OT I am sooooooooo not a Happy Camper!

Took my business computer to the repair shop for a regular maintenance
to keep it reliable (can't run the business without it) and gave them
one specific task to accomplish: acquiring a specific peripheral.

Picked it up this morning. What I had asked for was not done. However,
they "cleaned up my hard disk" ... in the process deleting a vital
WordPerfect folder and Netscape (which I use to read newsgroups)!!!!!

Just to make things more fun, they did something to my "mouse buttons"
(whatever you call them when you have a touch-screen instead of a mouse)
such that it takes full pressure of both hands to push them down.
Inside an hour, my tendinitis was killing me, but I was still trying to
set things to rights so I had no choice but to keep going.

Needless to say, the owner is getting an earful in the morning. I
didn't tell them to delete anything, or to mess with my settings, or to
install newer versions of old software (a version which, to my mind, is
not as easy to use at the older version, which is why I hadn't installed
it on this computer after trying it on the other one).

I have half a mind to send him a bill for my time undoing their
"improvements", which have taken enough hours that I think they'll end
up owing me more than I paid them.



--
Karen C - California
Editor/Proofreader www.IntlProofingConsortium.com

Finished 7/27/08 - MLI Christmas Visit

WIP: Oriental Kimono (Janlynn), MLI The Teacher (gift to
the library), Bethany Angel (Marbek)
Retrieved from UFO pile: Marbek's Snow Angel, MLI Farmers Market

CFSfacts -- where we give you the facts and dispel the myths
Myths, with research cites: http://www.aacfs.org/images/pdfs/myths.pdf
Newest research blog: http://journals.aol.com/kmc528/Lifeasweknowit/

Karen C in California wrote:
Took my business computer to the repair shop for a regular maintenance
to keep it reliable (can't run the business without it) and gave them
one specific task to accomplish: acquiring a specific peripheral.

Picked it up this morning. What I had asked for was not done. However,
they "cleaned up my hard disk" ... in the process deleting a vital
WordPerfect folder and Netscape (which I use to read newsgroups)!!!!!

Just to make things more fun, they did something to my "mouse buttons"
(whatever you call them when you have a touch-screen instead of a mouse)
such that it takes full pressure of both hands to push them down. Inside
an hour, my tendinitis was killing me, but I was still trying to set
things to rights so I had no choice but to keep going.

Needless to say, the owner is getting an earful in the morning. I
didn't tell them to delete anything, or to mess with my settings, or to
install newer versions of old software (a version which, to my mind, is
not as easy to use at the older version, which is why I hadn't installed
it on this computer after trying it on the other one).

I have half a mind to send him a bill for my time undoing their
"improvements", which have taken enough hours that I think they'll end
up owing me more than I paid them.



I feel your pain, but at least your PC is working!

Yesterday, I found I am severely infected with a Trojan Horse called
Vundo. It infects your winlogon and explorer .exes and replicates
hundreds and hundreds of bogus .dll files. Removing it is going to be
more hassle than simply formatting the drive and rebuilding from
scratch. So that's what I'll do. I've spent today backing up my data
files and tidying up ready for the Big Format. Buggerit! This is the
first big infection I've had in years and years and I'm not entirely
sure how it got in. It's supposed to reside in .exe files and has some
connection with Java, but I'm stumped!

By this morning, I couldn't even run a simple program like Notepad, but
DH has kindly deleted a whole swag of .dlls for me freeing up enough
memory for me to be limping along at a snail's pace, copying files to
DH's machine and backing up the data. Soon, I'll be offline. Hopefully,
I'll be back again before too long. Buggerit!

Trish Brown wrote:

I feel your pain, but at least your PC is working!


Well, sorta. I just had to manually delete every word of the post I'm
replying to because I cannot hold down the mouse button with sufficient
force while also scrolling to select text to delete.

The test for fibromyalgia involves pushing till the fingernail turns
white, which is 10 pounds of force -- from that information, I
extrapolate that I just put 20 pounds of force (2 thumbs, both with nail
turning white) on the mouse button and couldn't get it to register.
Somehow, I don't think this is something that can be repaired by them
telling me "click here, and there, and somewhere else", but will require
another trip to someone licensed to open computers to make a mechanical
adjustment.

Of course, if I cannot click on things without triggering my tendinitis,
I can't work, so it will require expert intervention, it's not something
I can just say I'll live with.

