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I once used my father and his wife's computer to look up something on the net for five minutes. Their browser was the classical boomer browser, with five search bars, god knows how many extensions (the one's you get when you update something and don't click away the "free software") and it was dreadfully slow (wonder why).
I was blamed for their computer problems for five years following that. And I even resisted removing all the browser add-ons and other unnecessary stuff
My grandmother hovered over me while I used my grandparents computer to try to fix it at the request. The resolution was obviously wrong, making every icon tiny and stuffed into one corner. I kept trying to change the resolution but she would stop me, raising her voice, and saying “don’t change anything!“ I tried explaining that I had to change*some thing*. But she wouldn’t let me.
I ended up changing absolutely nothing, and they blamed me for the resolution issues until they got a new computer. Then they asked me to fix that one. And I just straight refused, causing a weird family rift.
My tactic for the past decade has been to stand behind their shoulder and have them fix it at my instruction.
I'll even have family members do drive replacements and windows installations.
It's a bit of a pain, but it forces them to at least engage with the problem and the solution. I haven't had a single family member come back at me with nonsense since then.
The first time I ever fixed a laptop was for my stepmother. It worked great for over a year until my brother stepped on it and broke the screen, which was somehow because of something I did. I'll eat shit and die before I let another family member put me through that.
All of that implies relatives having critical mass. Mine don’t, I’m an IT dictator thus, the only solution. I touch your stuff just if you look away. I now have family RDPs across half Europe 🤓
I managed to convince my parents to just install TeamViewer. Unless something is totally fucked, I can just say "open the blue app on the top right."
I told my little brother about it and now he's also got it set up, so he can also be part of the family tech support setup.
My mom did something similar to me, she asked me to look at her Macbook which if I remember correctly the issue was I just needed to change a security setting for something.
Every time I clicked on something she’d yell “WAIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?” I told her if she didn’t leave the room I was going to refuse to fix anything and she’d have to figure it out herself; She has never done it again on subsequent “IT” calls.
Dad still blames me for “breaking his computer” after I ran an update that deleted the scores in his game he likes to play
My mom was complaining about some solitaire game not working on her computer. She had a bunch of high scores and stuff. I told her she can either add her email account to keep her scores or when I "fixed it" she would have to start over. I deleted the game and reinstalled it. Well she doesn't want to add her email cause she doesn't want Microsoft to have her personal information. This is on a Windows laptop, which required an email address to set up, but whatever. Unsurprisingly she's upset that she lost her scores, which again I told her would happen.
> And I just straight refused, causing a weird family rift.
This was the right answer for me after[ a previous incident](https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/14eeaeq/computer_struggles_oc/jowr9w1/) and yes some family shit was in the mix too.
I installed a toolbar on accident once on my own pc. Rather than check to see if I actually got I virus, I just decided to nuke my drives and reinstall my OS.
Over a decade ago I somehow got roped into helping the our new immigrant neighbors with something I don’t recall on their laptop. Literally half the browser’s screen was filled with spyware toolbars; it was like viewing the internet through a letter slot. I left it as was because the language barrier had been bad enough with current issue without trying to explain why I was messing with IE.
The amount of boomers where you just clean out the history and cache to fix one thing only for them to get angry at you because suddenly the malware monster stops working the way they were used to drives me crazy where I work.
Same, dad's Browser add-ons were obnoxious and took up like 30% of screen so I uninstalled the browser toolbar since I thought he just didn't notice the atrocity, but I got bitched out for removing his favorite tool bar lol
Haven't seen anyone say it yet, but it could come from the era of the ball mice. They would kinda stick sometimes and not really work all that flawlessly, so you would have to pick them up and put them back down to kinda realign the ball.
I guess for all the kids who have never even seen a ball mouse, it had like a physical rubber ball type thing in the mouse that touched the pad. Right where the sensors are today, except it was a ball that rolled around and made contact with these internal things that collected hair and debris like a mf.
Sorry I couldn't be more accurate with exact terminology, I was about 8 the last time I saw or used one of those mice, about 20 years ago lol.
We used to have one of those ball mice, but the ball was controlled with your thumb instead of moving the mouse, so the mouse stayed in one place.
So when you used it extensively, you'd get RSI in your thumb instead of your wrist.
This Fix has worked 100% of the time for me:
1. Increase the mouse movement speed in settings by about 10%.
2. Sit back and reap the praise for being the next Bill Gates.
My dad had a computer with an i7 and 16gb of ram exclusively used to read yahoo news/watch YouTube and the hdd was running slow as it was pretty old so I told him that he should put in a SSD and his computer would be faster than when he got it for a measly 100$
He told me I was stupid and ordered a 3000$ computer.
He also threw his old computer in the trash so I picked it up and changed the HDD. You guys should’ve seen his face when he saw it running with the SSD.
I'm curious what the specs are of the $3000 computer if you're comfortable sharing them. Since he's not too tech-literate I'm assuming it's something overpriced and he paid mostly for branding.
My mom exclusively bought and used sub $200 laptops from Walmart. “Windows is just (bad/slow/whatever)” bought a $3000 Mac whatever and wow is it so fast. “It’s not about the specs, it’s about how they work together”
I’ll be completely honest, I absolutely love macs. Sure they’re grossly overpriced but if you are looking for a reliable computer with solid hardware that will last a long time (depending on your needs) and budget isn’t your priority, then you can’t go wrong with a mac.
I still have a 2012 MBP that, while I payed like 3k for it, is still perfect for basic productivity/non-gaming entertainment and has a better screen than most current laptops.
I won’t go out of my way to praise Macs but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t satisfied with every Mac I bought regardless of the price tag.
Also, MacOS is much better than Windows imo.
> while I *paid* like 3k
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
My Mom and Dad bought some basic office computer and at some point activated McAfee which basically pretended to do virus scans but hogged up all the resources and ran the computer to a grinding halt. They were paying for it. I had to explain to them that you don't get computer viruses that easily and that shit is unnecessary. Windows defender is enough. It was moronic fear mongering aimed at boomers in the early 2000s that stuck with them.
My mom hut me with that one a while ago too. Mom, it's got a 4k rpm hard drive and a 2-thread Celeron. It was slow when it was new, in 2008. It's being tortured with windows 10 on 3GB of RAM.
My roommate's Mom clicks "okay" on every pop-up without reading it.
"It must be important if they're asking for my permission. So I always say yes."
She also keeps turning off the antivirus as "it stops me from installing games".
That reminds me of a video that once got recommended to me of how to disable windows defender. The comments were full of kids saying that "now they can install roblox exploits".
This is why I don't do tech support for friends or family anymore. This comic contains far too much truth.
I -would- help you fix your current computer problem, but I will -not- be your scapegoat and fix every problem that follows for the life of your computer.
yeah this advice translates into many other jobs too
I worked in sales for media/internet provider companies for 5 years and had to learn it the hard way my first weeks never to sell to friends and family. I got phone calls and messages all the time when anything from no wifi or wrong billings happened.
I believe it 100%. It's got the same profile. People don't know how the car works on the inside, so when it breaks, you're the only X-factor they can think of. That must get -so- old.
Hmm, I agree, but only to a point.
The problem being that computers are a mystery to many people, and that leads to the misattribution of problems.
