Experience With Non-techies?

Someone was complaining that their computer would not turn on, I went to them and found them pressing the eject button on the disk drive...

My mate attempted to build his own computer, he put the CPU cooler on the wrong way round, the PSU in upside-down, the HDD in upside-down and the wrong way round, no standoff's under the motherboard, the GPU in the wrong slot, used dual molex to 6 pin on the GPU instead of the dedicated 6 pin, the RAM in single channel mode, and didnt plug in any of the front panel connectors.

Needless to say I slapped him and re-built the entire thing for him.
 
acme15 said:
Someone was complaining that their computer would not turn on, I went to them and found them pressing the eject button on the disk drive...

My mate attempted to build his own computer, he put the CPU cooler on the wrong way round, the PSU in upside-down, the HDD in upside-down and the wrong way round, no standoff's under the motherboard, the GPU in the wrong slot, used dual molex to 6 pin on the GPU instead of the dedicated 6 pin, the RAM in single channel mode, and didnt plug in any of the front panel connectors.

Needless to say I slapped him and re-built the entire thing for him.
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I'll never understand why people think they are capable without getting all the guidance they need first. They amount of money now involved with building PC's and they do this............not a sensible move!
 
darael said:
After many years, I only found out by this thread what you meant. You're wording it wrong, IMO - mount which part of myself to the case using what?

I would say "ground your multimeter to the case then test the battery voltage by connecting the multimeter's positive lead to the positive side of the battery" sounds much more accurate.
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Me and my tri-pod mount ourselves very finely inside the case.
 
acme15 said:
Someone was complaining that their computer would not turn on, I went to them and found them pressing the eject button on the disk drive...

My mate attempted to build his own computer, he put the CPU cooler on the wrong way round, the PSU in upside-down, the HDD in upside-down and the wrong way round, no standoff's under the motherboard, the GPU in the wrong slot, used dual molex to 6 pin on the GPU instead of the dedicated 6 pin, the RAM in single channel mode, and didnt plug in any of the front panel connectors.

Needless to say I slapped him and re-built the entire thing for him.
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lol
 
I've been doing a bog standard office job for the last few months. Every week one of my colleagues that started at the same time as myself asks for help filling in his expenses form.

It's an Excel spreadsheet that you edit the date on and attach to an email. How hard can it be to do it yourself?
 
Stokesy said:
I've been doing a bog standard office job for the last few months. Every week one of my colleagues that started at the same time as myself asks for help filling in his expenses form.

It's an Excel spreadsheet that you edit the date on and attach to an email. How hard can it be to do it yourself?
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Ex... Excel... Whats that? :D

Email..?
 
strumpusplunket said:
I am the go-to "tech support" for my mother-in-law. She has a basic specs laptop that she really only uses for Skype, web-browsing, ebay and storing photos.
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Heh, I'm the same with my mother. Skype and eBay would be way beyond her, she only just grasps the concept of viewing photos, and thats only for stuff thats emailed to her. She uses a camera with film in it for her own photos. Anything more modern is way beyond her comprehension.

I installed everything on the PC so I know it inside out. However trying to talk her through the simplest things is excrutiatingly slow I do get a bit frustrated at times. Some things are simply impossible to talk her through.

Which I why I finally managed to get her to install software that lets me take remote control of her computer, saved me a massive headache and several hours of frustration.
 
I think the best one I had was...

Me: "That's great, now press the Enter key and it should open up X"
Him: "Okay.. *pause*... Where is the Enter key?"

Another common one that gets on my wick is when they have something like Outlook folders set-up and think that all their files have gone when they click on the '-' accidentally .... only to find 1 frantic phone call to IT Support later... and us pressing the '+' icon next to the folder.. balance is restored!
 
My mother decided it would be a good idea to get rid of her quad core laptop for an intel atom ultrabook needless to say i point it out everytime she says "this laptop is really slow" and even worse when using serif page plus that is the most awful program to use and on an ultrabook painful to use.

I also did work experience once in an it repair company, it was a shared building with a solicitors firm in the other half. the Solicitor comes in with his laptop and says "Hi i think i have a virus anychance you could fix it for me" so i go to the repair room with the laptop and one of the employees and we get to work, login and what do we find on the dektop shortcuts literally spawning by the second and a dodgy looking Blackgammon program. we then proceeded to look at his internet history and we found oodles of Pr0n and then had to explain to him not to use such dodgy Pr0n sites....His face when we told him....Priceless
 
While fixing a friends computer:

Me: Do you really need all these icons on the desktop? they slow bootup down you know.
Him: Yeah I think so, I use them all.
Me: I can see three internet explorer icons here, a word doc, a copy of that doc and a copy of the copy of that doc.
Him: Well I-
Me: How long is it since you left AOL?
Him: Maybe I don't need all of them
Me: Also, maybe as you haven't had a job in half a decade "tax stuff" isn't the best name for the porn folder, just saying
Him: *silence*
 
Bacon? said:
Still remember one of my friends built his own PC and coultn understand why it wouldn't work. I asked him what his PSU was and he said he didnt have one :D :D :D
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Let me guess, he thought it was wireless...;)


Some of these stories make me glad I don't do tech support as a job, it's bad enough trying to talk family and friends through things (usually the phone call ends with me saying "are you in....I'll pop round").
 
How about this one.

C - our internet keeps dropping
Me- I ask usual questions check cables, filter etc
C - It only works when we listen to Radio 1
Me- ??????
Me - where is the router plugged in
C- a four way extension
Me- where is the radio plugged in
C- same four way extension
Me- How do you turn the radio on and off
C- using the switch next to the socket where the four way is plugged in because the on/off switch on the radio is broke.

That was a leading driving instructor company.
 
Werewolf said:
Let me guess, he thought it was wireless...;)


Some of these stories make me glad I don't do tech support as a job, it's bad enough trying to talk family and friends through things (usually the phone call ends with me saying "are you in....I'll pop round").
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God knows why he though he could run a computer which he built (somehow managed to build it correctly too) could run without power :D


varkanoid said:
How about this one.

C - our internet keeps dropping
Me- I ask usual questions check cables, filter etc
C - It only works when we listen to Radio 1
Me- ??????
Me - where is the router plugged in
C- a four way extension
Me- where is the radio plugged in
C- same four way extension
Me- How do you turn the radio on and off
C- using the switch next to the socket where the four way is plugged in because the on/off switch on the radio is broke.

That was a leading driving instructor company.
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It took me 2 attemps to read this, and resulted in a head shaped mark on my desk ;)
 
I have plenty of stories when doing house calls.

My favourite was a lady who called me because her internet wasn't working.

Turns out that her husband unplugs everything every night before going to bed (old couple) including the CAT cable from the back of the PC in case he got a virus while the machine was off.

I wouldn't mind but after showing her the first time, I went back 2 other times for the same thing.

The other unfortunately was my own dad. Said his latest upgrade was **** as the screen wasn't refreshing. Again, it turns out that his old system was so slow, the refreshed screeen would painfully scroll down whereas the new system he couldn't see the refreshed but this was a problems in his eye.
 
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