Home Tech Support Tales

[Mayon]

If your like me, the only techy person in your family who every goes to for tech support, post your favorite, most face-palmable and hilarious things your friends and family have said or done right here :)

[Rayquaza]

Mum: "Why isn't the screen turning on?"

Me: "Cause it's not even plugged in yet."

[Mayon]

Trying to remember a good one from my thousands :) It's quite funny watching my class to ape-shit when I open Command Prompt because they think I am hacking the world....l

[TheMatrix]

It gets frustrating sometimes.

My sister, for example. She uses my dad's old laptop(a Dell Latitude D620 or something, remember those hot bricks?) with Windows XP Professional on it. And the WiFi card in it sucks so badly that it just disconnects randomly(and it's not the switch on the side, actually). So she tells me to "come type those numbers like you did last time". She means the IP addresses for inside our network, because my dad set it up so that everything has a statically assigned address. Very useful, actually. For some reason re-typing those settings and reconnecting fixes it.
Then my little brother. He tells me that his games aren't working. Turns out that he's actually trying to install a Windows 95 game on Windows XP(Media Center edition). And that's not going to work, unfortunately. But of course he doesn't want to hear that. Sigh.


Trying to remember a good one from my thousands :) It's quite funny watching my class to ape-shit when I open Command Prompt because they think I am hacking the world....l
Now you'd think that here in the Silicon Valley that people know a lot about technology. Incorrect.
92% of people are your average end users, found everywhere else. The remaining 8% know some more. About 5% of them are script-kiddies, who don't really know what they're doing. My high school is partly that. The remaining 3% know how to use a computer to it's fullest and are fully capable of figuring out problems and solutions on their own. I consider myself to be part of that group.

But this is why I don't do those kind of things. The last thing I need is fingers pointing towards me when things go wrong. And then they do think you're breaking into something.
A senior at my school who knew quite some things showed off too much. And guess what? He got expelled, for breaking into teachers' computers and stealing examination documents and selling them. He and 7 or 8 others, all expelled and had their college admissions likely revoked. A shame, too, he was going to Berkeley, if I remember correctly. Tsk, tsk. Oh well.

[CharlieHorse]

It gets frustrating sometimes.

My sister, for example. She uses my dad's old laptop(a Dell Latitude D620 or something, remember those hot bricks?) with Windows XP Professional on it. And the WiFi card in it sucks so badly that it just disconnects randomly(and it's not the switch on the side, actually). So she tells me to "come type those numbers like you did last time". She means the IP addresses for inside our network, because my dad set it up so that everything has a statically assigned address. Very useful, actually. For some reason re-typing those settings and reconnecting fixes it.
Then my little brother. He tells me that his games aren't working. Turns out that he's actually trying to install a Windows 95 game on Windows XP(Media Center edition). And that's not going to work, unfortunately. But of course he doesn't want to hear that. Sigh.



Now you'd think that here in the Silicon Valley that people know a lot about technology. Incorrect.
92% of people are your average end users, found everywhere else. The remaining 8% know some more. About 5% of them are script-kiddies, who don't really know what they're doing. My high school is partly that. The remaining 3% know how to use a computer to it's fullest and are fully capable of figuring out problems and solutions on their own. I consider myself to be part of that group.

But this is why I don't do those kind of things. The last thing I need is fingers pointing towards me when things go wrong. And then they do think you're breaking into something.
A senior at my school who knew quite some things showed off too much. And guess what? He got expelled, for breaking into teachers' computers and stealing examination documents and selling them. He and 7 or 8 others, all expelled and had their college admissions likely revoked. A shame, too, he was going to Berkeley, if I remember correctly. Tsk, tsk. Oh well.

You're in the silicon area?
Me too :)

My aunt wanted a new "apple laptop" to replace her crappy dell somethingorother laptop, so she duct taped an apple the the back of it.
-_-

[Mayon]

One thing that always amazes me is that when some perfectly intelligent people sit down at a computer, and their common sense just..vanishes. When my Grandma asks me how to print some photo, I have never used Picassa before, and I can still figure it out. Same with when there is an error message on the screen, they ask me to come and look at it when it says clearly in the message what is wrong and needs fixing, ugh!

[HunterSteele]

Once, my mom was watching an HD video on YouTube. It was taking up the full browser window but not full screen, something I hadn’t seen YouTube do before.

Mom: “I want to get to the replies.”
Me: “You want to read the comments?”
Mom: “I want to reply and see the other video.”
Me: “You want to leave a comment?”

