Rockin' on without Microsoft

[MikeH]

You can just phone up and buy more licences without getting more disks as well.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Asher
I'm sure they do, but look closely at what you wrote and the context of this thread.

I thought you meant "his products" as in the open source ones he was talking about that he used...

I didn't realize your post was a joke, simply because it wasn't even close to being funny.

It couldn't be funny, because my monthly supply of humor was exhausted in the past week, when I helped to clean the computer of a friend of my wife. Do you know what it means to make a diagnose, a clean up and patching of a XP Home at 700 km distance through the phone line with a woman at the other side, who doesn't even have a clue what a backslash is and who's computer keeps crashing every 2 or 3 minutes? It took several hours on 3 evenings. The first time it failed, because in the five minutes between cleaning up and patching she succeeded to catch that bloody thing a second time, and that only because all patch attempts had failed before due to the frequent crashes I have sworn, when ever I get those bastards who wrote this worm and this operating system in my hands, they won't get away alive.

[FrustratedPoet]

Couldn't you have downloaded the patch yourself and mailed it to her on a CD? Or does it not work like that? (only asking in case I have a friend with a similar problem at some point)

[Harovan]

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet
Couldn't you have downloaded the patch yourself and mailed it to her on a CD? Or does it not work like that? (only asking in case I have a friend with a similar problem at some point)

That's what I did on the 2nd evening, after we failed in a 2 hour session the day before to download it.

<Label x>
... guiding her to the website with the cleaner ...
"Do you see that link?"
"What's a link?"
"That blue underlined text, that says FixBlast.exe."
"No."
"Look, it must be there! It's near the bottom of the page."
"No, it isn't there."
"You may have to scroll down to see it."
"Ah yes, now I have it."
"Right click it with your mouse and choose "Save target as..."
"Ok I did."
"Save it to your desktop." (To have her easier find it later)
"Where's the desktop?"
"Press that little folder icon with the green arrow up, until it changes its color to grey"
"Ah, I see the icon... too late , it's shutting down again..."
*curses*, go to Label x.

Have this several times in a row and watch yourself becoming a fury.

I sent it per email, though, not per CD, that'd be lasted longer. But it runs several minutes. Too much for those frequent crashes.

[Kuciwalker]

Sterling Ball, a jovial, plain-talking businessman, is CEO of Ernie Ball, the world's leading maker of premium guitar strings endorsed by generations of artists ranging from the likes of Eric Clapton to the dudes from Metallica

Wow, I'll listen to him about what software I use. Whew! A GUITAR-STRING MAKER! What a computer whiz!

[Asher]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
It couldn't be funny, because my monthly supply of humor was exhausted in the past week, when I helped to clean the computer of a friend of my wife. Do you know what it means to make a diagnose, a clean up and patching of a XP Home at 700 km distance through the phone line with a woman at the other side, who doesn't even have a clue what a backslash is and who's computer keeps crashing every 2 or 3 minutes?

Did it occur to you to use the Remote Desktop feature?

XP Home ships with a cut-down version of it, where they can "request help from someone" (ie, you) and it lets you remotely access their computer.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Thank you, BSA, thank you, thank you ! Without you open-source wouldn't be half as popular as it is now...

[yavoon]

hi asher! didnt expect to see u here!

[Asher]

hi yavoon how r u
thanx u for ur help full contribooshun tuh the thread

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Asher
Did it occur to you to use the Remote Desktop feature?

XP Home ships with a cut-down version of it, where they can "request help from someone" (ie, you) and it lets you remotely access their computer.

Did it occur to you to realize, that her computer crashed every few minutes and I would need a new "access token" (or however these things are called, I forgot) every time?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Did it occur to you to realize, that her computer crashed every few minutes and I would need a new "access token" (or however these things are called, I forgot) every time?

It only takes a second to run fixblast.exe, then it doesn't crash anymore. Hooray!

[Harovan]

Fixblast itself ran over 15 minutes on her computer (hell knows why, it ran five on mine when I tested) and took a while before it actually succeeded its work before the computer shut down again. And the true pain was not to run it, but to make her get it.

Oh, and by the way, even if I could monitor what she does (and that's all the XP Home version allows), I couldn't help her myself, because I don't gain control over her PC. A well thought feature, Microsoft. You have to get XP Pro (designed for those who know what they're doing) to get full help. XP Home (designed for the computer illiterate) leaves you in the rain.

[Asher]

XP Pro's remote desktop is geared for people like me, to log in remotely and do stuff, not for tech support.

[Harovan]

The best in the whole story (or should I say nightmare) was, that after the second evening we thought we were rid of it. Not so. The few minutes to guide her to the MS update page (which was painfully slow that day) and make her patch her computer were enough for her to catch that thing a second time. That made up the third evening session for me. Thankfully this time she already had FixBlast and knew how to run it. We had tried to patch the PC before the cleaning, but two download attempts had failed, because the site was slow and her computer crashed before the download was complete.

I set up that computer myself for her. It was cheap (she couldn't afford more) and shipped with XP Home. I thought for a moment to format it and install a Woody with Gnome and Mozilla on it. It wouldn't have made a big difference to teach her the basics of Windows or Gnome. And the tech support would have been much better. I should have done it!

[Whaleboy]

Ummm, Asher, those are easily countered viruses