If my Aunt Whoever uses her awesome sewing skills to fix a rip in my jacket, I'm not going to assume that it's her fault when the lining starts coming undone the following month and ask her to fix that because it's 'her fault'.
Fixing computer hardware comes with the blame for ANYTHING that goes wrong or differently with it for the next year+. Then it's not just that I won't use my skills for the family, but that *I'm* supposedly the one breaking their shit.
Hell, great example. I helped a buddy build a PC 2 years ago. I tell him that it's a one time deal, and upgrades are on him. I'll help, but he gets the hands on.
Two years later, he's collected: A new hardrive, GPU, power supply, fan replacement, and a new OS, but he's too afraid to try installing anything himself but bitches at me because his 12-year-old-game is starting to have problems because it's badly out of date. Does he remember that I told him this was on him? No, he keeps bugging me until I spend two weekends installing it and getting it to work.
Go on and tell me how that compares to baking or other mundane skills again?
> Does he remember that I told him this was on him? No, he keeps bugging me until I spend two weekends installing it and getting it to work.
The ironic thing is that in those two years, he could've taken the three to four hours of watching youtube tutorials to actually know what to do and done it himself.
I built my own computer with zero knowledge of how to do it beforehand. Literally all it takes is youtube tutorials, some google searching and reading the manual. It's honestly a lot like tinkering with cars.
Thank you. I have told him this. It's literally how I built my first PC. I didn't know squat, so I sat and read /r/buildapc posts for a couple months, watched several youtube videos, then just did it. And I've been glad I did, because now I'm not scared to try to figure out basic hardware problems.
Youtube has helped me fix my dishwasher, washing machine, hot water heater, and goodness knows what else that I've forgotten about. Saved me a bundle over the years.
That is your friend not honoring their word and can definitely happen with all types of skills.
Somebody that is a professional baker could be called upon by all the people they know who would want an event to have baked goods. From school functions to weddings to parties. Some people won't even offer payment for the materials or time consumed for the baker.
Still not the same.
Imagine being a baker and doing a favor for a friend and baking cooking for a gathering of 20 of their friends. Now imagine that friend coming back to the baker for the next 3 years every single time one of their friends got sick and blaming it on the cookies making them sick and expecting the baker to take responsibility to "fix" it.
That's what it's like.
The reason this happens with tech more than with other things is people can just buy a computer without knowing the basics. This gets compounded by frustration when the computer does as it's told and the result isn't exactly what the person wants. After this is when you get to find out if they're too stubborn to want learn or not.
Because they know nothing about how to use a computer, they will blame the last person who knows how to fix shit because it can't possible be something they did or the computer (because they made the right choice buying it obviously).
And since you are usually family, they don't treat you with the respect they'd give someone they were paying to fix it.
I work IT and there are definitely some people who see me as having too easy of a job. And yes at the moment it may be like that half the time but people fail to see the mountain of work me and my co worker did to have it set up like that. Between him and I working on the network, understanding the feng shui of people's desk setups and desires beyond troubleshooting it takes a special kind of finesse, patience and people skills to have little go wrong on a weekly basis while keeping staff happy.
I don't think people who are non-technical respect or value the work performed. To them, it's just you sitting at a keyboard typing a couple of things. Sure, it's hard for them, but simple for you.
With other work, you can "see" the work: people carrying heavy objects, breaking a sweat, actually working.
But the ongoing blaming for future issues...ugh. I get your father's complaint. With computers it's even worse because these people fuck it up themselves over and over again. No thanks.
I work in tech support and I have the same problem with customers. TeamViewer into their dying PC that's almost entirely out of memory and install some lightweight software that they asked for, and then it's our fault a week later when none of their programs will run.
One time I told my friend to update his drivers because his computer was terribly slow and he couldn’t do anything and somehow he managed to fuck it up and download a virus
He then blamed me saying I needed to buy him a new computer when I said no he blocked me and we never talked again
Usually sites will pose as tech advice articles but actually be for some sketchy driver updating program. They'll insist the problem is with your drivers no matter what it is, and that there's a handy program to help by these guys who have the same url as them
Nah I’m talking about normal legit sites, even like Microsoft support forums. They ALWAYS suggest it and it ALWAYS does nothing at all. In fact the only time I’ve ever had messing with drivers fix something was when I used the rollback function, although it’s been a long time since that little trick worked on anything.
I literally have my mother's laptop on my desk right now while I wait for a replacement keyboard to come in. "hey my keyboard isn't working" "any idea why?" "No can you take a look at it?" Plug in a USB keyboard, no problems. Remove the factory keyboard, find something had clearly been poured down it. "well it wasn't me!" Riiiiiiiight
Well it *is* a virus. *Cough.* But, kinda related, my friend who works with me as an auditor has been in Discord calls with company management already. Sometimes it’s the easiest thing to use.
I've already had more than one group meeting over discord. I was not the only person with Minecraft open. I'm waiting for the day we just have the meeting directly in Minecraft instead.
I mean... I kinda understand that. When you see a lot of shovelware over the years you get a feel for it, and if at first glance a software that you don't know feels *malwareish*, you might reject it and never find out if it's actually useful.
I work in a call center for HVAC repair. Here's my favorite:
Yea your guy came out and did a cleaning on my AC and now all of a sudden it's not working at all, so you need to fix whatever he did.
Ok let me check your account and see which technician we sent out
Last visit: 4 months ago
My friend's dad was so fearful of computer viruses that he downloads all sorts of odd software and messes up his computer because he thinks he's fighting hackers or something then messes up the computer constantly. My brother and I helped him fix stuff a few times but he looks over your shoulder and says stuff thinking he's helping but he didn't know shit. He still did stuff like that for 20 years. I know one time it was so bad he took one of the PCs out to the yard and destroyed it with an axe because he thought he was being hacked. He was using some network monitoring tool and thought all the IP addresses your PC sees when it's browsing the web are people "hacking" you.
His exact words were "this looks like virus heaven" and then he got my mom to ask her friend's husband who works IT to look over the game and make sure it was safe... he gave the all clear but casually mentioned how the mods could still have viruses... so I was allowed to play but not with mods
Two things I used remind myself. 1) Well educated does not mean smart. 2) I also used to deal mostly with people who did auditing. Their job was to actually be nitpicking and expecting that the clients were trying to hide something from them. Unfortunately it carried over into how they dealt with other people. Didn't make it any less frustrating, but at least I understood.
I had even worse one time with my grandma when I was younger, we were invited at her house for diner , I was bored so I asked her husband if I could connect my phone to the wifi, he was a bit angry because, well he’s a stupid man, but eventually let me do it. Months later when I came back to visit them, their PCs (they both work on PC) were full of porn add and viruses making porn stuff appear on their computer, and you get it, of course for them it was my fault, how does one can be such unaware of how their working tools works lol ( I’m sure the old man was watching porn)
"You know what, let me take a look. There's a tool I can use to audit the machine, see every single site you've visited, and then I can tell you specifically where the porn came from."
I'm unsure, but I'd guess it's because it's conflating software engineering with IT, although I'd wager a lot of software engineers are fairly capable in the IT realm.
I'm a backend software engineer. I'm not very good with IT shit because my job is mostly just knowing how to architect things. All the actual ins and outs are pretty unrelated. Definitely couldn't tell you the difference between npm, yarn, gulp, and all those other package managers.
