You gotta love average PC users......

[Level42]

No this is not a war against any certain OS.

But do you guys recognize this: since you're pretty handy with computers etc. People ask you to look into their PC problems.

So, my cousin comes over and hands me over his laptop saying, yeah it doesn't start up anymore, I have no idea why.

So I power it up and hear the unmistakable sound of a physically crashed HD. Of course I get a S.M.A.R.T. warning that I should back up right away. I bet this message has shown lots of times but was ignored....

I ask if he had any important data, and if so he should be aware that he's lost it. Of course he didn't back up anything.......

Since I had upgraded the HD in my Mac Mini recently I still had a spare 80 GB HD that I offered him. So, next I ask him for the system restore DVD's he should have created when he bought the laptop. You may guess what his reply was.

(Of course, any decent manufacturer of OS'es actually still delivers _factory_ DVD's with the system for these situations, but hey, some will do anything to make even more money right ?)

Anyway, next he tells me his CD/DVD drive wasn't working anyway......since I have no USB DVD drive I was completely out of options. I realise I might be able to install XP from a USB stick etc, but frankly I was fed up with so much ignorance and told him he would be better of buying a new (decent) laptop.

Sigh....and this is a young person who you'd expect to have grown up with computers.....

Sorry about the rant

(By the way, the drive was a Hitachi. I _strongly_ advice against that brand of HD's. I've seen lot's of those going bad. It already started when it was still IBM drives. I think IBM decided they were not capable of building decent drives and sold the business. Smart move.)

I tried the "freezer" trick but didn't expect, and didn't' get any results from it.

[SavannahLion]

(By the way, the drive was a Hitachi. I _strongly_ advice against that brand of HD's. I've seen lot's of those going bad. It already started when it was still IBM drives. I think IBM decided they were not capable of building decent drives and sold the business. Smart move.)

I tried the "freezer" trick but didn't expect, and didn't' get any results from it.

Interesting, it's an Hitachi drive I'm trying to recover. I forgot Hitachi bought out IBM HDD operations. Piece of crap can't read past 1.3GB. Tried the freezer trick as well and it did jack ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.

IBM hasn't made anything decent outside of straightforward PC's for years. IBM is like certain car manufacturers, they can't get their ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- together. Anyone remember their Lexmark line? I had one of their printers and the piece of ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- wouldn't power up four times out of five. IBM had the gall to tell me I didn't have a proper ground.  I bet there's no proper ground, too bad it's in their ---smurfing--- printer. So I had a choice, leave the printer on 24/7 which dried out the ink three times faster (keep that in mind, I'll back on that point) or turn it off and pray to God it powers up when I need to print a paper on the day in needed to be turned in.

When the ink carts started costing $60 a piece and there was only one store in a fifteen mile radius that carried them, I got so sick of it, I gleefully took a hammer to that plastic ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. I found out that the "cap" for the ink heads was nothing more than a sponge with a drain tube (leading down to what would've been my desk). The sponge and tube were so clogged with ink that the ink heads couldn't sit properly and they dried out every single time. Never could figure out why it couldn't power up 100% of the time.

At least the AMD K6 PC I bought from them was half way decent. Took everything I threw at it for years.

[Nipedley]

I have to say the most rugged drive I came across was a 20gb Fujitsu which is still going, then it has to be Seagate's (I have 2 of those going). I had a hitachi here but never had any trouble with it (got sold when I upgraded to a seagate), WD gave me trouble for years with random MBR and MFT corruptions (I had 4x and they were all susceptible) and also years ago I never had a Maxtor that lasted more than a couple of weeks.

From my personal experience it has to be seagate's hands down, as that fujitsu was a business rather than retail model and I'm not even sure if they make retail drives, I've never seen one at least.

And I concur, all of my friends rely on me to fix their computer troubles. I don't mind though, as a £5 a time does start to add up

[Level42]

Hah, family and friends expect free repairs here !

[TOK]

I'm working on a friends computer as I type this. Its going through a spyware/malware scan.
This is the most screwed up computer I've ever seen that is actually still running. The crap on here is so bad that it won't let you download or run things to repair it.