--
Karen C - California
Editor/Proofreader www.IntlProofingConsortium.com

Finished 7/27/08 - MLI Christmas Visit

WIP: Oriental Kimono (Janlynn), MLI The Teacher (gift to
the library), Bethany Angel (Marbek)
Retrieved from UFO pile: Marbek's Snow Angel, MLI Farmers Market

CFSfacts -- where we give you the facts and dispel the myths
Myths, with research cites: http://www.aacfs.org/images/pdfs/myths.pdf
Newest research blog: http://journals.aol.com/kmc528/Lifeasweknowit/

I suggest you make your complaints very specific and very clearly
heard and request firmly that the computer be put back into the
condition in which you brought it for the work and that what you
requested originally be done. All of this should be done at no
charge, of course. What comes next would -- if it were me -- be based
upon the response received. It's possible that there is a new techie
who didn't understand the job, or that the work order wasn't clear,
and if either or both of those is the case the business owner will
have to make changes. And a reasonable owner should be extremely
upset and make every effort to please you. If you get a shrug of the
shoulders, you will need to find another shop entirely, and begin with
a new shop by telling them precisely why you left the prior one and by
putting all work requests in writing that specifically says that
NOTHING is to be done other than what you request -- no updates, no
downloads, no cleaning, no adjustments, no purging, no deletions.
What a mess!

Jangchub wrote:
On Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:33:37 -0700, Karen C in California
wrote:

Took my business computer to the repair shop for a regular maintenance
to keep it reliable (can't run the business without it) and gave them
one specific task to accomplish: acquiring a specific peripheral.

Picked it up this morning. What I had asked for was not done. However,
they "cleaned up my hard disk" ... in the process deleting a vital
WordPerfect folder and Netscape (which I use to read newsgroups)!!!!!

Just to make things more fun, they did something to my "mouse buttons"
(whatever you call them when you have a touch-screen instead of a mouse)
such that it takes full pressure of both hands to push them down.
Inside an hour, my tendinitis was killing me, but I was still trying to
set things to rights so I had no choice but to keep going.

Needless to say, the owner is getting an earful in the morning. I
didn't tell them to delete anything, or to mess with my settings, or to
install newer versions of old software (a version which, to my mind, is
not as easy to use at the older version, which is why I hadn't installed
it on this computer after trying it on the other one).

I have half a mind to send him a bill for my time undoing their
"improvements", which have taken enough hours that I think they'll end
up owing me more than I paid them.

I'm curious, what is regular maintenance involve? Mark worked at Dell
for over a decade and he's never performed maintenance on any of our
four computers. Sometimes I've seen him defrag the main server
computer, but I have no idea what that's called.

I'm sorry you lost files. It 's a horrible feeling.

v
I perform basic clean-up maintenance weekly on our family PC. I update
and run software to clean up spyware and adware as well as a disk
cleaner program which deletes temporary files, cache, etc. I also keep
our virus scanner updated and run that once a week and also set system
restore points when everything is all clean and happy.

Additionally I make sure I do a full system backup onto our external
drive at least once a week as well. Best purchase I ever made - when
our original hard drive died earlier this year - tada! I was able to
copy everything back over once the drive had been replaced.

I'm sure there's more sophisticated stuff that can be done - but at
least doing these on a regular basis gives me some sense of upkeep.
Anything more complicated and we have used a very reputable mobile PC
service -they will work on your system at your home or pick it up and
return it for you.

MelissaD

Jangchub wrote:
On Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:33:37 -0700, Karen C in California
wrote:

Took my business computer to the repair shop for a regular maintenance
to keep it reliable (can't run the business without it) and gave them
one specific task to accomplish: acquiring a specific peripheral.

Picked it up this morning. What I had asked for was not done. However,
they "cleaned up my hard disk" ... in the process deleting a vital
WordPerfect folder and Netscape (which I use to read newsgroups)!!!!!

Just to make things more fun, they did something to my "mouse buttons"
(whatever you call them when you have a touch-screen instead of a mouse)
such that it takes full pressure of both hands to push them down.
Inside an hour, my tendinitis was killing me, but I was still trying to
set things to rights so I had no choice but to keep going.

Needless to say, the owner is getting an earful in the morning. I
didn't tell them to delete anything, or to mess with my settings, or to
install newer versions of old software (a version which, to my mind, is
not as easy to use at the older version, which is why I hadn't installed
it on this computer after trying it on the other one).

I have half a mind to send him a bill for my time undoing their
"improvements", which have taken enough hours that I think they'll end
up owing me more than I paid them.

I'm curious, what is regular maintenance involve? Mark worked at Dell
for over a decade and he's never performed maintenance on any of our
four computers. Sometimes I've seen him defrag the main server
computer, but I have no idea what that's called.