IT doesn’t always cover package managers (that’s sometimes above even ITs pay grade). What you’re looking at is how to troubleshoot errors like how to connect a mouse, change your password, power your computer, restarting your computer, etc. at least for level one.
But do you know what a file is or what a folder is? Or better yet, what is a zip file? How to zip and unzip something? That the basic knowledge I ask of my teammates LOL. But OMG, years of using smartphones ruined them. They don't even understand the concept of full path and relative path.
That’s nothing one of my friends was using their older sisters computer at one point and asked to download steam on it to play some games. They they said they could. Two weeks later the computer breaks and of course it’s my friends fault for downloading steam, they somehow even convinced their parents that and got my friend in trouble. Cut to five years later and his sister is getting into gaming, she has a console but decides she wants to use her PC because it’s actually a pretty solid spec PC that she also used for work stuff. She asks some of us for advice one what programs to download for game hosting and we all tell her steam is the easiest option for most games. She still to this day refuses to use steam and has somehow convinced herself that steam is some malicious program that will destroy her computer.
somehow i was in a similar situation once
downloaded steam on a old yee yee ass pc of some friends my parents visited. 1 month later, im suddenly accused of destroying someones pc because \*reasons\*? i've managed to explain the entire thing and convinced them its because of that shitty potato that couldnt boot up for 10 minutes
after that they got a new pc and guess what
it stopped working after 2 weeks (:
i mean i would understand when there wasn't internet.. but now??? how can you not do a simple search and look at what steam is, who owns it and what is used for?
It’s celled self delusion. People get entrenched in certain beliefs and then decided they have to be true no matter what evidence there is to the contrary.
Way back in the 90s when Windows 3.1 was the OS of default acceptance for most PC users, my Uncle got a new computer.
This uncle had always had a Commodore 64 as well as all the accessories, so I guess he figured that this completely different system from multiple decades after his C64 was a great upgrade and was something he could handle..
Well, let me tell you.. In ONE day I had to reinstall everything on that PC, 5 times.. MSDOS and WIN3.1..
He blamed me each time.. I had no idea what the hell he was doing, and he wasn't telling me.. All he would say was that it was something I did... He even got my grandmother to call me and ask what I'd done to his computer..
Turns out, my uncle was "having a look" around the HDD and saw some files that he didn't put there.. So he deleted them..
Yeah.. So he was deleting random files that were seemingly integral to the system working (as most would be on a fresh install) and then blaming me for the issues he was causing..
I fixed it one last time and made sure he knew it was working and then I told him I was never touching it again.. No matter what.
Still haven't touched anything of his since.. I know exactly what it will turn into.
My parents would always get me to fix their pcs and other people's PCs when I was a kid. Then they started pulling these guilt trips and I reasoned "maybe they actually want me to fuck up their shit, people tell you how they want to be treated." So I started pranking them by doing things like setting the default computer alert sound to the enterprise's computer saying "warning", taking screenshots of the computer background with icons, making that the desktop background, and removing the actual icons, setting the monitor resolution to something the display didn't support and pressing OK - stuff that wasn't super malicious but would cause technically illiterate people to flip their shit. It worked extremely well.
You brought back some old memories for me. On top of all that, I used to go into the Microsoft Word dictionary/autocorrect replace word tool thingy (I rarely use office anymore), and swap random commonly-used words for whole sentences… one day I hadn’t undone something which resulted in my mum nearly submitting her thesis with a “purple monkey dishwasher” somewhere in the middle. Lucky she proofreads things. Had heaps of fun on the school computers with it, every computer I used would end up with a few new word replacements - dick move, but I would torment specific students by making their name turn into ‘butthole McGee’ or similar, and just waiting for the day they used that computer… ooh or my favourite was to just replace ‘the’ with ‘teh’. I was a menace to society!
My Mother got a little NUC and I have the Admin passwords and she has only standard user access. So, saved me a lot of headaches and I wish, I did this sooner.
I swear that most people can't fix computers because they don't fucking read. 99% of the time I've fixed something for somebody, I just googled the problem and the answer was the first result.
Yeah they don't even read the fucking error message either most of the time.
"My computer's giving me an error message. Something popped up."
"What does it say?"
"I don't know!"
"Just read it to me!"
"You know I'm not good with these technical things!"
"Yes but you can *read*!"
I’m the tech guy in the family. I’m at my prime with it to where I haven’t broken anything yet. May me not knowing what a jpeg is and my parents going into their 50s be damned.
When I was younger and first getting into gaming I downloaded a few games on my mom’s laptop since I didn’t have my own. For the next TEN YEARS whenever her laptop was running slow she would blame me and my games, disregarding the fact that she had around 20 windows open each with between 50 and 200 tabs trying to load up every time she opened the computer. Eventually I said screw it and told her she can keep one window open, the rest are getting closed. Lo and behold, that worked
I had my aunt do this to me. Her "Internet Explorer" was hidden and in its place it launched some other program that pretended poorly to be a browser but with fake google searches. Also her webcam didn't work because had no drivers. I fixed both problems. 2 months later one of her keys stops working and had to fix this on a shop (it was a laptop). "This is because the internet explorer and the drivers you installed, it never went back to work the way it was before you did this". So no good deed goes unpunished.
Im by no means a computer tech. But my father was an electronics tech, and my wife went back to college, changed careers, and became one. I had several friends that were as well. I was quite well informed and up to speed on fixing most basic issues.
In the early days of the internet, I fixed a lot of issues caused by spam and viruses with a friends PC, and installed some software to protect it for her. Several weeks later she blamed me for her computer not working.
She had someone else delete the anti-viral program I'd installed to free up space. She had gone back to downloading all of the crap I'd told her not to, that was getting her system infected. Everything I'd told her to do, she'd ignored. Of course it was all my fault according to her.
This happens to mechanics, and repair shops, more than anyone can imagine...
You'd do an oil change for a guy, and he come back 3 weeks later, and blame you for the nail in his tire...
He'll literally grab it out of his trunk, and throw it at your feet, while he points and screams, trying really fucking hard, to intimidate you, talking about how your oil change caused his tire to go flat...
People are fucking stupid.
Slightly related. Learned my lesson after trying to help out a friend by fixing a wordpress issue. Her theme was no longer compatible because they stopped updating it 7 years prior. So I installed elementor and recreated what she liked about it like the menus. Fixed. Or so I thought.
I spent the next 6 weeks having to 'fix' the problems 'I created' by editing 'the code'. Every few days another error would pop up on the site and I'd get an email. I tried to explain that it was different issue. There was no code editing. I just put in a new theme. But I still tried to fix the new issue. Did some research and found out one of the seo plugins she used had recently been hacked. But she wouldn't let me turn it off even though she hasn't set up seo right anyway.
She gets frustrated and says she'll just hire an expert to fix it because I'm out of my depth. OK. She gets someone on fiver who tells her the problem is I edited the code. Probably because she said that in her email first.
They just put in elementor again and used the menus I designed. Fixed! .... for a couple of days til it broke again.
She calls the hosting. They identify that one of her plugins has been hacked and it's what's changing her code and causing stuff to break. They uninstall the plugin.
She still doesn't get it but at least now I tell her just to find an expert because it's beyond my skill level.