The viewer wasn’t full screen, but it was taking the whole browser window and hiding the comments, so I thought she was trying to get to them.

Me: “Click down here to get back to the regular player.”
Mom: “And that that’ll play the other video?”
Me: “You have to go to the small player first because right now it’s covering up the comments. Then you can choose a related video from the list.”

She clicked the button but it doesn’t do anything. I deleted “?popup_viewer” from the address bar and it returned to the regular viewer with the comments underneath. I thought this was what she wanted, so I was disappointed to hear more shouting.

Mom: “You’re so useless! You never get me what I want! Go away! I don’t want you here.”

It turns out she was mispronouncing “Replay.” She wanted to see the video again.

[Human]

Kind of related, but I hate it when I download things from Steam etc. and when the computer gets viruses it gets blamed on me. I hate having to explain that Arma and Universe Sandbox aren't malware.

[IVIodern]

Kind of related, but I hate it when I download things from Steam etc. and when the computer gets viruses it gets blamed on me. I hate having to explain that Arma and Universe Sandbox aren't malware.

Yeah. I hate when people tell me to do a virus scan, it finds something that I DEVELOPED in C# and I get told to delete it instantly.
Anti virus' are the biggest pieces of shit I've ever seen.
On a somewhat related note to the topic, yesterday my sisters laptop crashed. Literally, the screen was offset and then it just crashed. She called me when it was offset and said
"Peter, why is my screen like this"
I went up, the laptop crashed. She almost started crying. I tell her that it most likely overheated and that she SHOULDN'T LEAVE HER LAPTOP ON HER LAP, OR A CUSHION WHERE THE HEAT HAS NO PLACE TO ESCAPE. Common sense, right?

Not to her. She put her laptop on the cushion, I quietly whispered 'why do i even?' to myself and walked out.


Also whenever my internet drops she tells me to restart the router whereas I know the exact problem but no one believes me.
People are so stupid in Ireland when it comes to PC's and laptops its not funny.

[TheMatrix]

Yeah. I hate when people tell me to do a virus scan, it finds something that I DEVELOPED in C# and I get told to delete it instantly.
Just what were you trying to do? :P

Anti virus' are the biggest pieces of shit I've ever seen.
Usually it's the "family-safe" ones that do this.

[Silicate Wielder]

Mom:"Michael, why is the mouse doing this?"
Me:"Its ubuntu, and for some reason it doesn't work well with the mouse pad on this laptop, its over sensitive." -Thinking it's probably a driver issue-
Mom: "I think this has a virus. I bet it does, why did you even install this in the first place? tell me, why? Where did you download this from?"
ME: "I downloaded it from the ubuntu site. And, it works fine when I'm using it."
Mom: "Here you take it, I'm tired of messing with this."
Me: -turns mousepad off- "You do remember that the mousepad turns off, right?"
Mom: "Take it. I don't want to use it no more."

My mom is ignorant of these little solutions sometimes :P Oh well.


now as for my sister, it takes 15 minutes to teach her how to save files.

[Castle of Glass]

Well, i have a couple. First one is of me(the most tech savy person in family)

So i wanted to test an old computer. Plugged screen into motherboard like normal. screen doesn't work. then after a day and a half of working with it, i open it up. has graphics card.

second one is one i run into everyday pretty much.
I am one of the only people at my hs how know how to use technology. even our schools "geek squad" who supposedly know a lot doesn't know shit. So this is me every time when my class is in the computer lab'
class mate:
teacher, what is the password(school has no individual accounts to people)
Teacher: IDK, ask niilo
Classmate: Niilo, whats the password?
Me:*says password*
*Classmate types it in*
Classmate: Doesn't work
i go over to that person's computer. Caps lock is on.

another time;
Class mate: screen isn't working. help me teacher
teacher: Niilo, help plz
me: Ok, what ever.
*i go over*
classmate: see? screen is not turning on when i move the mouse.
reason: computer wasn't even on.

also, my mom things everyhing i have and ever site i go to is malware, even google. just because it type google like this google.com, not how my mom does. she does it like this: http://www.Google.com

Open command prompt at school to troubleshoot a problem i have that i can fix. teacher gets pissed. calls tech guy, doesn't know shit. ask if i can finish, i finish, everything works well, and about 50GB of spam and trash cleared of HDD

[iOS6]

People with iPhones iPods and iPads come to me for help and they use cheap things to have me fix them with and they don't last so I finally got genuine parts to work on them.
When it comes to computers at my school only 3 people at the most are good with computers. We are always having to leave class and help people with issues. My tech people at my school know nothing about iPads or and PC. For some reason they don't know command prompt is the holy grail for windows and that it can be used to fix a lot of issues that people are having with the computers.
When it comes to family, my grandpa and dad are good on iPads, my grandma, mom and everyone else can't seem to figure them out and are always calling me.
The stupidest thing I have heard is "how do I get out of an app on my iPad?"

