horrors of helping Friends/Relatives with computer shit -

[XYZpdq]

oh hai XYZpdq ahahaha so yeah here's an old shitbox with XP please make it work also back up my everything

on the plus side it means new pics of legendary tourist trap South Of The Border are birthed unto the world

I think I have enough old win7 towers that I took home from work (they were legit free to a good home, not stolen) around to get them up to "at least supported by some antivirus programs" with a bit of frankenstein styles

 

[The Fool]

Windows 10 on a shitty trash-picked pentium machine with 2GB RAM

enough said.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

"Hi, the pin code for windows doesn't work. It's important, I need to submit my essay." It took three hours and lots of pictures of the screen, because people can't fucking read, sent over text messages but I fixed it. They noticed by my tone that maybe they shouldn't ask for anything else for a couple of months.

 

[Blasterisk]

Trash AV program stuck midscan due to enduser insistence of powering down after use (checking emails) no matter what. Has happened more than once.

If you're going to pay for garbage on a subscription, bloody well let it finish its garbage job.

 

[Niggernerd]

Love my mom and sis but fuck if they aren't retarded. Bad enough i have to help get the remote to work or help them get on the wifi. I'd probably blow my brains out if i had to help with them with computer stuff.

 

[awoo]

on the plus side it means new pics of legendary tourist trap South Of The Border are birthed unto the world
View attachment 2014594
I think I have enough old win7 towers that I took home from work (they were legit free to a good home, not stolen) around to get them up to "at least supported by some antivirus programs" with a bit of frankenstein styles

this is funny because it's an obscure east coast I-95 thing and even then lots of people I know haven't heard of it


I don't have any horror stories really but I do have an old win98 machine that I used to use as a kid and maybe I'll go back and clean it out with the knowledge of hindsight.

 

[Boris Blank's glass eye]

No real horror here, just blunt pain.
My mother has a laptop that wasn't cheap enough to justify just throwing it out of a window, but wasn't expensive enough to be actually usable when running W10.
She actually bought it with W10 pre-installed, but as it turned out a couple months later, it was originally a W7 machine with W10 updated on top of it. Off to a wonderful start here.
She had me back up "everything important" ("-What exactly, ma? -WELL I DON'T KNOW SON, EVERYTHING THAT LOOKS IMPORTANT!") then took it to a repair shop to wipe the drive clean and install everything fresh.

Now, with a clean W10 installed, it's still fucking slow and barely usable. Why? Because she doesn't use it frequently enough so the system needs to do everything exactly when I'm trying to fix something/help her with anything minor that doesn't need to be taken to a shop. Look for, download, and install updates, MS Defender, Windows Removal Tool, everything.
And she never shuts it down, just puts it to sleep "so it boots fast". I've offered to buy her an SSD but "-No, the repair shop guy said the laptop is a pain in the ass to disassemble and reassemble and I'd feel sorry for him if he had to."

 

[Teiluna]

i can't think of any from me helping someone, so here's one in reverse - i used to make my half brother reformat the hard drive every time i downloaded something sketchy or got a bluescreen. dude had the patience of a saint, probably thought our parents were dumb as all hell for letting a kid use a computer (or at least the internet, because we had a lot of shitty edutainment game dvds) at least it was an old one that wasn't used for work or anything so there was no lasting damage.
my brother quickly learned not to download anything on there because our half brother would listen to me over him.

 

[stares at error messages]

I have too many stories. My experiences as a technician have taught me to hate senior citizens, have no patients for normies, and have a low view of the retards that don't stop being technicians after learning what's is like to be one.

Story one.
Client old man age 79.
Needs help. Basically I work the computer for him because his wife divorced him and now lives in New Mexico with her simp while old man struggles to pay sales tax. I get to the house and let old man talk because he's lonely. I let him spend about 1 hour of chinwagging before we actually get to the computer. The computer thing is easy. All you do is read websites and fill in the balk. (like knowing how to hit next on installers) After the computer stuff It's time to pay and old man wants met to take a bunch of broken electronics with me that don't work and are all a mess in a box. I agree to take the box of junk. I did a number of things on the computer for old man and I'm always really flexible about the time he wants to spend talking. I say it's 150 for the session. Old man doesn't like this. Says he gave me good stuff so the price should be lower. I revise the price to 100. Old man accepts reluctantly.

I really hate old people. I'm not going to try to shift or really do anything with the box of junk that you think is so valuable that you are going to give it away or put it in the trash. I can get better garbage tracing streets in the spring for people cleaned out junk, if interested, I don't need your crap. If in this case old man has hired GeekSquad or some other outfit they would have him on the clock for 3 hours and add fees for driving out to his house. It would be an easy 250 or so and there would be a nice shiny bill to go with that amount. You probably think I'm pretending to be nicer then I am, but 150 is a steal when I'll even take your garbage out to the curb without a second thought.