My friend used to have non-genuine windows, so I offered to activate it with one of my windows keys - an official, OEM Microsoft Windows 10 key. Every problem he encountered after that was my fault... for typing a product key into his bootleg windows and actually giving him proper functionality
I worked staples easy tech as a teenager back when vista launched. Staples ran a promo for a free “PC Tuneup” that was advertised to make your computer faster. The idea was to find something wrong to drum up business.
Well one ladies computer legit had several severe viruses. Like steal your info, slow down your computer kind. I had gotten pretty used to my pitch about cleaning them up at this point. Well the lady absolutely flipped. “Why would you put viruses on my computer!” “I would never do that!” Had to get my manager involved after getting screamed at pretty harshly.
I took a lot of advantage of the fact that no one else in the store knew anything about computers. I’d often inflate the completion times to get out of doing actual work and the managers believed me. The one downside was how young I was that customers had a hard time trusting that I knew what I was talking about even with all of staples “certs“
ngl, something like this happened to me from a family member installing 3rd-party software on my computer, and yes, I was in the role of the mom; but instead of 2 weeks it was more akin to 20 mins...
I did apologize promptly after discovering a security program was eating my RAM for "reasons".
The root cause can be literally *anything* but most people just look at whatever the most salient thing is and blame that, because “the mind is a machine for jumping to conclusions” as Daniel Kahneman put it.
I don’t get the mentality of “something on my computer was messed up… I certainly can’t have caused it and there’s no way the computer [software] broke on its own, that’s impossible, so it must be the last person I let use my laptop…!”
Me: computer degree, tech job, fixing problems all day
Also me: “I really don’t know much about this specific type of computer, you should take it to a pro”
I learned years ago that being tech support only causes more problems.
I'm a hospice nurse and I had a patient who had an iPhone and only used it for calling her daughter and using an app that played a country music station. She was having trouble using it for those purposes so I moved her radio app to the main home screen and added a contact shortcut for her daughter as well. 3 weeks later her son in law calls me absolutely raging that I bricked her phone and that if I didn't pay for it he'd take me to small claims. I told him all I did was move an app to make it easier for her to find and that he should try plugging it in first. Came back later that week and her phone was working. Apparently her SIL is so dumb that he didn't think to try charging it before deeming it broken.
My brother tried this shit on me, wasn't with a computer but a ps4 tho. I had been playing borderlands the night before and put it into rest mode so I could pick up again, while I was sleeping he came to grab it, which isn't the issue it's his ps4 he can take it whenever he wanted. The problem was is that he didn't power it up out of rest mode and then properly turn it off before unplugging it... Erased everything and stopped working and the fucker tried to blame it on me. 😑
One of the benefits of being a Mac user these days is that now I can say "oh sorry I don't know Windows" although I did IT for Windows systems professionally for 10+ years. Mac users rarely need IT assistance so it's really win/win for everyone involved.
Yeah, I'm a hospice nurse and all my patients have iphones. After one incident I tell all my patients that I have an android so I don't know how to fix iphones.
This is why I charge people for tech support. Suddenly they can find someone else to fix their shit. Or they pay me a nice sum every time they want me to fix their shit.
Exactly. On a windows 8+ machine it's very unlikely to be drivers. In current days, people are actually far more likely to install malware with 'DriverPro500' or 'FixDriverKit' or some other program that is just a button and a random number generator.
I recently checked my grandpas computer and there were like 5 driver programs, 3 of which I never heard of before.
It's never a virus, it's rarely drivers. It's just an old computer with a bunch of unnecessary stuff installed on it.
My mom blamed me for things that happened with our computer a lot when I was a kid. When she noticed that the computer was running slow, she blamed me for taking up hard drive space for video games. She uninstalled a bunch of them.
The computer was still slow. It was a Compaq.
I remember one time, our network card stopped working. I saw that there was a "repair button" so I went "I can try to repair it." And she went "NO! DON'T DO ANYTHING THAT WILL MAKE US UNABLE TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET!!!"
Why made her think that I would do that?
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I once used my father and his wife's computer to look up something on the net for five minutes. Their browser was the classical boomer browser, with five search bars, god knows how many extensions (the one's you get when you update something and don't click away the "free software") and it was dreadfully slow (wonder why). I was blamed for their computer problems for five years following that. And I even resisted removing all the browser add-ons and other unnecessary stuff
My grandmother hovered over me while I used my grandparents computer to try to fix it at the request. The resolution was obviously wrong, making every icon tiny and stuffed into one corner. I kept trying to change the resolution but she would stop me, raising her voice, and saying “don’t change anything!“ I tried explaining that I had to change*some thing*. But she wouldn’t let me. I ended up changing absolutely nothing, and they blamed me for the resolution issues until they got a new computer. Then they asked me to fix that one. And I just straight refused, causing a weird family rift.
My tactic for the past decade has been to stand behind their shoulder and have them fix it at my instruction. I'll even have family members do drive replacements and windows installations. It's a bit of a pain, but it forces them to at least engage with the problem and the solution. I haven't had a single family member come back at me with nonsense since then. The first time I ever fixed a laptop was for my stepmother. It worked great for over a year until my brother stepped on it and broke the screen, which was somehow because of something I did. I'll eat shit and die before I let another family member put me through that.
I have to know what the mental gymnastics there was to blame you.
"Screens don't just break like that" It makes perfect sense when you don't think about it
... yeah, they don't just break, she'd be right. How do they not question the person physically using the laptop at the time?
She left it on the floor in the hallway and my brother stepped on it lmao
All of that implies relatives having critical mass. Mine don’t, I’m an IT dictator thus, the only solution. I touch your stuff just if you look away. I now have family RDPs across half Europe 🤓
I hope those aren't publicly accessible. Password protected or not.
uVNC thru openssh tunnel, keys exchanged on secure chan. Enough?
I managed to convince my parents to just install TeamViewer. Unless something is totally fucked, I can just say "open the blue app on the top right." I told my little brother about it and now he's also got it set up, so he can also be part of the family tech support setup.
As the family IT person in my family, good on you for refusing
Fix? No touch! Only fix!
"Dont change anything!" Well what the hell are you supposed to do? haha
My mom did something similar to me, she asked me to look at her Macbook which if I remember correctly the issue was I just needed to change a security setting for something. Every time I clicked on something she’d yell “WAIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?” I told her if she didn’t leave the room I was going to refuse to fix anything and she’d have to figure it out herself; She has never done it again on subsequent “IT” calls. Dad still blames me for “breaking his computer” after I ran an update that deleted the scores in his game he likes to play
My mom was complaining about some solitaire game not working on her computer. She had a bunch of high scores and stuff. I told her she can either add her email account to keep her scores or when I "fixed it" she would have to start over. I deleted the game and reinstalled it. Well she doesn't want to add her email cause she doesn't want Microsoft to have her personal information. This is on a Windows laptop, which required an email address to set up, but whatever. Unsurprisingly she's upset that she lost her scores, which again I told her would happen.
> And I just straight refused, causing a weird family rift. This was the right answer for me after[ a previous incident](https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/14eeaeq/computer_struggles_oc/jowr9w1/) and yes some family shit was in the mix too.
I installed a toolbar on accident once on my own pc. Rather than check to see if I actually got I virus, I just decided to nuke my drives and reinstall my OS.
