tech support

I’m no stranger to tech support. I’ve fielded many calls from my parents about various software or hardware problems. The one that sticks in my mind is the frustration my Dad expressed after Netscape was unable to fix his printer for him.

Along the way, I learned that its difficult for me to be effective when I can’t see what’s happening. (This doesn’t surprise me, as I’ve come to realize I’m a hands-on visual learner.) Therefore, there was only so much I could do over the phone for problems which couldn’t be explained to me to a point where I could really understand what was happening. It would usually end up in frustration at both ends of the phone and we’d leave it unfixed.

Last week, a co-worker of Krista’s mentioned she was having some computer issues. She had tried to install a new version of anti-virus software and ended up with a blue screen. The machine would no longer start up, it would just begin loading windows and then blue screen.

I volunteered to have a look at it. Sounded like a pretty easy job, I thought it would probably take 2hrs at most to cleanup the install and have it back to normal. Three days and two on-site visits later, I had learned some lessons.

First mistake was taking the machine out of its habitat. I figured it would be an easy job that I could do in the comfort of my own home, so Krista picked up the box and a big bag of software and brought it to me. I did not take into account the fact that the owner would have to plug all the wires back in, without really knowing what went where, (her ex-boyfriend had set the computer up for her several years ago, this was her first attempt at anything software or hardware related.)

I booted up the Win2k box in safe mode and quickly saw from the event log that a bunch of AVG services had failed. From the looks of it, AVG 7.5 had been installed, then partially removed and AVG 8.0 installed on top. I disabled the services and it booted up just fine.

She got it back the next day and set it back up. It booted just fine for her as well, but on its third startup it crapped out again. I googled AVG a bit and found a posting about successfully removing AVG 7.5 completely from a machine. Site visit number one involved me:
- uninstalling AVG 8.0
- downloading the free version of AVG 7.5, installing it, then uninstalling it
- downloading AVG 8.0 and installing it

This took a while and the owner had to leave, but left me to finish the job. I neglected to get the license code from her, which she received upon renewal of her AVG subscription. I had to leave the job incomplete and left instructions as best I could for her to install AVG 8.0 with her license code. She tried it when she got home later and it blue screened for her.

Site visit number two involved me getting there to find she no longer had an internet connection. She also mentioned that she tried to print one of her spreadsheets and the printer wouldn’t print. This was the point where I realized I should have never requested the computer to come out of its home. I looked around at all the wires to find two things:
- the USB hub, (to which all the peripherals were connected) was slightly loose from its connection to the PC. I plugged it back in and things started to recognize again. The DSL modem reported it had a USB connection and all was good.
- the DSL modem had an unexpected wire connected to the back. It was the USB connector for the printer loosely inserted into the ethernet connection. I plugged it into the printer and three or four queued up docs spit out.

I uninstalled AVG 8.0 again and then reinstalled it (my thinking was that it was trying to update itself on install, but choked with no net connection.) I saw the blue screen. The machine restarted midway through the install, then gave lightning blue-black on startup. Yikes! That’s not a BSOD, that’s something more frightening altogether.

Safe mode again, uninstall AVG 8.0. Download paid version of AVG 7.5, install with license code. It all seemed good. AVG updated itself, she could print. Everything seemed fine and appears to be fine now. License is good until April next year, at which point she’ll call me first before installing anything.

So, a lot of time spent. But in the end I felt OK about it. I learned some stuff, (mostly about how to approach tech support situations, and to recommend people avoid AVG.)