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Excuse me, do you have a few hours free?

Posted in Technology on July 9, 2008 at 3:25 pm

Here is, I am sure, a familiar story. I managed to get a day holiday on Monday but instead of resting I got a knock at the door from a next door neighbour who was experiencing computer problems, and there went four hours of my holiday.

What made this story different however is my neighbour, having only had the computer for less than three months, took the initiative of calling a well known support desk but was having difficulty, due to language differences, explaining the nature of the problem and wanted me to help through it. I took a look at the computer; it was booting up OK, showing the Vista logo, then staying on a black screen with just a white cursor sitting upon it. My neighbour then called the support desk then, after confirming some details, handed the phone to me. I explained to the operative what had happened and got told to, and this is exactly how it was explained, “press and hold the power button until the computer goes off, then wait 30 seconds and press the power button again.”. Of course, being a good little user, I followed these familiar instructions and was told “OK, that should do it - I will give you a reference number in case you get any further problems”. Ahem? “But you haven’t done anything yet,” I retorted only to be told that my power problem was now resolved. “What power problem?” I ask to which I got the response “You told me the computer was not powering up!”. My surprised reply said “I never mentioned the power as being a problem.” to which I was met with a pause then the fairly firm reply “I THINK YOU WILL FIND THAT YOU DID.”.

I can only imagine what might have been the situation had I not been there, especially as this was not a free phone call. Fortunately, after giving up with the support desk, the problem was resolved by rolling the system back a few days then creating a new user account under Vista. It took about an hour (mostly waiting around for things to happen) for the system to fully roll back and restart.

You may be wondering what happened to the other three hours. Well, after I had finished the user had several other curious things they hoped I might sort out while I was there…