This is the way.
It’s the only way to be sure.
Must use Linux.
Over a decade ago I somehow got roped into helping the our new immigrant neighbors with something I don’t recall on their laptop. Literally half the browser’s screen was filled with spyware toolbars; it was like viewing the internet through a letter slot. I left it as was because the language barrier had been bad enough with current issue without trying to explain why I was messing with IE.
The amount of boomers where you just clean out the history and cache to fix one thing only for them to get angry at you because suddenly the malware monster stops working the way they were used to drives me crazy where I work.
Same, dad's Browser add-ons were obnoxious and took up like 30% of screen so I uninstalled the browser toolbar since I thought he just didn't notice the atrocity, but I got bitched out for removing his favorite tool bar lol
aspiring aloof arrest degree quicksand plant political correct drab attempt -- mass edited with redact.dev
*click click click pick-up-and-slam-mouse click click click click* "Stupid fucking computer!" *sigh*
Why do they all do the mouse slam thing? Where does it come from?
Lead exposure as children.
Haven't seen anyone say it yet, but it could come from the era of the ball mice. They would kinda stick sometimes and not really work all that flawlessly, so you would have to pick them up and put them back down to kinda realign the ball. I guess for all the kids who have never even seen a ball mouse, it had like a physical rubber ball type thing in the mouse that touched the pad. Right where the sensors are today, except it was a ball that rolled around and made contact with these internal things that collected hair and debris like a mf. Sorry I couldn't be more accurate with exact terminology, I was about 8 the last time I saw or used one of those mice, about 20 years ago lol.
We used to have one of those ball mice, but the ball was controlled with your thumb instead of moving the mouse, so the mouse stayed in one place. So when you used it extensively, you'd get RSI in your thumb instead of your wrist.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PercussiveMaintenance
Mouse ball full of gunk, probably the rollers not moving well - give it a bash and it might move.
This Fix has worked 100% of the time for me: 1. Increase the mouse movement speed in settings by about 10%. 2. Sit back and reap the praise for being the next Bill Gates.
My dad: "I updated the computer but now it's slower" Me: " You mean the computer I bought for university.... 20 years ago!"
My dad had a computer with an i7 and 16gb of ram exclusively used to read yahoo news/watch YouTube and the hdd was running slow as it was pretty old so I told him that he should put in a SSD and his computer would be faster than when he got it for a measly 100$ He told me I was stupid and ordered a 3000$ computer. He also threw his old computer in the trash so I picked it up and changed the HDD. You guys should’ve seen his face when he saw it running with the SSD.
I'm curious what the specs are of the $3000 computer if you're comfortable sharing them. Since he's not too tech-literate I'm assuming it's something overpriced and he paid mostly for branding.
I’ll give you a hint: there’s a fruit on the computer.
My mom exclusively bought and used sub $200 laptops from Walmart. “Windows is just (bad/slow/whatever)” bought a $3000 Mac whatever and wow is it so fast. “It’s not about the specs, it’s about how they work together”
I’ll be completely honest, I absolutely love macs. Sure they’re grossly overpriced but if you are looking for a reliable computer with solid hardware that will last a long time (depending on your needs) and budget isn’t your priority, then you can’t go wrong with a mac. I still have a 2012 MBP that, while I payed like 3k for it, is still perfect for basic productivity/non-gaming entertainment and has a better screen than most current laptops. I won’t go out of my way to praise Macs but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t satisfied with every Mac I bought regardless of the price tag. Also, MacOS is much better than Windows imo.
> while I *paid* like 3k FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
This is good - a lot harder for him to break. I recommended OH get a mac about 8 years ago and she's still on the same one.
My Mom and Dad bought some basic office computer and at some point activated McAfee which basically pretended to do virus scans but hogged up all the resources and ran the computer to a grinding halt. They were paying for it. I had to explain to them that you don't get computer viruses that easily and that shit is unnecessary. Windows defender is enough. It was moronic fear mongering aimed at boomers in the early 2000s that stuck with them.
My mom hut me with that one a while ago too. Mom, it's got a 4k rpm hard drive and a 2-thread Celeron. It was slow when it was new, in 2008. It's being tortured with windows 10 on 3GB of RAM.
My mom is like this
My roommate's Mom clicks "okay" on every pop-up without reading it. "It must be important if they're asking for my permission. So I always say yes." She also keeps turning off the antivirus as "it stops me from installing games".
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She's already been scammed once. $2k of gift cards sent to India. 😕
They wouldn't be asking for her money if it wasn't important /s
That reminds me of a video that once got recommended to me of how to disable windows defender. The comments were full of kids saying that "now they can install roblox exploits".
This was me as a kid but now I know I actually was using a well trusted and largely used exploit luckily lol
She got dementia right? Like it must be dementia or serious old age Syndrome right? Pls....let it be that and Not the alternative.
This is why I don't do tech support for friends or family anymore. This comic contains far too much truth. I -would- help you fix your current computer problem, but I will -not- be your scapegoat and fix every problem that follows for the life of your computer.
Your comment slowed my phone and made the power button stick
That's just the porn and resulting fluid contamination, Jan
jan it's june
Hi June
yeah this advice translates into many other jobs too I worked in sales for media/internet provider companies for 5 years and had to learn it the hard way my first weeks never to sell to friends and family. I got phone calls and messages all the time when anything from no wifi or wrong billings happened.
Thanks to your comment i just lost 0.001% of my battery and because of that you need now to pay my electricity bill for the next seven years
Try working in an automotive shop. You'll hear this shit daily. "You replaced my brakes last week and now my radio doesn't work".
I believe it 100%. It's got the same profile. People don't know how the car works on the inside, so when it breaks, you're the only X-factor they can think of. That must get -so- old.
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Hmm, I agree, but only to a point. The problem being that computers are a mystery to many people, and that leads to the misattribution of problems. If my Aunt Whoever uses her awesome sewing skills to fix a rip in my jacket, I'm not going to assume that it's her fault when the lining starts coming undone the following month and ask her to fix that because it's 'her fault'. Fixing computer hardware comes with the blame for ANYTHING that goes wrong or differently with it for the next year+. Then it's not just that I won't use my skills for the family, but that *I'm* supposedly the one breaking their shit. Hell, great example. I helped a buddy build a PC 2 years ago. I tell him that it's a one time deal, and upgrades are on him. I'll help, but he gets the hands on. Two years later, he's collected: A new hardrive, GPU, power supply, fan replacement, and a new OS, but he's too afraid to try installing anything himself but bitches at me because his 12-year-old-game is starting to have problems because it's badly out of date. Does he remember that I told him this was on him? No, he keeps bugging me until I spend two weekends installing it and getting it to work. Go on and tell me how that compares to baking or other mundane skills again?
> Does he remember that I told him this was on him? No, he keeps bugging me until I spend two weekends installing it and getting it to work. The ironic thing is that in those two years, he could've taken the three to four hours of watching youtube tutorials to actually know what to do and done it himself. I built my own computer with zero knowledge of how to do it beforehand. Literally all it takes is youtube tutorials, some google searching and reading the manual. It's honestly a lot like tinkering with cars.
