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Who told all the old people that "defragging" fixes everything?

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The one I hate is when I tell someone they need more memory they reply "If I delete some of the video and mp3 files will that help ?" . memory is not hard drive damnit !

As for defrag, just don't ever delete anything and you have nothing to defrag 🙂
 
Yeah the storage and memory confusion I hear a lot of as well.

As far as defragging goes, it's been years since I've run it on my home computer. I would run it every now and then on my work machine. I only did it though when working on a large, several thousand part, assembly. A lot of the stuff was library parts pulled from the server before hand and defragging after it was local sped up load times quite noticeably.
 
IcePickFreak said:
Yeah the storage and memory confusion I hear a lot of as well.

As far as defragging goes, it's been years since I've run it on my home computer. I would run it every now and then on my work machine. I only did it though when working on a large, several thousand part, assembly. A lot of the stuff was library parts pulled from the server before hand and defragging after it was local sped up load times quite noticeably.
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Windows can be helped by defragging, but it isn't nearly as necessary as a lot of people think. On XP when you're looking at a solid bar of red in the defrag window, that'll generally be helped by running defrag. That's something you should only have to do once a year or so. It certainly isn't a weekly activity, much less something that has to constantly run in the background like some 3rd party defraggers did.
 
IronWing said:
Anyone know how to turn off Adobe Type Manager in Win 7? That's the key to really speeding things up.
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Uninstall? I don't know what that is, but removing Adobe products generally does wonders for computers performance and security.
 
i de-frag my rack mount in my logging truck, but that is because i deal with 2 to 3 gig databases all the time. clean up the old data and defrag every month or so seems to keep my software from locking up when collecting data.
 
Modelworks said:
The one I hate is when I tell someone they need more memory they reply "If I delete some of the video and mp3 files will that help ?" . memory is not storage damnit !

As for defrag, just don't ever delete anything and you have nothing to defrag 🙂
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FTFY. Honestly, if you can't get the terminology right, don't expect them to. It's a logical assumption on their part. The computer "remembers" their files.
 
MagnusTheBrewer said:
Fritzo, calm down. I love doing support for older folks. They always pay in cash, they give you cookies and coffee while you're working and they don't think it's odd that you just fixed it for them 3 months ago.
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This. I've made hundreds and hundreds off people like this. I'll get them up and running, then they'll give me banana bread and coffee or juice or something and I'll listen to them talk about the good old days for a while.

Then their grandkid comes over a couple months later and installs limewire or something and totally borks their rig. Lather, rinse, repeat.
 
Haven't defragged in years, come to think of it I haven't had to reinstall the OS in years either. Though I do run a light weight AV program, I always keep the startup and background apps to a bare minimum and I don't go around installing/deleting shit all the time.

I don't mind being paid to fix other people's systems that are screwed up, 90% of the time by user error. Doesn't frustrate me one bit!
 
bignateyk said:
If someone asks me what's wrong with their computer I usually tell them to defragment.

Why? Because I don't want to help them and it's an easy way to get them out of my hair.
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LOL, yeah when I saw this thread I knew this was the answer. Its not as common on tech forums now, but if you go to less tech oriented places or places fill with morons to ask a PC related question (say you foolishly tried to get help on steam forums) you'll still get people saying "try defragmenting" which basically means, please fuck off for several hours.

I'm sort of amazed how much traction this meme has...I have to ask, has defragmenting ever in the history of man kind fixed an actual "it doesn't work" problem? I'll give you that maybe in some cases it improved hard drive performance (with the vast majority of these supposed cases actually being placebo effect) but its always trotted out as being a solution to everything from out of date drivers to PCs not booting to not having flash installed.

Anyway, when you don't want to help some one what you do is tell them to get a Mac because they're so much better. When they fuck their Mac up and ask you to help them fix it just say "Sorry man, I don't know anything about Macs."
 
DesiPower said:
Yes...
mac_users.jpg
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D:
 
Fritzo said:
I swear to god if I hear "My computer takes 12 minutes to load and I get pop ups everywhere telling me I have to buy some $79.95 antivirus package to get rid of 433 detected infections. I defragged my computer and that didn't even help!"... I'm gonna donkey punch someone.

Grandma doesn't even know what defragmenting does, much less what it means...it seems someone told anyone over 60 that it's a magical fix that cures any computer problem. 😡
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Sorry, that was me, along with the rest of Tech Support in the 90's and early 2000s. You see, most of the problems we saw was what we called 'ADR' or 'Ain't Doin' Right!' where a customer would call in and tell us that their system seems to be moving slower today then yesterday. So, we would nod at them all serious like and tell them that is needs defragging, oh and make sure you reboot afterwards (just incase something really is wrong.)
After several hours of watching little boxes blink they felt that their computer was speeding along when they finally got back into windows NT and started working again. Problem fixed, and I was able to work on my P1 problems while only occasionally having to tell the defragging customer that, 'yes, it is suppose to take this long, just wait. As long as it is still blinking it is still working'
So, you can blame it all on me.
Sorry.
 
dainthomas said:
This. I've made hundreds and hundreds off people like this. I'll get them up and running, then they'll give me banana bread and coffee or juice or something and I'll listen to them talk about the good old days for a while.

Then their grandkid comes over a couple months later and installs limewire or something and totally borks their rig. Lather, rinse, repeat.
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That's great, but I have to talk to 30-40 of them a day over the phone from all over the country, and they pay us on average $10/month. Hard to be accepting in those circumstances.
 
Fritzo said:
That's great, but I have to talk to 30-40 of them a day over the phone from all over the country, and they pay us on average $10/month. Hard to be accepting in those circumstances.
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So, what you're really ranting about is being stuck in a call center. Can't help you there bro, call centers be the scum sucking masters of the universe...and, about that 16 minute bathroom break yesterday.
 
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