Further adventures of the nonagenarian computer user.

[Aressel]

Some of you may remember me posting about this guy some time back. 92 Years old, loves his computer. He purchased a new one from us reciently, and managed to break it within a week. Seriously. It went out last Friday, I had to go in and service it on Tuesday, and it came back in yesterday (Friday). Today, I am reloading it.

The boss had gotten so fed up with this guy fiddling with and breaking the computer that he decided to install Windows SteadyState. This is a program put out by Microsoft for managing shared computers. Among other things, it allows a computer to be set up so that only limited changed can be made to system settings, and those changes will be reset when the computer restarts. The boss figures that this may be a solution to him fiddling once and for all.

So, the boss installs and configures SteadyState, deletes the links, etc. and sends it out. However, he forgot to empty the Recycle Bin. So, the gentleman restores the stuff from the Recycle Bin and turns off SteadyState. By Tuesday, when I have to go out for the service call, he has tried to uninstall Nero and failed, causing a bunch of errors. He should not be fiddling around with add/remove programs. (As a small shop, we only install Nero, PowerDVD, Corel Office 12 and a year's subscription to McAfee on our computers. Not a bunch of crap like some other vendors that I might name. *cough*HP*cough*) As well, he has installed Zango and who knows what other crap.

By Friday, it is freezing up on him, (gee, I wonder why?), so the boss brings it in, and here I am on Saturday reloading it. No SteadyState this time though, too much potential for trouble.

[Bright_Star]

u ought to ask him why he keeps doing that.

[clowninasack]

Wow. Our shop stopped "officially" covering software issues under warranty due to people like this.

[earl colby pottinger]

Have to charge for it

We had a customer like that too, he kept playing with the hospital's network setting. Yes, I said hospital!

After the third time we installed a simple .bat file to restore all the settings stored in a hidden directory. Twice more we were called out, each time the tech while making sure that the customer did not see how the fix was does would restore the settings and confirm the entire system worked okay.

After that the customer was told that every time a tech was called and it was confirmed that just restoring the settings (not covered under the service contract) that the customer would be charged for a service call.

Cured the problem in just two more service calls.

[Rapscallion]

Reminds me of a refrigeration worker who came to our place to sort out a chiller problem. He'd had to deal with a nightclub time and again - he'd set the ice maker to the right settings, but kept having to be called back (and charging for) sorting it out.

The owner of the nightclub was tearing his hair out. "They keep needing to change the settings!" he wailed. "It keeps going wrong!"

The contracter kindly explained to him that they didn't need to change settings and that by doing so they were fouling the machine up expensively. All they had to do was wait.

"Make it a sackable offence," he suggested after the fifth visit. He never needed to be called again.

Rapscallion

[marasbaras]

Do you bill this old guy for all the work he makes?

[Aressel]

Most times we bill him, this time we didn't, as it could technically be considered a warranty issue if the computer is freezing. He never complains about paying though.

[marasbaras]

Screw technically with that guy. He's messing with stuff he shouldn't be.

And, if he's paying ... enjoy the job security.

[edible_hat]

Ah, old people and computers. When my grandmother's finger dexterity went to the point she couldn't play solitaire with cards any more, we got her a cheap computer with a huge screen and big arthritis-friendly mouse and put solitaire in the startup menu.

In the three years before she stopped using the computer, I would drop by once a month to do computer maintenance. Such as:

-delete multiple copies of the Solitaire icons (highest count was 15 extra ones)
-put solitaire back in the startup menu
-remove other things from the startup menu (once including three more copies of solitaire)
-delete a blank text file called "what do i do now?"
-reinstall Windows (twice)

[myswtghst]

This all makes me very proud of my grandma. She's 87 now, and has a computer my brother built especially for her. She has dial up and an AOL account, and basically uses the computer to send an occasional email, and to print stuff off of quilting websites, but she has yet to need much more than a little help with it, which my brother and I can gladly provide.

[PepperElf]

mom loves her hearts. not sure if the vista-craptop has it tho. tried to convince her to go mac but she didn't want to spend the money.... now she wishes she hadn't said that cos... she doesn't like the new one as much as the old dell & mac looks really good to her now... plus, none of my software for keeping her computer running smoothly is vista-compatible

course the only tihng worse than fixing silly user-errors is when you get the user who claims to know more than you...but can't seem to stop from screwing stuff up. & of course when they break it, they claim it's cos you didn't do your job properly to begin with... and it's *never* because they didn't know as much as what they thought they knew.

[edible_hat]

course the only tihng worse than fixing silly user-errors is when you get the user who claims to know more than you...but can't seem to stop from screwing stuff up. & of course when they break it, they claim it's cos you didn't do your job properly to begin with... and it's *never* because they didn't know as much as what they thought they knew.

One classic I heard somewhere was where an idiot opened their case and plugged all the extra connectors (including power connectors) into random things on the mother board. After explaining what he'd done he said "I've done something stupid, haven't I?" At least he had a couple of clues left.

ETA: The good old cup holder story isn't entirely urban myth, my cousin had a few cases when he worked tech support at Parliament House. Here are the people who supposedly run Australia and they're putting coffee cups in their CD drives!

[PepperElf]

one of my x boyfriends use to tell me those stories... like the woman who called apple because her computer was threatening to blow her up. ... she'd gotten the "bomb" symbol and didn't realize it meant something had crashed.

[Geek King]

one of my x boyfriends use to tell me those stories... like the woman who called apple because her computer was threatening to blow her up. ... she'd gotten the "bomb" symbol and didn't realize it meant something had crashed.

I had a user actually run up to my crying because, "I bro-o-oke the compu-hu-ter! <sniff> <weep>" She was convinced that we were going to make her pay for the computer she 'broke.' When I followed her back to the desk, she had gotten out to DOS (Win `95 machine), and had never seen it before. Only time I got a hug for typing 'exit.'

[sld72382]

Here's my suggestion for this guy:

1. Create 2 user accounts. Make one an admin account and password protect it (don't give him the password!). Make the other a limited account so he can't screw around anymore, but if he wants to install or uninstall something, he needs to come to you.