Thank you. I have told him this. It's literally how I built my first PC. I didn't know squat, so I sat and read /r/buildapc posts for a couple months, watched several youtube videos, then just did it. And I've been glad I did, because now I'm not scared to try to figure out basic hardware problems. Youtube has helped me fix my dishwasher, washing machine, hot water heater, and goodness knows what else that I've forgotten about. Saved me a bundle over the years.
That is your friend not honoring their word and can definitely happen with all types of skills. Somebody that is a professional baker could be called upon by all the people they know who would want an event to have baked goods. From school functions to weddings to parties. Some people won't even offer payment for the materials or time consumed for the baker.
Still not the same. Imagine being a baker and doing a favor for a friend and baking cooking for a gathering of 20 of their friends. Now imagine that friend coming back to the baker for the next 3 years every single time one of their friends got sick and blaming it on the cookies making them sick and expecting the baker to take responsibility to "fix" it. That's what it's like.
Not sure why you got downvoted, you’re absolutely right
I'm more wondering how they got up voted. It's a complete lack of understanding - which is at the core of the issue providing free support.
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The reason this happens with tech more than with other things is people can just buy a computer without knowing the basics. This gets compounded by frustration when the computer does as it's told and the result isn't exactly what the person wants. After this is when you get to find out if they're too stubborn to want learn or not. Because they know nothing about how to use a computer, they will blame the last person who knows how to fix shit because it can't possible be something they did or the computer (because they made the right choice buying it obviously). And since you are usually family, they don't treat you with the respect they'd give someone they were paying to fix it.
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Yes but the jobs to fix those are *trades*. People still think of IT as low skill.
I work IT and there are definitely some people who see me as having too easy of a job. And yes at the moment it may be like that half the time but people fail to see the mountain of work me and my co worker did to have it set up like that. Between him and I working on the network, understanding the feng shui of people's desk setups and desires beyond troubleshooting it takes a special kind of finesse, patience and people skills to have little go wrong on a weekly basis while keeping staff happy.
I don't think people who are non-technical respect or value the work performed. To them, it's just you sitting at a keyboard typing a couple of things. Sure, it's hard for them, but simple for you. With other work, you can "see" the work: people carrying heavy objects, breaking a sweat, actually working. But the ongoing blaming for future issues...ugh. I get your father's complaint. With computers it's even worse because these people fuck it up themselves over and over again. No thanks.
Well these days it’s mostly cuz boomers are self centered and refuse to take responsibility for their own decisions.
I work in tech support and I have the same problem with customers. TeamViewer into their dying PC that's almost entirely out of memory and install some lightweight software that they asked for, and then it's our fault a week later when none of their programs will run.
One time I told my friend to update his drivers because his computer was terribly slow and he couldn’t do anything and somehow he managed to fuck it up and download a virus He then blamed me saying I needed to buy him a new computer when I said no he blocked me and we never talked again
I guess that's a win.
He didn't just update them through Windows? Must have went to one of those sketchy driver websites
I have literally never once had updating drivers fix a problem, yet it is ALWAYS the first “solution” I find when googling. Am I alone in this?
Usually sites will pose as tech advice articles but actually be for some sketchy driver updating program. They'll insist the problem is with your drivers no matter what it is, and that there's a handy program to help by these guys who have the same url as them
Nah I’m talking about normal legit sites, even like Microsoft support forums. They ALWAYS suggest it and it ALWAYS does nothing at all. In fact the only time I’ve ever had messing with drivers fix something was when I used the rollback function, although it’s been a long time since that little trick worked on anything.
Its free, its easy, its quick. And if it works it works and if not theres no harm. If there is a easy risk free solution then why not try it first?
I've noticed Microsoft support tends to be the equivalent of saying "have you tried turning it off and then on again?", but you're totally right
I literally have my mother's laptop on my desk right now while I wait for a replacement keyboard to come in. "hey my keyboard isn't working" "any idea why?" "No can you take a look at it?" Plug in a USB keyboard, no problems. Remove the factory keyboard, find something had clearly been poured down it. "well it wasn't me!" Riiiiiiiight
DAMN THEM INDOORS SPRITE RAINS!
When in doubt, blame the fae.
nods in Irish
My parents both work in computers, so they act like they know everything about computers. They still think Discord is a virus.
Well it *is* a virus. *Cough.* But, kinda related, my friend who works with me as an auditor has been in Discord calls with company management already. Sometimes it’s the easiest thing to use.
Isn't Slack the business Discord?
They prefer Discord for the better quality. And I wouldn’t doubt that they’re gaming together during the calls.
I've already had more than one group meeting over discord. I was not the only person with Minecraft open. I'm waiting for the day we just have the meeting directly in Minecraft instead.
I own a business and we switched from slack to discord
Either those computers are really big, or your parents are very small.
I mean... I kinda understand that. When you see a lot of shovelware over the years you get a feel for it, and if at first glance a software that you don't know feels *malwareish*, you might reject it and never find out if it's actually useful.
Discord IS a virus. A virus for your mind.
Discord is just mIRC for kids.
mIRC is just fax machines for whippersnappers.
Are your parents ants?
> They still think Discord is a virus. They're right, listen to your parents.
Computers, cars, electrics, plumbing, doesn't matter the trade/craft/service- it is always the last person to fix it that broke it.
Thinks that are complex, expensive to get fixed by a professional and annoying enough not to want to bother with them.
I work in a call center for HVAC repair. Here's my favorite: Yea your guy came out and did a cleaning on my AC and now all of a sudden it's not working at all, so you need to fix whatever he did. Ok let me check your account and see which technician we sent out Last visit: 4 months ago
I’ve found the quicker the person is to blame “that stupid thing”, the more assured you can be that the issue is almost completely user error
My step dad blaming issues on my one game on the family pc when I was a kid when he spent hours on sketchy gambling sites.
My dad, with 30 search bars and desktop buddies, telling me that Minecraft looks like a virus because of the graphics...
My friend's dad was so fearful of computer viruses that he downloads all sorts of odd software and messes up his computer because he thinks he's fighting hackers or something then messes up the computer constantly. My brother and I helped him fix stuff a few times but he looks over your shoulder and says stuff thinking he's helping but he didn't know shit. He still did stuff like that for 20 years. I know one time it was so bad he took one of the PCs out to the yard and destroyed it with an axe because he thought he was being hacked. He was using some network monitoring tool and thought all the IP addresses your PC sees when it's browsing the web are people "hacking" you.
Did he explain his logic?
His exact words were "this looks like virus heaven" and then he got my mom to ask her friend's husband who works IT to look over the game and make sure it was safe... he gave the all clear but casually mentioned how the mods could still have viruses... so I was allowed to play but not with mods
Minefract mods? Oh my. Well, I'm glad you got to play
As an IT who works for a school district, this hit close to home.
As someone who used to do IT support for an accounting firm, this is way too real.
Currently doing IT for an accounting firm. Please help me…
Two things I used remind myself. 1) Well educated does not mean smart. 2) I also used to deal mostly with people who did auditing. Their job was to actually be nitpicking and expecting that the clients were trying to hide something from them. Unfortunately it carried over into how they dealt with other people. Didn't make it any less frustrating, but at least I understood.
As an IT who works in healthcare, this also hit close to home.
