Too dumb to own a PC (Part 2)

[Nick]

Before the hack I had a thread going moaning about me mother and how some people just shouldn't have PCs.

Well, she's had it running for a few months now and its all kicking off all over again.

This time it gets better in that my sister 'who knows about computers' has got involved...

So the problem is this.. against my advice my mum has been running without any sort of virus or firewall protection, the excuse being that she's not online enough to need it. I know that the firewall perhaps isn't necessary, but I even downloaded Zonealarm for her, but no, it was disabled by my sister as, according to her, that's what was stopping the scanner from working.

Anyway, mum was getting disconnection messages and shutdowns everytime she went online, so of course it had to be the Celeron chip I'd put in there as my wonderful sister has persuaded mum that Celerons are Pentium chips that dont work properly, hence thats why they're cheaper.

This goes back to the whole 'What do I need to buy to upgrade' argument I had... I built her a new PC for about £130 using budget bits and some spares of my own. My sister was advocating getting a P4 3.2 gig... totally overpowered and overpriced for a PC that is gonna be used for wordprocessing, email and a bit of surfing.

Anyways, I finally persuade mum to get Norton and lo and behold, she has 17 viruses and trojans sitting on her system... and this is where it gets good...

My sister has wiped the hard drive to start all over again and decided that the motherboard BIOS needed flashing... can you guess whats happened???

Yep, she's stuffed it up, but of course, its not her fault, its that damn dodgy celeron chip, isn't it?

So now I have to go and try and fix a non booting machineand explain at the same time what went wrong. I give myself about 20 minutes in the same room before I go postal.

[Theo]

I feel your pain dude... as the only person who knows vaguely anything about computers in my family - I lay down the rule of:

-Don't touch it. If it doesn't work, come to me.

and why?

-because I know more than you, shut up. Thanks.

Works every time to be honest... I get a few huffs and puffs, but in the end, everyones happy - I'm saved aload of effort trying to figure out what people have done wrong, and most of the time things run smoothly

[TomWilko]

Originally posted by Theo
I feel your pain dude... as the only person who knows vaguely anything about computers in my family - I lay down the rule of:

-Don't touch it. If it doesn't work, come to me.

and why?

-because I know more than you, shut up. Thanks.

Works every time to be honest... I get a few huffs and puffs, but in the end, everyones happy - I'm saved aload of effort trying to figure out what people have done wrong, and most of the time things run smoothly

Same here, i know just about enough to solve the problems we get on our PC + more than enough to tell everyone to leave it alone and don't go near the damm control panel!!

Only thing is, I get lumbered with all the issues!

[Big RICHARD]

hee hee hee! I remember sympathising with you (as well as laughing at you behind your back!) when this all happened last time Deckard!

I feel your anger! Good luck!

P.S. It's gotta be those damn dodgy celeron chips!

[Howard]

I'm surprised she didn't moan that her internet was too slow thanks to those "cheap Celeron chips"

Luckily no one in my family keeps buggering their PC up, my dad leaves his alone and just uses it for internet and email.
I do get him asking me for all sorts of advice on behalf of all his friends/workers/etc though, which gets a bit irritating when I say I don't know, and I get "oh I thought you knew everything!.."

Lol

[Moby-Dick]

Deck , please let me kill them both - its the kindest thing to do !

failing that I'll pop over , sort it and make it look like you did = muchos brownie points

all it will cost you is suggestions for an alternative xmas menu

[Ferral]

I'm the same with my family. Now if something goes wrong they ask me to sort it as the 2 sisters are always screwing around with it.

The words don't install that or open it if you don't know where it has come from is mentioned quite a bit but never gets listened to.

Not good that the bios has been flashed, if its dead then you may need to get a new bios chip for the board (Unless you have a Gigabyte that has dual bios incase that very thing happens or the primary has gotten a virus) I hate it when you get someone that has done 6 months IT basic training in college and they think they know it all. My oldest sister is like that but when I gave her my Norton Internet Security suite (Anti Virus and the lot) she didn't even know how to install it ! Got a laugh out of that one !

[Nick]

Ferral, shes had NO computer training other than she 'uses them at work everyday'... which makes everyone in the entire country an expert...

I suggested she went to work at PC World as they would find her advice invaluable to sales... but she said, totally seriously, 'I'm not THAT qualified'...

[Bazzlad]

YOU got off lightly.
My mom doesn't believe I know a thing about Pcs because of an arrest regarding hacking, and my mom thinks hacking is done by people who can't use them properly.
A "Friend" of a friend was talking to my mom about a PC, she needed it for word proc. Emai and internet. I reccomended a AMD Duron 800 system IIRC. Anyway this bloke came round to sort it out, Mr Mc Dodgy from Dodgyville. He had the worst PC I'd ever seen, it was a P133 with 32mb of ramm I think a 2gb Hdd running a dodgy windows 98, what impressed me is he fit office on there.....must have left most of it out. He showed it my Mom, and she was impressed, I started to tell her it was the crappest thing ever and he turned to my Mom and told her I didn't know a thing about PCs. She believed him and paid £500. I laughed and promised she'd regret it. 2 months and 1 million kernal32.dll errors and she calls him round. They've been caused by me fitting a 20gb hdd apparantly (so she could actually save something)
Anyway to cut a long story short, when she finally realised, she took him to court under theb trades description act, but couldn't prove that this wasn't a one off sale (it wasn't he'd been selling dodgy pcs to guillible familys for years) and lost. And how I laughed. It gets worse tho. I told her she needed a new PC and she told me she could upgrade it, she told me she ws gonna take it to PC WORLD and get it looked at. I lost it completely! I managed to get her to meet Agent, and let him look at it (She'll listen to him but not her own son.)
2 days later Agents round my house loks at the PC, laughs and says
"Carole, you need a new Box"
She agreed.
I slept well that night.
A week later I came back from college to find she'd upgraded it.
And bought a new "BOX"- being a case.
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
And wouldn't listen/believe when I explained Agent meant a new SYSTEM.
All this coming from the woman who joined AOL - AGAINST MY WISHES because- "It's American, it has to be good."
Moms.

[Skii]

Aw cmon Deck, - its not her fault, even the Intel advert says you can surf the net faster with a P4

[Bazzlad]

Here's an example of Mom-ness.
Teaching my mom how to use the internet - explaining she doesnt need that 500 page book as it's simple. It's going well, she searches and finds a page she wanted. Then she asked me how to get it off, I was walking into the kitchen to make a coffee at the time and I said
"Just click on the little X"
Walk in 5 mins later and she tells me it's not working. While clicking on the X Key on the keyboard!

[megah0]

It can be frustrating when someone gets an idea in their head and sticks to that idea despite all evidence to the contrary.

Can't you just set her up as a limited user, that way she can't muck around too much with it.

Oh and slap your sister for the attempted flash.

[Howard]

Makes you wonder doesn't it, the simplest things, us "enthusiasts" take for granted, some people have extreme difficulty getting to grips with

[Nick]

Would it help if I told you that her video, although it has auto setup, still flashes 00:00?

Don't ask me how, it just does, ok?

[megah0]

woooo, did you put a celeron in the video too?

[Butuz]

Hehehe poor Deckard.

Your sis sounds like prime PC World material.

I would suggest they snap her up now what with the adverts theyre running at the moment regarding all their "computer experts"

My rule is dont piss around with it ask me first, and my family do stick to the rule because it works

Butuz

Butuz