He couldn't find any of his original software, or I would have just blown it out and started over. I've probably spent 3 hours dicking around with this thing over the course of the last few nights. The worst thing is that I know when I give it back clean, it'll be all screwed up again in two months.

[wp34]

next I ask him for the system restore DVD's he should have created when he bought the laptop. You may guess what his reply was.

Sigh....and this is a young person who you'd expect to have grown up with computers.....

I work at a local university and we see this kind of thing all the time.  In our case they cobble up the computer so much with spyware and viruses that it is inoperable.  They look at you with that deer in the headlights look when you mention the original restore CD's.  What makes it worse is that they think they are computer geniuses because they do Facebook.

[saint]

I'm working on a friends computer as I type this. Its going through a spyware/malware scan.
This is the most screwed up computer I've ever seen that is actually still running. The crap on here is so bad that it won't let you download or run things to repair it.

He couldn't find any of his original software, or I would have just blown it out and started over. I've probably spent 3 hours dicking around with this thing over the course of the last few nights. The worst thing is that I know when I give it back clean, it'll be all screwed up again in two months.

Image it before you give it back

[SavannahLion]

I'm working on a friends computer as I type this. Its going through a spyware/malware scan.
This is the most screwed up computer I've ever seen that is actually still running. The crap on here is so bad that it won't let you download or run things to repair it.

He couldn't find any of his original software, or I would have just blown it out and started over. I've probably spent 3 hours dicking around with this thing over the course of the last few nights. The worst thing is that I know when I give it back clean, it'll be all screwed up again in two months.

Image it before you give it back

Or use something like CloneZilla to strip out the unused portion of the drive image. The drive image can't be restored using standard tools though, you'll need a CloneZilla or some other sucessor to pull it off. I just successfully compressed a 20GB drive after the unused sectors were noted then removed, all the slack was taken up then fed through a compression routine. It's now a collection of files no larger than 10GB sitting on a different hard drive waiting for a new HDD. If you can prep the drive and strip out enough crap and just leave the OS itself (like after a fresh install), you can create an image to be stored on a DVD or 2. Then attach a DVD pouch just inside the case and leave the image with the PC. I used to do that for years with all my PC's in my pre-Linux driven days.

[IG-88]

My 65 yr old father in law has me "fixing" his computer at least once a quarter. It doesn't matter how much I preach to him that certain sites (if you get my meaning) need to be kept away from. He swears everytime that he doesn't visit those type of sites yet the evidence is plain. I love to tease my wife about it. She gets completely embarrassed.   

[SavannahLion]

Modify his HOSTS file.

[protokatie]

Someone who I worked with like 9 years ago showed up to my work tonight with his gf's laptop which was infected. (I also had to fix this same computer 6 months ago because he didn't install a simple wifi driver properly.). It turned out that he had a stupid "I am a virus checker" trojan on his computer. Every few minutes it would pop up a window that showed the exact same thing (a list of random viruses with a few with an infected icon next to them). Of course this screen was also asking for him to register the program to flush it out. Prolly didn't help that this trojan had a name similar to AVG and used the same icon...
Just gotta love how this "virus scanner" had comments next to the virus list describing the supposed threats as "Slow down computer virus" and similar

Fixt it by end-tasking the offending task, DLing a real virus program, and doing a thorough scan, which removed the fake virus scanner and 5 other infected files (which may have been copies of this program).

As per the HD, I have 2 1TB WD drives and they have been flawless for almost a yeah. Maybe WD fixed their problems... I wonder if the people who have HD probs are just the ones who get the 10 to 20% of the drives that were flawed but made it through QC anyways (typical with most complex electronics).

[Xiaou2]

That wont stop him.

 Give him a list of  "Good"  bad sites   


Btw - Im happy about the level of understanding of the general pc user. 
It gives me a paycheck and occasional side job cash.

[TOK]

I'm working on a friends computer as I type this. Its going through a spyware/malware scan.
This is the most screwed up computer I've ever seen that is actually still running. The crap on here is so bad that it won't let you download or run things to repair it.

