The Most frustrating thing you deal with when working on other people's computers.

[88keys]

Are you sure you put all of the files you want to keep in that folder right?

Yes, I'm sure.

*moves folder over to network*
*re images PC*
*downloads folder from network*

WHERE DID MY STUFF GO!?

Well I asked you if you had moved your important data to that folder.

I did do that, but this, this, this and this is gone!

I'm sorry, but I don't know where you keep your important files, thats why I asked you to move them into that folder so I can save them to my network can pull them when I'm done. Everything that was in that folder is what's on your computer.

 

[TheVrolok]

You pretty much nailed it in the OP. People lack any sort of organization in file storage. People who have documents/pictures /etc scattered over 15 different "document" folders with no rhyme or reason drive me nuts.

 

[RaistlinZ]

The people themselves are the worst part about working on people's computers.

 

[Jadow]

my users pretty much stick to my documents and the desktop. gotta remember to get that email archive and ie favorites though.

 

[JulesMaximus]

That reminds me, I need to backup my wife's computer...

 

[mmntech]

I hate working on other people's computers. I think most techie people do for a few reasons.

1) They assume you know how to do everything, and I mean EVERYTHING.
"How do I do this in (insert obscure program here)?"
"I don't know, look it up"
"What?! I thought you were supposed to know about computers"

2) They assume you can repair it instantly
My dad is notorious for this. He'll stand over me while I'm working and keep asking why it's taking so long. Worse is when he becomes the armchair repairman and asks "why do you need to do that? You don't need to do that." Well if you knew how to fix it, why did you ask me to begin with?

3) They refuse to learn good habits, thus keep needing fixes
Backing up important files, not clicking suspicious emails and websites, etc. Or clicking on things randomly when the computer isn't doing what they want, then breaking it even worse.

This is why everybody should get an iPad, because it's purposely designed with these in mind. It does 99% of what most people use computers for. It automatically backs up all your important files remotely, doesn't get viruses, keeps everything neat and self contained. Basically there's no way your average idiot can screw it up.

 

[olds]

Everything goes into My Documents and I only have to back up that folder.
I just backed up my work computer. Our new computers came in and I am on vacation. It wouldn't surprise me to get back after 2 weeks and find my new laptop there with a standard image and my old computer gone.

 

[Mixolydian]

Some people just need to learn from their stupidity the hard way.

 

[Jeff7]

I hate working on other people's computers. I think most techie people do for a few reasons.

1) They assume you know how to do everything, and I mean EVERYTHING.
"How do I do this in (insert obscure program here)?"
"I don't know, look it up"
"What?! I thought you were supposed to know about computers"

Or just general clairvoyance.
"My computer's doing this thing where an error box pops up when I click on things in the Internet. Why does it do that?"

-"What program are you using? What does the error box say?"

"How the hell should I know? Don't you know anything about computers? Now can you fix it, or do I have to find someone smarter?"

2) They assume you can repair it instantly
My dad is notorious for this. He'll stand over me while I'm working and keep asking why it's taking so long. Worse is when he becomes the armchair repairman and asks "why do you need to do that? You don't need to do that." Well if you knew how to fix it, why did you ask me to begin with?

This one's great anywhere. Call in the expert, and then proceed to tell him how it should be done. It happens at work, too, when Marketing or Sales or management tries to play Engineer, and do the design work.

"I think we should build it like this."

-"I think we shouldn't, because building it like that will cost 5x more than it costs now, and it will cause about $5,000 in damage the first time it's powered on."

3) They refuse to learn good habits, thus keep needing fixes
Backing up important files, not clicking suspicious emails and websites, etc. Or clicking on things randomly when the computer isn't doing what they want, then breaking it even worse.

Yes. This.
Toolbars and spyware...constantly. It also doesn't help if they can't tell the difference between Firefox and Internet Explorer.
"Click the orange icon, called 'Firefox.'"
This is not as easy as it sounds.

"But this one's called 'Internet' Explorer, and I wanted to use the Internet."

This is why everybody should get an iPad, because it's purposely designed with these in mind. It does 99% of what most people use computers for. It automatically backs up all your important files remotely, doesn't get viruses, keeps everything neat and self contained. Basically there's no way your average idiot can screw it up.

Then the questions will be related to how to bypass those things, or how to fix the broken screen, or the coffee- or toilet-water- or bathtub-water-saturated electronics.

 

[Leyawiin]

Cleaning the damned thing. With my family's computers that I get tasked to work on its usually a hardware failure I get to debug. They NEVER clean their PCs. I recently worked on my sister's computer and it had at least two inches of dust everywhere in it. All the fans were totally blocked with dust (no wonder the PS crapped out and took the mobo with it). After cleaning when I turned it on it still smelled like her nasty apartment. I worked on it on the patio for that reason.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I refused an offer long ago to help people with their pc in return for payment of money. The primary reason is that i noticed that too many people wanted to be adminstrator while there was no need for it.

Only one person i helped out and he logs in as a user with limited rights.
He can log in as administrator so he can install his programs but only for installation of programs or to change certain settings. If that is not the case he logs in as a normal user.
His windows installation is now almost 10 years old and still functions. He makes regular backups of his document folder to a usb stick.
Most people are not like that at all.

