"

"I don't know," is the repeated answer from the customer.

"Well if you don't know where it is and you don't know where you want to move it to, why do you want to move it?"

"I don't know. See, before you wiped it, I had... *insert some story about the previous set-up of the computer that is totally irrelevant to the discussion anyway*. Plus I've got a load of emails I want but they aren't there."

"Well what email were you using?"

"I don't know." Calmly take a sheet of A4 paper from the printer and write on it in really big letters, "Bang Head Here". (They were using Outlook Express, a program that more often than not refuses to import anything from a previous installation).

There follows a painful exchange where nothing can be explained or resolved because the customer does not understand anything of what they are being told. They know not how to Google, they know not how to do anything. Break things down to their level, they accuse you of being patronising. Go up a notch and it's over their head.

Abraham Lincoln was right when he said (more or less :)) you can please some of the people all the time, all of the people some of the time but you can't please all of the people all of the time. And some people want the moon on a stick and nothing less.

Blue Screens

One of the most common causes of blue screens under Microsoft Windows is the underlying drivers that power everything. A corrupt driver will cause a blue screen.

A computer that comes in under the notion of "it blue screens" typically doesn't do it when it's outside of it's usual environment. The logical assumption then is that the issue is being caused by something that's no longer being plugged in. USB devices are good at this. The user typically brings the main box in (without anything else they plug in), we find nothing wrong with it and they go back and it blue-screens again.

The ironic thing it, it doesn't blue-screen on the workbench. Now if we cannot make the computer fall over, there's not really a lot we can do about it. Some people don't quite seem to understand the concept of if we cannot reproduce it, there's little we can do and of course they get a little bit upset that their computer is rather fond of the colour blue. Sadly that's not our problem if we see no blue screens.

Somebody wanted all the drivers updating or replacing if there were corrupt. Bearing in mind Windows uses hundreds of the things, it was never going to happen.

The Memory Scenario

Common scenario time:

"I have a computer/laptop, a Packard Bell/HP/Dell/whatever, how much to put more memory in it?"

"I don't know because I don't know what type of memory it takes," is our reply.

"It's a Packard Bell/HP/Dell/whatever *insert model number that is completely arbitrary to the entire conversation anyway* and I think it's got 250."

"256Mb of memory, okay, but I need..."

"It come up saying something about virtual memory is low. I have 80Gbs of memory."

"No, you have an 80Gb hard drive. Virtual memory is hard disk space. *insert very basic concept of how and what Virtual Memory is*"

"I know nothing about computers." Ah, that old chestnut.

"Yeah but I can't quote you on some memory for your computer until I know what type it takes. It's like going into a garage and saying I want some tyres for my car, they're big, black and round."

The computer typically comes in three weeks later with an 256Mb video card, 512Mb system memory, three anti-virus packages on it (all of which expired months ago), Limewire and WinAntiVirusPro 2009.

OS Benefits

Why is it that people consider XP Professional to be far superior to XP Home?
Unless you're in an environment that uses the extra features of XP Pro (and most home users are not), then you don't need it.
This would be tragic if not in pretty much every scenario this comes up in, the PC in question has a perfectly valid and happy XP Home product key stuck to it. And the ironic thing is, the XP Pro that's somehow found it's way onto the computer is almost always a cracked copy that'll get flagged up straight off by Genuine Validation.

Power Problems

Strange concept some people have: They think electrical items run on electricity at home and that said items run on fresh air in any other location. What other excuse do people have for bringing printers in without a power lead?

Printers that take normal figure eight power leads are not a problem; neither are those that for whatever reason end up taking standard three pin kettle leads, nor clover-leaf designs. HP printers tend to use a completely unique power pack for their printers which is pretty much not possible to get on its own. The scary thing is, if the printer takes figure eight, kettle or clover leaf, they'll bring the power cable down regardless. If it's anything else, they don't bring it down, ironically enough.

Of course, not to mention that the apparent problem with the printer turns out to be the fact there's nothing wrong with the printer and the problem is either the computer or (more likely) the person using the computer. Typically the print queue is full, or there's a corrupt job, or said printer isn't the default anymore.

Strange Requests

If you're going to buy a component for a computer, please research before you wander in and make yourself look like an idiot. It is not possible to "take SATA drivers out of the BIOS" in order to install XP on a machine that previously had Vista. Two reasons why: 1) The BIOS does not have any drivers that you can remove, and 2) Anybody who claims to have done such a thing is fibbing.

The user in question now wants a motherboard in Socket 775 in Pci-Ex with two PATA ports on it. The scary thing is they only have two IDE devices and a SATA hard drive. Quite WHY they need two IDE ports will probably never be explained, even though the machine was only three weeks old and now they want to replace the board... Sometimes it's just not worth asking.

