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Dealing With The Always-Breaking Family PC?
Corby Ziesman asks: "I am sure many on Slashdot are entrusted to maintain computers for their family members. I've built a few computers for my sister over the years; however she constantly complains to me that 'something's wrong' with the computer, and claims that it 'just stopped working' all by itself. She blames the computer I built, calling it 'a piece of crap', yet it works flawlessly once I start using her old computer after she has upgraded. I've considered revoking her access to Windows, and giving her Ubuntu Linux or something, however she has a lot of games and art applications like Corel Painter that require Windows. How do I get her up and running, so that I don't have to keep fixing the computer every month? I'm tired of digging in the registry, checking the processes for spyware, and all that. I have also tried to educate her about how to use a computer intelligently, but she seems to lack common sense when it comes to what software is suspicious and bloated, and what is trustworthy. So I ask the Slashdot community: how do you cope with your family members who have a talent for torturing computers?"
Your family, that is.
But serious, look at some sort of OS imaging system. VMWare, Deep Freeze, a Live CD, etc. Then just create an area where they can save data. If they need new applications, you add them to the image.
It never failed once, and I never had to fix it, and my mother is very happy with it to write letters and her e-mails.
Because PC's are marketed as appliances, and appliances (as we all know) "just work" for years without our having to think about, most users are incapable of grasping the facts that any geek takes for granted (and which I won't recap here).
Your path is clear, unless you *want* to be a Windows support specialist, or have a secret masochistic streak; the next time your sister's box goes on the fritz give her the 800 number to Dell...and let them deal with her.
At the very least, after a Bangalore call center experience she *should* come back to you with a better attitude.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
If an app breaks, you can troubleshoot with regmon and filemon, i.e. many apps need r/w perms in their own directory for some retarded reason.
.INI file under \program files\appname is a security risk. Prevent me from writing to someone else's installation directory if you like, and certainly to the OS directory, but for Christ's sake, let me write to my own directory, already.
There are a lot of reasons for this, and they aren't all retarded. Sometimes it makes sense to install and run multiple instances of an application; e.g., one where each instance uses a specific virtual COM port. When the OS, in a misguided attempt at being trendy and "multi-user" and all that, forces everything to write to a user-specific data directory, that convenience goes out the window.
I have yet to hear a coherent explanation of why writing to my own
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Assuming the hardware and RAM is beefy enough to support it, consider the rather drastic approach of virtualization for this problem.
Using Linux as the host OS. Set it up so you can remotely SSH in to "fix" things when something breaks. Then use something like VMware to create a Windows virtual PC. Keep a copy of the finished image (or create a snapshot if you are using VMware tools).
Follow the advice of the person that gave the suggestion to use Ghost -- use a second drive for documents, email, etc. When she breaks something, all you have to do is shut down the Windows virtual machine, restore the snapshot, and restore it.
You could even go as far as creating an icon on a special linux user login -- "Fix my PC" -- and have it to it automatically.
Of course, you'll be sacrificing some of RAM and a chunk of CPU performance due to virtualization.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
I know people modded that funny, but that isn't a bad idea. However, since the poster mentioned Linux, why not set Linux up on a dual boot, disable all internet access on MS Windows, then set up internet access on Linux only. That way, the sister will still be able to run the "holy" Windows programs, but will not easily be able to download and install malware. No XP Professional required.
I don't understand why they wouldn't supply the basic security features in the Home version. In fact, they should have put it in Windows 95. Linux and FreeBSD both had file permissions from the beginning--okay I haven't been using them that long, but I know it was before '95. I wonder why that is...oh yeah, MS doesn't care about their customers, they just want to fleece them.