I personally back up often and make use of syncback free.
It is a freeware version of a commercial program that just works great.
It is rules based and makes either backups, synchronizes or just copies.
Every week i plug in my backup HDD, execute the rule and syncback searches for the changes, shows the current progress and files to be backupped and then asks to continue with the back up process.

 

[mmntech]

Then the questions will be related to how to bypass those things, or how to fix the broken screen, or the coffee- or toilet-water- or bathtub-water-saturated electronics.

"Oh, it's under warranty. I wouldn't want to void it. Take it to the Genius Bar".

Problem solved. ^_^

 

[Jeff7]

"Oh, it's under warranty. I wouldn't want to void it. Take it to the Genius Bar".

Problem solved. ^_^

"Oh come on, I'll give you a beer for two days of work on it. A whole beer!"

 

[Schmide]

Seriously OP. You're not an expert if you think the user knows what's up.

1995 rant found.

 

[FeuerFrei]

People who find error messages impenetrable gobbledygook, and attempt to dismiss everything they don't understand by clicking the red X in the corner. Don't know what's going on? Just hit the X and you won't have to deal with it, right? Funny to watch them repeatedly dismiss the Save prompt all the while wondering why they cannot close what they're working on. The whole concept of parent and child windows is lost on them.

Also people that ask you to "conjure up" (lol) a website for them so they can add stuff to the cart and then print out the order for mailing. Please, it's like asking me to turn the pages of your book for you.

That person who guardedly admits things sure are a lot easier these days and computers are "good for SOME things." Emphasis on "some."

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I love how they stand over your shoulder and then freak out "for no reason" when you do something that they don't understand, but which might land you in their "special folder."

 

[gevorg]

The worst part about working on other people's computers is when something goes wrong with it at a later date, they immediately blame you "becuz u fixed it last time bro". I try to explain it with a car analogy, that all I did was an oil change, and this time your brakes are shot, but they still don't get it.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I learned years ago to never ask my wife that question about her stuff. Much easier to go hunt for it. Humans are not perfect, and part of their imperfection is that they forget stuff, or forget where it was placed to begin with.

Stupid humans. <insert Bender's voice>

 

[JamesV]

That's easy... someone asking me to help because their PC is slow, and going over and finding 100+ toolbars or some other crap add-on software.

Then I tell them, the reason is all this extra crap, and they say 'but I use that'.



Second, but not far away, is when I get called back because of problems, and find they turned off their AV and firewall to get something to work, and now can't understand why they get pop-ups and other strange things happening.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Oh, forgot one.

Working with other peoples' computers sucks because most of them don't have SSDs.

 

[Brainonska511]

Setting up computers for people - how much garbage can you store under your desk?

Helping someone with a program that they should really know how to use, at least in a basic way (eg: doing simple calculations in Excel).

Helping someone on their computer and seeing that they have more than 0 toolbars installed in the web-browser and lots of unnecessary tray icons. Of course it's going to run slow too..

Backups are not such a problem though. Anything Windows-based that I handle (for immediate family and myself), I use SyncBack Free on a schedule. Any linux box I set up in my lab, I use an rysnc over ssh script to backup nightly to our NAS.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm so glad I don't really get bothered as much to restore people's computers anymore. When I do I try to drag it as much as possible and they usually end up figuring it themselves or actually paying a company to do it.

But yeah, that was one of the worse. Or people who think all the cached stuff is going to stay, like URL auto completes and stuff. Some people actually rely on that instead of actual bookmarks.

Worse was restoring email, there was always the few occasions where for whever reason not all the emails would be there, and people would freak that "I deleted their emails".

The other bad thing was hunting for drivers for all their hardware. That alone could sometimes take like hours. Though, XP and up is better about that, but in the 98 and even 2000 days it was pretty brutal trying to find the NIC, sound, video etc drivers. Driverguide.com usually worked well, and using aida32 to find out what kind of hardware they have so I know what driver to search for.

I also don't miss the early days of XP, where a computer with like 256MB of ram would come preloaded with XP and be bloody slow and unusable out of the box, then putting windows 98 on it and trying to find drivers. Ugh... what a pain. I'm actually surprised I did not get flooded with people who want to get rid of windows 8. It seems most people just put up with it though. These type of people don't really use their computer for work, so as long as they can figure out how to get on Facebook to play Candy Crush they're usually happy.

 

[Jeff7]

The worst part about working on other people's computers is when something goes wrong with it at a later date, they immediately blame you "becuz u fixed it last time bro". I try to explain it with a car analogy, that all I did was an oil change, and this time your brakes are shot, but they still don't get it.

And even if they buy a new computer, anything that goes wrong with it is still somehow your fault.

 

[RockinZ28]

How fucking slow they are.

Takes 3 minutes to boot. Everybody always has about 1,000 processes running on start up. Memory is all used. Takes 30-60 seconds to open an internet browser. My desktop from 2003 with 1gb of ram and Windows 7 ultimate should not be faster than 2013 laptops lol.

 

[Red Squirrel]

How fucking slow they are.

Takes 3 minutes to boot. Everybody always has about 1,000 processes running on start up. Memory is all used. Takes 30-60 seconds to open an internet browser. My desktop from 2003 with 1gb of ram and Windows 7 ultimate should not be faster than 2013 laptops lol.

The best is when they say it's always been that way, and it's fine. What do you mean it's fine? I want to throw that computer out the window! LOL.

Oh, and smokers' computers. That's a whole other league.