Story two.
Old women age 74.
Religious Nut who hands out terrorist propaganda and openly bad mouths the people she doesn't like in her building right to their faces. Then she has the audacity to say, "I can't believe [the gays I keep saying are going to burn in hell] didn't invite me to their christmas party". Old woman has a gmail account and is afraid of being spied on by the government. My thoughts are you can't have your email spied on if you don't have en email account. Of course, I don't tell her this. The last time I ever agreed to do work for this women was when she was having problem sending a video to her friend with gmail on the ipad. The video won't send because it's too big a file to attach to the email. (yes I know about google drive but that's not in this story) I explain that it is nothing wrong with her gmail and that it's just the file is too big to send. For five minutes strait she starts sulking in this not-crying but same sounding voice as crying about how she'd done this before and that she can't believe this is happening to her and that she prays all the time and that she always used to be able to do just this... (all manner of hysterics) To the question of why this is happening, taking her at her word that she has done this before (I wasn't there how should I know), that it must have been google who lower the size limit for file uploads in email. Still in hysterics, eventually she starts to be calm enough to ask me to fix it for her. I cut the video so isn't shorter and it uploads fine and sends. While I'm cutting he video her building's fire alarm miss fires and a loud siren echos though her whole building. Why did you have me com to you building, we could be at a coffeehouse or something, if you knew your building was malfunctioning. I mentioned the siren. Hardly phased, she explains that's it's been a chronic problem for the past month. I don't remember how much I charged her, but she couldn't afford service even if it were free.

This woman I had been doing work for a few times by then and I had gotten to know more then I wanted to know about her. Her kids and grand kinds never visited because she would be cranky and judgemental when they would come which scared them away. She was hyper religious. She even wanted to have her birthday money her son sent her tithed. (I know it's usually the other way around, right?) Her son had sent her 2 computers and an ipad. The first computer was wrong because windows didn't look exactly like on her last computer which was form 1995. I don't know what was wrong with ipad, she probably didn't like it because it didn't have real keyboard. From the moment I had met her she would insist that she was writer, while never writing anything and only ranting about trade publications that ruled her choice is hardware and software. She said she didn't like the ribbon gui in ms word, so I installed libreoffice as an alternative option. She never tired it. Instead, listing a bunch of things she and her forums (forums that she didn't comment on or belong to) said made libreoffice unacceptable. Once she showed me an excerpt she had gotten published in the local news paper, but to her she was a journalist with a hot career. I can always understand the technical ignorance people have with computers. That was not this woman's problem, she was just an awful person. It quickly became apparent it was a waste of time helping her. I have no problem believing that this women had gone though 3 marriages. All divorces. At one point the question of weather or not I tell lies came up, probably because of her religious obsession. Of course I tell lies. Who doesn't? It would be dishonest of me not to say I sometimes lie. She got really worked out of shape about this like a small child being obstinate and withholding when they get caught up with needing to get their own way. It's like she was the grandmother strait out of A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Connor: ignorant and obsessed with adherence to superficial orthodoxy.

I think the worst part, like with most of these stories, is the fact that they have no money or don't want to part with any of what they don't have. Computers are not food or water. Yes they make things easier, but the are not as essential as food and housing. Much of what you can do over a computer you can do slower by phone, so if you can't use computers you're not entirely disabled either. Back when I was a technician, I would charge different rates to clients on fixed government subsidize incomes. This women couldn't even pay 10 dollars so that she could have someone to berate.

Story three.
Man age 66. Partial disability.
The village pot head.
This guy had gotten kicked out of his wife's house and was living at his office because of pot addiction. Pot head was very nice, but useless and poor. He couldn't pay his debts and his line of work didn't support him. He had me prepare documents on the computer for him a number of times. If he were high he wouldn't pay. Not "I'll get you next time", he just wouldn't pay. He'd forget while he was high and it would be impossible to get him to focused enough to pay me. He never wanted to pay either, so maybe the pot let his subconscious desire to not pay fully manifest, or something. You're probably thinking he sounds like a laugh and a half. I never thought so. He really didn't live well, he was homeless for years living out of his office that didn't have a shower or really any enmities. He was difficult to work for because he would be too high to give feedback on the work. Completely ignorant of computers. Never cared what I did anyway. Really slap dash and unprofessional. I eventually stopped answering his calls. Real nice guy when you did need anything from him, but I think most people felt like he was just in the way. His office was dusty from all the cigarettes and pot he would smoke. It was messy and gross. He was on my lower rates because he was poor, even on food stamps, but he still wouldn't pay me for anything that I would do for him. It wasn't just simple typing either. He would have me do graphic design work which would normally take hours and could cost 100s of dollars all for chicken shit he would pay. Nice guy, but you can't pay me in food stamps.


Seniors in America
It's no surprise to me that the USA is a fucking trash heap given my experiences with it's greatest resource. (I know I'm being hyperbolic.) No wonder we're all facing troon-agedden when old people don't have their shit together after a life time of chances to do so. The problems I see in the US have existed for 3 generations. The generation of my grandparents, my parents, and my peers are all this way. There really is no recovery from this state of affairs at least none that I can see. If you want to waste your life trying to find one, be my guest, but I've got a life to live.