Strange requests go with the terrority - "I got a computer, it's all screwed up, yes you can probably wipe it but I need all my data and I need all my programs." When asked as to what they do with the system the standard reply is they haven't a clue what they use to do anything. Couldn't even find out what they were doing - "bits and bobs". Apparently I'm supposed to know what they're doing with their computer.

The other strange request of the day was the computer user who wants a power supply simply for running a graphics card. It was a six year old Dell machine with unique wiring from the PSU. The user wanted to run a juice-hungry 9600 series graphics card (one of those that feeds from the six/eight pin connector) purely from a power supply on the outside of the case, and feed the rest of the system with the built-in PSU that's uniquelly wired on the PSU and the board that's non-standard.

For the unitiated most power supplies have a need for a minimum load, otherwise they'll either not work at all, work ineffectively or worse, burn themselves out. I refused to condone such behaviour, perhaps understandably.

Vocal Diagnosis

Diagnosing a computer over the telephone is pretty much not possible at the best of times when the person on the other end doesn't know how it's ended up in the state it has. Therefore even attempting to figure out why it's fell over is often fruitless, though the usual cause of the problem is that it sits between the keyboard and the chair.

Calling up somebody who works with computers and saying to them, "My computer has [symptoms], and what it was... [insert totally random concoction of completely irrelevant anecdotes that that has absolutely nothing to do with the state the computer's in at this moment in time]. What do I do?" will usually generate the response "Bring it in."

When was the last time you phoned up a garage and said, "My car won't start. What it was, like, I saw a dead bird on the by-pass, swerved to avoid it, like, nearly hit another car because I cor see jack shit out my near-side mirror as next door's kid hit it with his bloody football. So then after I went round the roundabout to go back and scoop it up to chuck it in the field, like, I saw Paul's red Ford Zetec coming down the road. You know Paul, from the Red Lion pub who bought the Zetec 'cos he wrapped his Toyota round the lamppost last Christmas? Anyway I later saw him down the pub, he was totally pissed out of his head and to cut a long story short, my car won't start. What do I do?"

The scary thing is, these people turn up with the PC under their arm, and proceed to tell exactly the same story again complete with a sheet of A4 paper with copious other issues with the computer that lead to more anecdotes that basically boil down to "the computer's infected with malware and viruses because your Norton ran out eighteen months ago and somebody's put Kazaa on it." Now if you'd said that on the phone you'd have probably had it back by now!

Passwords..

If you're going to put passwords on computers then leave them with computer technical folk, please tell them: a) it has a password, and b) what it is.

Windows passwords are easy to get rid of; boot passwords and what not are not. As intelligent as we may be we don't have time to perform dictionary-based attacks for something you should have told us before you went out the door.

You don't take your car to a garage and then walk off with the keys, do you? A more aggravating situation is the user who puts passwords on the Administrator account in Windows XP. Aside from the fact you only ever see this account in Safe Mode and if you're using said account the system's typically screwed anyway.

No It's Not!

Come hither, and understand once and for all: Microsoft Word does not come with any version of Windows whatsoever. Windows does come with Wordpad (formally Write) which is effectively a cut-down version of Word.

Many exchanges often occur because people think Word is part of Windows. This situation has been perpetrated by the common trend over the last ten years by the big manufacturers to bundle Word (or increasingly Works) with a computer. When the system has to be wiped eighteen months later because somebody put Limewire on it and screwed up the recovery partition, said exchanges occur. It usually later transpires that the Word in question was only the 60 day trial anyway and it'll be some more money to replace it with one that doesn't time out in two months time.

The Post-Purchase Situation...

One of the strangest situations that occurs in this field is the user who gives you money for a PC and then asks what you get for said amount of dosh. Would this have not been a better question to ask before they said "Okay, I'll order that then"?

When was the last time you went to a Ford garage, gave them £3,000 and then asked whether the car you've just bought has power steering or not?

The situation of "Have you Got...?" comes up regularly. For something small like an extra mouse for another computer, not a problem. When they just given you £200 for the budget computer and then ask if they can play World Of Warcraft on it.

Sometimes They Just Don't Mix...

On occasion a computer and a user do not gel. They will never gel, typically because the computer is smarter than the user.

It is a well-known fact of life amongst those work in the field of computer support than even the most intelligent person on the planet can sit in front of a computer and suddenly lose all grasp of logic and knowledge.

Some of these shall be explored at some point. Such as the user who downloads everything for nothing and then wonders why the computer takes all day to do anything.