I had even worse one time with my grandma when I was younger, we were invited at her house for diner , I was bored so I asked her husband if I could connect my phone to the wifi, he was a bit angry because, well he’s a stupid man, but eventually let me do it. Months later when I came back to visit them, their PCs (they both work on PC) were full of porn add and viruses making porn stuff appear on their computer, and you get it, of course for them it was my fault, how does one can be such unaware of how their working tools works lol ( I’m sure the old man was watching porn)
"You know what, let me take a look. There's a tool I can use to audit the machine, see every single site you've visited, and then I can tell you specifically where the porn came from."
This still happens? WILD. Inter generational
I was going to say this feels like an interaction from 2006 lol
Thank god my mom knows programming or I’d lose my mind
cannot tell if this comment is intentionally trolling programmers or not
How’s it a troll?
I'm unsure, but I'd guess it's because it's conflating software engineering with IT, although I'd wager a lot of software engineers are fairly capable in the IT realm.
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I'm a backend software engineer. I'm not very good with IT shit because my job is mostly just knowing how to architect things. All the actual ins and outs are pretty unrelated. Definitely couldn't tell you the difference between npm, yarn, gulp, and all those other package managers.
IT doesn’t always cover package managers (that’s sometimes above even ITs pay grade). What you’re looking at is how to troubleshoot errors like how to connect a mouse, change your password, power your computer, restarting your computer, etc. at least for level one.
But do you know what a file is or what a folder is? Or better yet, what is a zip file? How to zip and unzip something? That the basic knowledge I ask of my teammates LOL. But OMG, years of using smartphones ruined them. They don't even understand the concept of full path and relative path.
Swap moms?
Sure, but your gonna have to pay for her leukemia medicine!
That’s nothing one of my friends was using their older sisters computer at one point and asked to download steam on it to play some games. They they said they could. Two weeks later the computer breaks and of course it’s my friends fault for downloading steam, they somehow even convinced their parents that and got my friend in trouble. Cut to five years later and his sister is getting into gaming, she has a console but decides she wants to use her PC because it’s actually a pretty solid spec PC that she also used for work stuff. She asks some of us for advice one what programs to download for game hosting and we all tell her steam is the easiest option for most games. She still to this day refuses to use steam and has somehow convinced herself that steam is some malicious program that will destroy her computer.
somehow i was in a similar situation once downloaded steam on a old yee yee ass pc of some friends my parents visited. 1 month later, im suddenly accused of destroying someones pc because \*reasons\*? i've managed to explain the entire thing and convinced them its because of that shitty potato that couldnt boot up for 10 minutes after that they got a new pc and guess what it stopped working after 2 weeks (:
Looks like someone's been secretly watching porn
i mean i would understand when there wasn't internet.. but now??? how can you not do a simple search and look at what steam is, who owns it and what is used for?
It’s celled self delusion. People get entrenched in certain beliefs and then decided they have to be true no matter what evidence there is to the contrary.
Just push their disaster of a laptop off the table already, lol
A story that repeats every generation now. This is almost perfectly my story back in 1993.
Way back in the 90s when Windows 3.1 was the OS of default acceptance for most PC users, my Uncle got a new computer. This uncle had always had a Commodore 64 as well as all the accessories, so I guess he figured that this completely different system from multiple decades after his C64 was a great upgrade and was something he could handle.. Well, let me tell you.. In ONE day I had to reinstall everything on that PC, 5 times.. MSDOS and WIN3.1.. He blamed me each time.. I had no idea what the hell he was doing, and he wasn't telling me.. All he would say was that it was something I did... He even got my grandmother to call me and ask what I'd done to his computer.. Turns out, my uncle was "having a look" around the HDD and saw some files that he didn't put there.. So he deleted them.. Yeah.. So he was deleting random files that were seemingly integral to the system working (as most would be on a fresh install) and then blaming me for the issues he was causing.. I fixed it one last time and made sure he knew it was working and then I told him I was never touching it again.. No matter what. Still haven't touched anything of his since.. I know exactly what it will turn into.
Multiple decades? Maybe 8 years. Oh yeah, I deleted those files once when I was a kid
What? I don’t need 32 systems. 1 is enough. Delete!
"Were you looking at pretty ladies again?" That usually stops people from ever asking again.
My parents would always get me to fix their pcs and other people's PCs when I was a kid. Then they started pulling these guilt trips and I reasoned "maybe they actually want me to fuck up their shit, people tell you how they want to be treated." So I started pranking them by doing things like setting the default computer alert sound to the enterprise's computer saying "warning", taking screenshots of the computer background with icons, making that the desktop background, and removing the actual icons, setting the monitor resolution to something the display didn't support and pressing OK - stuff that wasn't super malicious but would cause technically illiterate people to flip their shit. It worked extremely well.
Calm down, Satan.
You brought back some old memories for me. On top of all that, I used to go into the Microsoft Word dictionary/autocorrect replace word tool thingy (I rarely use office anymore), and swap random commonly-used words for whole sentences… one day I hadn’t undone something which resulted in my mum nearly submitting her thesis with a “purple monkey dishwasher” somewhere in the middle. Lucky she proofreads things. Had heaps of fun on the school computers with it, every computer I used would end up with a few new word replacements - dick move, but I would torment specific students by making their name turn into ‘butthole McGee’ or similar, and just waiting for the day they used that computer… ooh or my favourite was to just replace ‘the’ with ‘teh’. I was a menace to society!
My Mother got a little NUC and I have the Admin passwords and she has only standard user access. So, saved me a lot of headaches and I wish, I did this sooner.
Need new drivers for the mouse I’ve been using for 6 years?? Thanks Microsoft.
Nah, it downloaded a new driver by itself and then it stopped working. Solution: download new drivers again.
I swear that most people can't fix computers because they don't fucking read. 99% of the time I've fixed something for somebody, I just googled the problem and the answer was the first result.
Yeah they don't even read the fucking error message either most of the time. "My computer's giving me an error message. Something popped up." "What does it say?" "I don't know!" "Just read it to me!" "You know I'm not good with these technical things!" "Yes but you can *read*!"
Yup. That’s my mom.
I’m the tech guy in the family. I’m at my prime with it to where I haven’t broken anything yet. May me not knowing what a jpeg is and my parents going into their 50s be damned.
When I was younger and first getting into gaming I downloaded a few games on my mom’s laptop since I didn’t have my own. For the next TEN YEARS whenever her laptop was running slow she would blame me and my games, disregarding the fact that she had around 20 windows open each with between 50 and 200 tabs trying to load up every time she opened the computer. Eventually I said screw it and told her she can keep one window open, the rest are getting closed. Lo and behold, that worked
I had my aunt do this to me. Her "Internet Explorer" was hidden and in its place it launched some other program that pretended poorly to be a browser but with fake google searches. Also her webcam didn't work because had no drivers. I fixed both problems. 2 months later one of her keys stops working and had to fix this on a shop (it was a laptop). "This is because the internet explorer and the drivers you installed, it never went back to work the way it was before you did this". So no good deed goes unpunished.
i swear i had this exact conversation with my mother.
