I suppose you eventually develop either a thick skin or a seventh sense. The last two days have produced a couple of instances where a client would have saved themselves money and me time and temper if only they had told me the truth from the outset. I always ask for a bit of history if a machine I have not seen before is presented to me for repair - it can often save hours of digging about in the guts of the thing looking for clues; but these two - well I leave it to you to decide if I was being fair or not...

Madhine one - about 120 miles (190 kms) away so it was a remote access job and set up so I could get on with it while my client was away on his happy holliers. No access - the thing was not even logged on and I had only accessed it a day or so before. Phone call to Portugal - can you get a neighbour to go in and check that both the PC and the router are running and showing pretty lights? Reply comes back - it is all working properly and the neighbour who claims to be IT savvy says 'it is alright'. No it isn't because I cannot 'see' it on the remote access listing of PCs I look after. Another call to Portugal (this is getting expensive) - has he any idea why this should not be working? Nope - no changes made since the last access and "it was working when I left it". I've heard that one before, peeps, and did not believe it then. Oh no. He rings me back asking if I have any ideas - right says I, "lets start at the basics. Have you had any changes to the wiring done?"
"Nope", says he.
"What about any new phones?"
"Nope," says he again and then goes quiet.
"Are you still there"
"Yes - and I have just had a thought", he says. "Would the change to BT broadband (another ISP) make any difference? I arranged for the changeover to be made while we were away to make it easier"
Your imagination might do justice to what was said after that, but then maybe not.

Machine two - I was on site with this one as I had been accused of deleting all the emails - the whole lot, and all the folders too. I had been assured that no files of any sort had been changed or removed, and it had happened all by itself when she (the user) wasn't looking - so it must have been me the day before, mustn't it?
When setting up a new machine I usually create an email folder in My Documents and reset the email store folder in Outlook Express to point to this instead if the silly place MS insists on hiding the default folder. This also makes backing it up that much easier too. This machine is some 5 years old.
One guess allowed about what I found in the recycle bin - yerp, you guessed it.
"Oh", she says "I was just clearing out a few folders and wondered what that was....."
Well now she knows and might be a bit more careful next time about clearing out files she knows nothing about...and fat chance she will ever understand that she is responsible for all my hair falling out.

Clients? Who needs them!

ahhh such is the life of an IT bod

I know I whinge on a bit about the way people always fail to tell the truth but we do seem to get it worse than anyone else!

People could save themselves all that plus their health if they told their doctors the truth, but often they don’t. Avoiding the blame is as basic an instinct as any that has made a stronger reputation as such.

On the other hand, whenever I try to tell an expert some historical background, he starts getting bored and interrupts me. It’s also part of human nature to prefer talking from listening. Mother Nature erred here, She should have given us 2 mouths and 1 ear.

You don’t clarify whether she was a blonde, in which case you should not always expect the full truth.

Mature blonde - no answer to that except she might have learned something by now....
(with apologies to all mature blondes who have learned a thing or two)

People like you would rob computer users, non-users, and innybodies of endless delight and ways of life, just so somebody could document rare and useless honesty about computer and printer voodoo infestations... purely accidental events could ruin life for us people who charge by the hour and by the day... not to mention meddling with creativity and truth... how much can you charge for saving those themselves money, or you valuable time and temper...

How you gonna pay for your boat and your Lexus if they start doing that with endless delight...

The truth doesn't belong in the computer owner's lexicon... If it isn't weird enough, they can spend a few minnits making it more weird and even irrelevant. Where is the challenge otherwise?

Eh .....???

To be fair, people who dont understand wont tell you what they think you need to know, if you were in their shoes would you thought to have mentioned it.?
Im not attacking you for what you thought at the time, but to many tech bods get enraged when the non tech do something well intended but misguided.

.
MS hide it their so that people who dont know their way around a PC wouldnt delete it, you put it in a place where the user has access and where most think that anything can be deleted safely as they must have put it their and your asking for trouble.

Email folder:
I have done this on thousands of machines and explained why to the user. This is the first time anyone has deleted a folder called "email message folder" or similar - and it had to be a (mature) blonde, didn't it. I am NOT changing my habits because of a single incidence either!

Funny. I hate the users that tell you they didn't change anything when in fact they know damned well they did. I can relate to the second one, too; in the days of DOS my cousin would call me every other month saying "I deleted a bunch of files I don't need and now my computer doesn't work."

"I deleted a bunch of files I don't need and now my computer doesn't work."

those are the ones! Every time!

You are not supposed to delete ALL of them, are you... I thought you were supposed to leave one file...

Joking apart - if they are system files you need all of them...

"I deleted a bunch of files I don't need and now my computer doesn't work."

Sounds similar to upgrading a perfectly working BIOS, and the computer doesn’t start after that.

Or getting similar results after cleaning the registry, disabling “unnecessary” services, upgrading drivers, the list is endless.

It seems the advice “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is too simplistic and unappealing to be followed.

There's a lot to be said for that - new tale from the toolroom coming up on much the same subject!

Well, yes, then there is that...

I never quite convinced her that if you DON'T recognize the title, then you probably didn't create it - and since her husband couldn't even turn it on, therefore she shouldn't delete it! I explained operating system files, how she had a hundred and five megabytes and was using three so she really didn't need to be deleting files, even set up folders with text and batch file menus to automatically change to a directory and start WordPerfect. Nothing worked. Every couple of months she'd go on a search and destroy mission and nuke DOS. Only the arrival of Windows saved me - I set it up to automatically go into Windows. Of course, that computer had a much bigger hard drive too.

Now both she and her husband teach computer courses (among others) in high school to kids who mostly know way more about computers than do they. Gotta love our education system!

I once had one of those clients - after 30 mins instruction from me on how not to b ugger up a machine she got a job teaching in a local college for mature students! Gawd knows what she taught them all!

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. (George Bernard Shaw)