I'm sorry you lost files. It 's a horrible feeling.

v
I perform basic clean-up maintenance weekly on our family PC. I update
and run software to clean up spyware and adware as well as a disk
cleaner program which deletes temporary files, cache, etc. I also keep
our virus scanner updated and run that once a week and also set system
restore points when everything is all clean and happy.

Additionally I make sure I do a full system backup onto our external
drive at least once a week as well. Best purchase I ever made - when
our original hard drive died earlier this year - tada! I was able to
copy everything back over once the drive had been replaced.

I'm sure there's more sophisticated stuff that can be done - but at
least doing these on a regular basis gives me some sense of upkeep.
Anything more complicated and we have used a very reputable mobile PC
service -they will work on your system at your home or pick it up and
return it for you.

MelissaD

lucretia borgia wrote:
On Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:39:09 -0700, MelissaD
opined:


I perform basic clean-up maintenance weekly on our family PC. I update
and run software to clean up spyware and adware as well as a disk
cleaner program which deletes temporary files, cache, etc. I also keep
our virus scanner updated and run that once a week and also set system
restore points when everything is all clean and happy.

Additionally I make sure I do a full system backup onto our external
drive at least once a week as well. Best purchase I ever made - when
our original hard drive died earlier this year - tada! I was able to
copy everything back over once the drive had been replaced.

I'm sure there's more sophisticated stuff that can be done - but at
least doing these on a regular basis gives me some sense of upkeep.
Anything more complicated and we have used a very reputable mobile PC
service -they will work on your system at your home or pick it up and
return it for you.

MelissaD

Ditto. A computer requires housework, just like ones abode. For the
seconds it takes, more than worth it, I sure as hell would not trust
anybody else to work over my files !

And I'd make sure that I had at least two copies of the latest backup!
--
Bruce Fletcher
Stronsay, Orkney
http://tinyurl.com/3b54af
(Remove dentures to reply)

Jangchub wrote:

I'm curious, what is regular maintenance involve? Mark worked at Dell
for over a decade and he's never performed maintenance on any of our
four computers.


The head geek at that shop told me, when I brought the one with the
broken fan in, that there's "thermal" something or other inside which in
this climate needs to be replaced every year or two.

I also like to have someone look for worn parts and dried out rubber;
I'm pretty hard on computers, and would rather have stuff replaced
before it breaks.


--
Karen C - California
Editor/Proofreader www.IntlProofingConsortium.com

Finished 7/27/08 - MLI Christmas Visit

WIP: Oriental Kimono (Janlynn), MLI The Teacher (gift to
the library), Bethany Angel (Marbek)
Retrieved from UFO pile: Marbek's Snow Angel, MLI Farmers Market

CFSfacts -- where we give you the facts and dispel the myths
Myths, with research cites: http://www.aacfs.org/images/pdfs/myths.pdf
Newest research blog: http://journals.aol.com/kmc528/Lifeasweknowit/

MelissaD wrote:

we have used a very reputable mobile PC
service -they will work on your system at your home or pick it up and
return it for you.



I may have to get their name from you.....


--
Karen C - California
Editor/Proofreader www.IntlProofingConsortium.com

Finished 7/27/08 - MLI Christmas Visit

WIP: Oriental Kimono (Janlynn), MLI The Teacher (gift to
the library), Bethany Angel (Marbek)
Retrieved from UFO pile: Marbek's Snow Angel, MLI Farmers Market

CFSfacts -- where we give you the facts and dispel the myths
Myths, with research cites: http://www.aacfs.org/images/pdfs/myths.pdf
Newest research blog: http://journals.aol.com/kmc528/Lifeasweknowit/

lucretia borgia wrote:
Ditto. A computer requires housework, just like ones abode. For the
seconds it takes, more than worth it, I sure as hell would not trust
anybody else to work over my files !


That's why I didn't ask them to do disk clean-up. I had all that stuff
as Scheduled Tasks to run in the middle of the night (one on Tuesday,
one on Wednesday, one on Friday). I note that my Scheduled Tasks have
been changed, so I guess it finally dawned on him to check that folder,
and he had to cover his tracks by deleting the stuff that I had
scheduled to run so he'd have an excuse to spend the extra time doing
what didn't need doing.


--
Karen C - California
Editor/Proofreader www.IntlProofingConsortium.com

Finished 7/27/08 - MLI Christmas Visit

WIP: Oriental Kimono (Janlynn), MLI The Teacher (gift to
the library), Bethany Angel (Marbek)
Retrieved from UFO pile: Marbek's Snow Angel, MLI Farmers Market

CFSfacts -- where we give you the facts and dispel the myths
Myths, with research cites: http://www.aacfs.org/images/pdfs/myths.pdf
Newest research blog: http://journals.aol.com/kmc528/Lifeasweknowit/