A lot of these people I used to do work for were old and poor. In the USA Social Security is one of the biggest draws on the non-discretionary budget. In my estimation what everone of these retards needed was a social worker not a computer technician. Some one to slap them upside the head and make clear that what they had been playing at their entire life had put them here and nothing else; it's their own damn fault. There is not a enough sympathy and kindness in the world to help adult babies who act like teenagers, and there never will be.

 

[PaleTay]

I did some tech support in university, usernames, passwords, pins and so on are the nemesis of boomers.

I met one schizophrenic who claimed he represented Trudeau's campaign and handed out stickers to everyone he encountered.

Most of work and family related stuff is just watching them take 3 hours to try to do something obvious and refusing help.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

Unless your job is in IT you're better off playing dumb with tech.

I made the mistake of helping my inlaws with something once and I'm now the extended family tech guy.

 

[JoshPlz]

Unless your job is in IT you're better off playing dumb with tech.

I made the mistake of helping my inlaws with something once and I'm now the extended family tech guy.

Absolutely true. Help with something once and you are responsible for it forever. And they want you to do it all for free.

There seems to be a general lack of appreciation of this kind of work too. People don't want to pay or if so, pay peanuts.

I'm now mostly playing dumb or say that I don't have time.

 

[Lame Entropy]

My mom better hope I don't die before her. She absolutely cannot figure out how to do anything online no matter how many times I've tried teaching her. As a result, I'm in charge of taking care of her financial/legal matters. She can't even figure out how to pay her fucking credit card on her own. Never mind keeping track of all of the accounts I've had to make for her.

On one hand, she's a reasonably intelligent woman otherwise so mshe might just like having me as her secretary. On the other hand, I've had calls from other people asking me to please come help her because she's been trying to do something on her own for too long without getting anywhere

If it's the first one, I hope I get hit by a bus.

 

[Hydraulic Llama]

Absolutely true. Help with something once and you are responsible for it forever. And they want you to do it all for free.

There seems to be a general lack of appreciation of this kind of work too. People don't want to pay and if so, pay peanuts.

I'm now mostly playing dumb or say that I don't have time.

Took the words out my mouth. Remember those horrifying toolbars that promised more smilies for msn messenger and such? That shit still gives me nightmares.

 

[TheImportantFart]

When I was in my first year at uni, my friend, who was in his third and final year, asked me to read through his dissertation to check for typos. One of the requirements for essays at our uni was they had to be double spaced and one of the first things I noticed was he'd manually double spaced his entire dissertation. When I asked him why, he said he didn't know Word had the facility to do it automatically. He'd been manually double spacing his essays throughout uni and only realised it could've been done automatically right before the end.

 

[A Dumb Demon]

My dad destroyed my first computer by following every sketchy link he could find while browsing hardcore porn because he didn't know what a computer virus was, and my mother used to call me up every week at some god-forsaken hour of the night to make me follow her through basic shit like setting up a new browser or how to move a file from a thumbdrive to the computer. The best part is when I would sit there to try and help, she'd start screaming about me breaking her computer instead of letting me just do the fucking thing.

 

[Mal0]

Back in HS I used to be a part of our tech division. I was one of the more knowledgeable guys who knew stuff about computers (and unlike others, wouldn't install viruses or fuck with your files to be a dick), so people would often come to me for help.

Freshman came to me with his "gaming pc" saying it's chugging after a while of being idle. Asked and it was a prebuilt delivered to his house via mail. While digging around at home, I found his "homework" folder hidden using windows 10's "Hidden Items" feature.

Nearly 15 GB of tranny, pegging, and general humiliation fetish porn. This kid was like 14 and looked as normal as ever. Returned him his PC and suggested getting a new HDD since I assumed it was damaged during shipping. I did mumble to him "nice homework folder". Kid avoided me like the plague until I graduated the next year.

 

[Disappointed Kenny]

My granddad fell for the indian "your weendowz hahs a veyerusss" bullshit 3 times now. I'm pretty sure by the time he dies all his money will be gone because he keeps paying upwards of $500 per call to "fix" his computer remotely.

For reference he had like six different remote access applications from these motherfuckers on his machine a year ago, before I wiped and reinstalled his machine.

 

[Shroom King]

Pot head was very nice, but useless and poor.

This needs to be random.txt.

Took the words out my mouth. Remember those horrifying toolbars that promised more smilies for msn messenger and such? That shit still gives me nightmares.

Incredimail shut down last year. Probably the #1 reason for "my computer runs slow" for the past 20 years.

The worst is helping someone set up their wireless printer. I don't understand how in 2021 getting a printer on wifi with full functionality is still a pain in the ass. I couldn't even get my own printer to scan wirelessly 100% of the time (it would work for a couple of months, then stop recognizing my PC, yet wireless printing was working fine). I now have a USB printer cable that I use whenever I print or scan. The cable works 100% every single time.

I once set up my dad's wireless printer. Pretty straightforward but a year later when I came to visit I found the printer laying on its side on the floor of the basement. I guess my dad was having similar problems that I have and got pissed off and chucked the printer down the stairs into the basement.

 

[serious n00b]

I don't have any horror stories really but I do have an old win98 machine that I used to use as a kid and maybe I'll go back and clean it out with the knowledge of hindsight.

upload anything cool on it pl0x