He couldn't find any of his original software, or I would have just blown it out and started over. I've probably spent 3 hours dicking around with this thing over the course of the last few nights. The worst thing is that I know when I give it back clean, it'll be all screwed up again in two months.

Image it before you give it back

I'd love to do that with a clean install. I'm afraid doing it this way that there is something that I'm going to miss and I don't want to image it with a problem.
Its 75% better than it was already, but still won't let me open stuff like Spybot.

He's sharing this PC with his young teen daughter and in addition to her iTunes, it has every Smiley toolbar, shady web game service, coupon generator and malware generator disguised as malware remover ever created on it.

 

[ChadTower]

I used to do a lot of side repairs for extra income... did help desk support in college... did PC support in the corporate world... I've seen enough truly stupid, and I mean make your head asplode stupid, things that my brain probably jettisoned most of the memories out of self preservation.

Hell just the list of random objects I found inside PC cases is enough to make you want to cry.  And more than a few times I ran across content that raised real problems, most times just about fidelity, but a couple times it was stuff that made me call the police.

[hypernova]

He's sharing this PC with his young teen daughter and in addition to her iTunes, it has every Smiley toolbar, shady web game service, coupon generator and malware generator disguised as malware remover ever created on it.

With all these toolbars out there, I'm wouldn't be surprised if some people have lost over half their screen space when internet surfing.  People just leave boxes checked when doing things, and wham, they've downloaded a toolbar.  If you do it enough times, your internet browser is all toolbars, and no browser.

[danny_galaga]

He's sharing this PC with his young teen daughter and in addition to her iTunes, it has every Smiley toolbar, shady web game service, coupon generator and malware generator disguised as malware remover ever created on it.

With all these toolbars out there, I'm wouldn't be surprised if some people have lost over half their screen space when internet surfing.  People just leave boxes checked when doing things, and wham, they've downloaded a toolbar.  If you do it enough times, your internet browser is all toolbars, and no browser.

.

Actually got fooled recently when my housemates laptop anti-virus expired. We installed free AVG on it and somehow ended up with an extra toolbar as well. Now removed naturally...

[saint]

Fan on my power supply on the home server died, so I took it apart to replace yesterday. Found a spider! My server is now debugged.

[Malenko]

Fan on my power supply on the home server died, so I took it apart to replace yesterday. Found a spider! My server is now debugged.

ZING!

[ChadTower]

I learned the hard way not to open up a sketchy looking PC from a repair client in my house.  I had to start opening them outside first.  Too many times they'd have some sort of insect nest inside.  One had died because roaches had basically stuffed the entire power supply until it overheated.

[LLUncoolJ]

I learned the hard way not to open up a sketchy looking PC from a repair client in my house.  I had to start opening them outside first.  Too many times they'd have some sort of insect nest inside.  One had died because roaches had basically stuffed the entire power supply until it overheated.

Why don't you just rock me to sleep.

[protokatie]

I think my next get-rich-quick scheme will be inventing a roach motel that installs in a drivebay O.o

[DaOld Man]

I too have found insects several times when opening a computer.
I am often worried that someone will give me roaches, bed bugs, spiders (mean ones like black widows or brown recluses), or a number of other bugs who like to hang out in dark warm places.
I usually try to take the computer cover off outside and vacuum it, before I bring it into the house.
Sometimes, if it's going to be a few days before I can get to it, I will put it in a garbage bag and tie it up.

There is always a ton of dust in there, and I sometimes wonder if bugs like swine flu can be carried in the dust? Probably not, but you still wonder about what all you are opening your house to.

[ChadTower]

If you're doing it outside you are better off using compressed air.  It's a lot more effective than a vacuum and faster.

Don't suck.  Blow!

[J_K_M_A_N]

I just bought one of these. It works great. A bunch of air comes out of where the two pieces meet but it still has plenty coming out the nozzle. It has a long enough cord that I can run it outside and clean the crap out of other peoples systems. I would say it is almost twice as powerful as a can of air. Maybe 1.5 times more. Very nice.

J_K_M_A_N