Family members and computers!

Meatball

Meatball

Meatball

Soldato
Joined
12 Jun 2005
Posts
6,359
Location
St Albans
Is it just me or is having a hobby in computing a curse? If anything goes wrong with the computers in my house the fingers always pointed at me because I always "Fiddle around with them" :mad:. For example today my dads user account on the computer downstairs became corrupt and he lost his bookmarks (2-3 in total.) and as usual my dad got all angry and mad and blaimed it on me. He was ranting and raving for 20 minutes how I should just leave the computers alone. What's funny is I haven't touched the downstairs computer since setting it up a couple of years ago except for updating the anti-virus & spyware definitions. He's the most computer iliterate person ever, he doesn't even know how to shrink, minimize and restore windows despite me showing him countless times! It took him 10 minutes just now to get onto hotmail :mad:.
 
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I have stopped building computers for friends and family because they call me and expect me to fix them all the time. I just tell them what to buy from the purple coats so they get the tech support guys phone number instead of mine.
 
Steve2000 said:
Just say it was working fine until he touched it.
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I do and he comes back with the old "well how else do you explain it?" :mad:. He seems to think data corruption is impossible. To be fair I can't explain what happened, it's most likely him fiddling around not knowing what he's doing.
 
The phone calls from friends of your parents, people who you've never personally met, are the worst. They expect you to fix their problems over the phone despite the fact that they don't even know what OS they're running let alone what components are in case.
 
Meatball said:
Is it just me or is having a hobby in computing a curse? If anything goes wrong with the computers in my house the fingers always pointed at me because I always "Fiddle around with them" :mad:. For example today my dads user account on the computer downstairs became corrupt and he lost his bookmarks (2-3 in total.) and as usual my dad got all angry and mad and blaimed it on me. He was ranting and raving for 20 minutes how I should just leave the computers alone. What's funny is I haven't touched the downstairs computer since setting it up a couple of years ago except for updating the anti-virus & spyware definitions. He's the most computer iliterate person ever, he doesn't even know how to shrink, minimize and restore windows despite me showing him countless times! It took him 10 minutes just now to get onto hotmail :mad:.
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+1
 
No i always get the "my computer's broken fix it", "my mates computer is broken fix it", "you dont know me can you fix my computer"
 
Is amazies me when people running games and things always update the graphics and sound drivers BUt when you mention Chipset drivers, they are like "what?".

I heard one person say "what you mean, network card drivers", pff.
 
TheCrow said:
Just tell him you have checked the logs and they say that it was his fault for looking at naughty sites....
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That sounds like a good idea. I might make up a fake computer log in notepad and print it off to show him. I'll add an entry showing corruption while he was logged on and using it, would shut him up :p.
 
Azagoth said:
The phone calls from friends of your parents, people who you've never personally met, are the worst. They expect you to fix their problems over the phone despite the fact that they don't even know what OS they're running let alone what components are in case.
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Yea it happens quite often for me. Tad annoying.
 
Last night a mate rang me. He wanted to print out some lyrics from a website and wanted to make them bigger. It's a simple matter of highlighting the text, copying and pasting into word and changing the size and font and printing or saving it.

Half an hour later......:rolleyes:
 
I get asked by family members to fix their computers occasionally, but they're all pretty confident with computers so it doesn't happen that often. When it does happen though, it's a pain in the arse! Always worse than you expect. Had to completely rip apart my uncles computer a few months ago because the motherboard had died.
 
I know what you mean and it is damned annoying!

I'm known in the family as the computer genius but I'm really not... What really bugs me is when family members computers get clogged up with so much crap like IE toolbars and rubbish game apps that they make it run like a pig. I format the PC, reinstall windows and tell them not to install so much useless rubbish(I mean seriously, why would anyone need 10 different messenger apps?) but 3 months down the line I know it will be back in the same state.
 
Just been given a box of bits today by my aunt, apparently it was a computer in a previous life before her son and his friend decided to go dismantling it. Wouldn't mind but I only fixed this computer a few weeks after a virus infection. Oh well.

@ the op:

Dad used to say the same thing to me years ago and, in fairness, sometimes he was right. However, to this day he still blames me when something goes wrong with his computer even though I've never, ever been near it on general principles. It's usually my brother looking up naughty sites. I think it comes with knowing a thing or two about computers, people are scared to touch them and will always resort to calling someone they know who's handy with them. At least that way they can blame you when it blows up.
 
I just say buy a new one i saves my time and doesn't waste theirs trying to fix a derelict 7 year old pc which has no juice left. If that fails then i back up then i try and find the faulty part and just replace it.
 
Azagoth said:
The phone calls from friends of your parents, people who you've never personally met, are the worst. They expect you to fix their problems over the phone despite the fact that they don't even know what OS they're running let alone what components are in case.
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Yes, this.

People seem to think that "it went funny" is all the information needed to diagnose a fault and fix it over the phone.

I found that it's easier to go there and fix it than first try to get enough information over the phone to find out what the problem is and and then try to get them to fix it (if it can be fixed easily).

EDIT: In my case, it's friends or family of coworkers, but it's the same sort of thing.
 
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Dad went mental at me for breaking his PC, id plant a virus or wipe the hard drive.

Aye ya ***** I broke it that time.
 
I hate this also. The worst is when people ring up (friends of random family members are the worst, with P3, Win98 and miniscule amounts of RAM with documents farted over the entire drive) and ask if I can fix their computer. I tell them sure, just bring it over and I'll take a look. The phone goes quiet and then they say can't you just come over and take a look as all the cables are plugged in... Mobile free PC fixer Mint at your service..

AArrgghh, worst is when my sister does it, expects me to drive miles and miles to fix it. IT'S A LAPTOP, just bring it over, I have all my PC stuff here so I can download drivers etc, plus I can do it while I work, leave it running something while I get on with things rather than staring at a progress bar for hours. She gets funny because she doesn't want to have the hassle of un-plugging it and says I don't help her enough.. pardon, last time I spent over 9 hours on it and didn't even get a thanks. grr.
 
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