[Blueeyes]

People with iPhones iPods and iPads come to me for help and they use cheap things to have me fix them with and they don't last so I finally got genuine parts to work on them.
When it comes to computers at my school only 3 people at the most are good with computers. We are always having to leave class and help people with issues. My tech people at my school know nothing about iPads or and PC. For some reason they don't know command prompt is the holy grail for windows and that it can be used to fix a lot of issues that people are having with the computers.
When it comes to family, my grandpa and dad are good on iPads, my grandma, mom and everyone else can't seem to figure them out and are always calling me.
The stupidest thing I have heard is "how do I get out of an app on my iPad?"

The tech guy at my school is fairly similar to your case.
I'm constant being pulled out of my work to troubleshoot things that has stumped the Network Admin. Note - he isn't actually a network admin, nor does he have any certs.

But anyways, I'm mostly known to know my way around computers. Don't want to brag or anything, but I do.
Penetration testing using various techniques such as SQL Injection, brute forcing, hash (MD5) cracking, etc is what I do to our own network to make sure it's capable for a school (not SQLi, thats for the websites).

Virus removal is another thing. I make sure I carry around my Rescue USB which is loaded with about 10 Antivirus solutions based off linux (Kapersky rescue cd, Bitdefender rescue, comodo rescue, etc). Along with other tools for partitioning and such.

I also run the school's firewall. It's a multi-function PC I built with the funds provided by the school that is a NAS, Firewall, Packet sniffer and antivirus solution that scans network PCs. It's based off of ClearOS/CentOS.

Being such a person at the school, I'm requested... a lot. Basic things from how to open up Lanschool in the bottom tray or more complicated like HDD errors and recoveries. But lucky for us, Google was invented and all life's complications are just a click away :D.

Note that I also do not have some skills that other people have, I'm not exactly a programmer. I can programme basic things like batch files and python files... but nothing crazy with C++ and things like that. I tend to use batch files a lot, I made one that switches DNS settings onto Google's DNS from OpenDNS (opendns is the internet filter) which will be used for troubleshooting, and connecting to network printers.

But as you can imagine, I have some stories I'd like to share... but maybe later lol. This spiel of wasted text is taking up my time :P

[Mayon]

...I make sure I carry around my Rescue USB which is loaded with about 10 Antivirus solutions based off linux (Kapersky rescue cd, Bitdefender rescue, comodo rescue, etc). Along with other tools for partitioning and such....

If you haven't heard of it, use Hiren's Boot CD(Yeah, I think you can put it on USB but the DVD is easier for booting into for removing passwords etc on old computers) it has literally every freeware program you would ever need. Download link was a bit annoying to get so I got it elsewhere *cough cough.se*

[Kevin Bacon]

My dad telling me to uninstall Google Chrome and reinstall IE6 on the Windows XP desktop in my parents room, because, "Google Chrome is a virus and wack a*s sh*t." Yeah, my father. :/

[Blueeyes]

If you haven't heard of it, use Hiren's Boot CD(Yeah, I think you can put it on USB but the DVD is easier for booting into for removing passwords etc on old computers) it has literally every freeware program you would ever need. Download link was a bit annoying to get so I got it elsewhere *cough cough.se*


Yeah I was thinking of using Hiren's back a few months ago. Then just decided to use SARDU and download what I needed and made a multiboot usb.

[JoeHillsTSD]

Kind of related, but I hate it when I download things from Steam etc. and when the computer gets viruses it gets blamed on me. I hate having to explain that Arma and Universe Sandbox aren't malware.

!!!! *^^*This here !!!! I downloaded Minecraft on the computer, and I cant play it to this day, because my mom swears it has a virus. Of course the hundreds of games and songs my siblings download on the computer have nothing to do with the virus, right?

When I was living with my grandparents, everyday I explained the process of adding a shortcut for a website to the desktop. Each time she would tell me she remember how to do it for the next time.

Not to mention the 2 months my aunt walkedaround calling her phone's USB charger a USb port