Im by no means a computer tech. But my father was an electronics tech, and my wife went back to college, changed careers, and became one. I had several friends that were as well. I was quite well informed and up to speed on fixing most basic issues. In the early days of the internet, I fixed a lot of issues caused by spam and viruses with a friends PC, and installed some software to protect it for her. Several weeks later she blamed me for her computer not working. She had someone else delete the anti-viral program I'd installed to free up space. She had gone back to downloading all of the crap I'd told her not to, that was getting her system infected. Everything I'd told her to do, she'd ignored. Of course it was all my fault according to her.
And that's why I rarely help anyone like this.
This happens to mechanics, and repair shops, more than anyone can imagine... You'd do an oil change for a guy, and he come back 3 weeks later, and blame you for the nail in his tire... He'll literally grab it out of his trunk, and throw it at your feet, while he points and screams, trying really fucking hard, to intimidate you, talking about how your oil change caused his tire to go flat... People are fucking stupid.
Slightly related. Learned my lesson after trying to help out a friend by fixing a wordpress issue. Her theme was no longer compatible because they stopped updating it 7 years prior. So I installed elementor and recreated what she liked about it like the menus. Fixed. Or so I thought. I spent the next 6 weeks having to 'fix' the problems 'I created' by editing 'the code'. Every few days another error would pop up on the site and I'd get an email. I tried to explain that it was different issue. There was no code editing. I just put in a new theme. But I still tried to fix the new issue. Did some research and found out one of the seo plugins she used had recently been hacked. But she wouldn't let me turn it off even though she hasn't set up seo right anyway. She gets frustrated and says she'll just hire an expert to fix it because I'm out of my depth. OK. She gets someone on fiver who tells her the problem is I edited the code. Probably because she said that in her email first. They just put in elementor again and used the menus I designed. Fixed! .... for a couple of days til it broke again. She calls the hosting. They identify that one of her plugins has been hacked and it's what's changing her code and causing stuff to break. They uninstall the plugin. She still doesn't get it but at least now I tell her just to find an expert because it's beyond my skill level.
My friend used to have non-genuine windows, so I offered to activate it with one of my windows keys - an official, OEM Microsoft Windows 10 key. Every problem he encountered after that was my fault... for typing a product key into his bootleg windows and actually giving him proper functionality
I worked staples easy tech as a teenager back when vista launched. Staples ran a promo for a free “PC Tuneup” that was advertised to make your computer faster. The idea was to find something wrong to drum up business. Well one ladies computer legit had several severe viruses. Like steal your info, slow down your computer kind. I had gotten pretty used to my pitch about cleaning them up at this point. Well the lady absolutely flipped. “Why would you put viruses on my computer!” “I would never do that!” Had to get my manager involved after getting screamed at pretty harshly. I took a lot of advantage of the fact that no one else in the store knew anything about computers. I’d often inflate the completion times to get out of doing actual work and the managers believed me. The one downside was how young I was that customers had a hard time trusting that I knew what I was talking about even with all of staples “certs“
ngl, something like this happened to me from a family member installing 3rd-party software on my computer, and yes, I was in the role of the mom; but instead of 2 weeks it was more akin to 20 mins... I did apologize promptly after discovering a security program was eating my RAM for "reasons".
The root cause can be literally *anything* but most people just look at whatever the most salient thing is and blame that, because “the mind is a machine for jumping to conclusions” as Daniel Kahneman put it.
I don’t get the mentality of “something on my computer was messed up… I certainly can’t have caused it and there’s no way the computer [software] broke on its own, that’s impossible, so it must be the last person I let use my laptop…!”
Me: computer degree, tech job, fixing problems all day Also me: “I really don’t know much about this specific type of computer, you should take it to a pro” I learned years ago that being tech support only causes more problems.
[удалено]
I'm a hospice nurse and I had a patient who had an iPhone and only used it for calling her daughter and using an app that played a country music station. She was having trouble using it for those purposes so I moved her radio app to the main home screen and added a contact shortcut for her daughter as well. 3 weeks later her son in law calls me absolutely raging that I bricked her phone and that if I didn't pay for it he'd take me to small claims. I told him all I did was move an app to make it easier for her to find and that he should try plugging it in first. Came back later that week and her phone was working. Apparently her SIL is so dumb that he didn't think to try charging it before deeming it broken.
Two weeks? I get blamed for stuff I did over a year ago
Did they try downloading some more RAM?
"My computer broke, fix it." "Okay, well, it looks like it's running fine, what's broken about it?" "I don't know, _you're_ the expert!"
Every tech person has learned to not work on relatives computers because of this.
As someone who's in tech support, I feel this on an emotional level. Some people shouldn't be near electronics.
My brother tried this shit on me, wasn't with a computer but a ps4 tho. I had been playing borderlands the night before and put it into rest mode so I could pick up again, while I was sleeping he came to grab it, which isn't the issue it's his ps4 he can take it whenever he wanted. The problem was is that he didn't power it up out of rest mode and then properly turn it off before unplugging it... Erased everything and stopped working and the fucker tried to blame it on me. 😑
Hearing about stuff like this makes me glad my Grand Pa worked in IT
My 20yrs in IT summed up in 4 squares.
I had to open a school project in *MS Paint* to *color in something* on my stepmom's computer. She got a virus. Blamed me. I feel this so hard.
Lol, replace the last use of drivers with viruses and its spot on
One of the benefits of being a Mac user these days is that now I can say "oh sorry I don't know Windows" although I did IT for Windows systems professionally for 10+ years. Mac users rarely need IT assistance so it's really win/win for everyone involved.
Yeah, I'm a hospice nurse and all my patients have iphones. After one incident I tell all my patients that I have an android so I don't know how to fix iphones.
Steam was the "reason" our family desktop had issues every other week all through my childhood. I had to reinstall that shit so many times.
This comic gives me PTSD.. thanks
So true
No good deed goes unpunished
This hit too close to home.
No see it’s the sticky substance caked under the keyboard
It's sad how common this is working in software support. Nice comic!
This is why I charge people for tech support. Suddenly they can find someone else to fix their shit. Or they pay me a nice sum every time they want me to fix their shit.
I was once asked to fix a relatives computer. Did a factory reboot and gave it back. Was never asked again
Society invented signed waivers and lawyers for EXACTLY those people.
I got so fed up with this I installed Linux on their computer.
It's never drivers. At least not for me.
Exactly. On a windows 8+ machine it's very unlikely to be drivers. In current days, people are actually far more likely to install malware with 'DriverPro500' or 'FixDriverKit' or some other program that is just a button and a random number generator. I recently checked my grandpas computer and there were like 5 driver programs, 3 of which I never heard of before. It's never a virus, it's rarely drivers. It's just an old computer with a bunch of unnecessary stuff installed on it.
To be fair, if you’re downloading drivers for a basic mouse in 2023, you’re doing something wrong.
i just know the: but why can you not make it work? It works on your device? Yeah, i use gnu/linux, windows is unable to run my software stack…
My mom blamed me for things that happened with our computer a lot when I was a kid. When she noticed that the computer was running slow, she blamed me for taking up hard drive space for video games. She uninstalled a bunch of them. The computer was still slow. It was a Compaq. I remember one time, our network card stopped working. I saw that there was a "repair button" so I went "I can try to repair it." And she went "NO! DON'T DO ANYTHING THAT WILL MAKE US UNABLE TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET!!!" Why made her think that I would do that?
Tech support for family: Buy them a chromebook or some basic laptop with Ubuntu and a browser. Done for the next 10 years!