Rather ironic to read this as my washing machine is about one year old and is currently dead. I have to take off the entire afternoon from work to wait for the washing machine repairman to come and take a look at it and tell me how much it will cost to repair.
I agree that things are generally not made as well as they used to be. Go look at the construction quality on a McMansion and then compare it to a pre-ww2 house. Or for an even better example, check out your dresser or table or other big piece of furniture. Chances are it's a bunch of particle board slapped together with glue and staples in an assembly line in some third-world country. It might have a nice veneer on it but give it some time, it was not made to last.
I recall there was (is?) a married couple who are both astronauts. No idea if they have ever served on the same mission, but assuming they have I would expect NASA wouldn't object to allowing them to "conduct some research"...
I ran into this exact problem once and used proc explorer to figure out wtf was going on. It does the job. In that case it was some new spyware, I updated spybot to the beta definitions and that took care of it without a problem.
It's probably feasible but I personally hate doing remote support and I think it scares customers that you can hijack their computer over teh intarweb. If you cover a large geographical area or have a lot of customers with simple software issues it may be worthwhile.
If you have techie friends let them know what you are up to. Every IT person gets asked by non-IT friends and family for help regularly - most of us don't want to deal with random home users though. When I was doing freelance work I got a lot of referrals this way. Now that I have a full time job I give out a fair number of referrals to a guy at work who does freelance stuff. I'd guess that if you offer $10 or $20 per referral you will get even more of your IT friends passing people to you.
In a worst case scenario you can do a dirty reinstall by backing up their Windows directory, reinstalling Windows, then pointing the fresh install at their backed up Windows directory when it asks for drivers. Most of the time it works, at least in Win9x. In any situation where you are doing more than messing around with some settings you should always explain up front what you are doing, what the consequences may be, and then get their explicit consent. Even if you are uninstalling shit like Weatherbug - make sure they know it. If you install any new software, even Firefox or Spybot - make sure they know it. If you back their data up onto your hardware - make sure they know it.
On those really old machines that are totally fucked, explain that the cost to fix it will likely meet or exceed the cost of replacement. Usually they won't care, but if they do tell them you can provide consultation on a replacement (assuming you can) or can build them a new box for $x (assuming you are willing).
The worst situation to be in is when you have done something the customer didn't expect and are not happy about. I had a situation once when I was in college where a girl lost all her data because I asked "do you have data back ups?" rather than "I am about to wipe your hard drive, you will lose all data on the machine, do you have your data backed up somewhere other than on your computer?". She didn't understand that saying yes to "do you have back ups?" was the wrong answer when your back up is another folder on the same fucking hard drive. Make everything explicit and explain the consequences of your actions before you take them.
Screw the USB key - get an external hard drive. If you're concerned about size you can assemble one from a laptop HDD. If you ever support Macs you can put a bootable partition on there loaded with your diagnostics. Also, the Ultimate Boot CD - bring a copy, it's got a bunch of useful tools on it.
I played Doom3 on minimum specs - the gameplay obviously wasn't there so I never played it again. I also played HL2/HL2DM/CS:S on minimum specs for almost a year before upgrading my computer so it runs better and looks nice now - the gameplay obviously was there. For people who play FPS games, particularly multiplayer, the PC is where it is at and probably always will be.
Isn't that how it works already? I vaguely recall when I went to public highschool that there was a special school where they sent the kids who got into trouble often enough or who had other issues.
There ASRock 939Dual natively supports both AGP and PCI-E and it has a riser card to upgrade it to AM2. Check out the performance comparisons - it runs full speed with whatever combo you throw at it - people have even gotten it working with a video card in each slot (no SLI that way unfortunately). I've had one for almost a year now and it runs great. OC'd an A64 in it without issue - plays games at framerates comparable to similar boards, no stability issues, and I've got an upgrade path to a new video card and CPU.
I love the 3com 905's - they are cheap and durable and work in everything. We have a huge amount of them floating around at work. They don't help performance much but they do perform better than anything else I've seen besides the NICs built in to nforce boards.
Not sure if this is still the case but AMD was putting some fairly decent heatsink/fan combos on their retail CPUs for awhile. I have an A64 that can OC a huge amount on stock cooling. Some video cards come with stock cooling that is fairly decent too - LeadTek in particular has a long history of putting higher quality cooling on their boards.
Another cooling option that might work for a media PC is to underclock/undervolt - I know at least some of the time you can undervolt and get a decent heat reduction without sacrificing performance/stability. In the cases where stability is affected a bit of underclocking will usually solve the problem, if you're willing to trade in a bit of performance. I once had a AXP that would overheat in certain circumstances (it was heavily OC'd) - I dropped the voltage on it to a little below spec and it still ran without a hitch but stopped overheating. It ran like that without issue for years before I upgraded.
I have the same problem. I would go with a local DSL provider instead of Comcast, even if it were a little more expensive or slower. But when it comes down to Qwest vs. Comcast I have to go with Comcast.
You can even adjust how long it stays up and how transparent it is. It really is one of the most useful features in Outlook2k3 for those of us who get a lot of email in a day.
At work we had some old drives we had to "erase" before they were disposed of. We powered them up and then took magnets from previously destroyed hard drives and rubbed them back and forth across the HDD casings. It made lots of very exciting noises. Not sure how effective this is (we took the drives apart afterwards just to be sure) but it seems like attacking a spinning drive with a powerful magnet should do the trick. Of course it is probably obvious that the drive didn't die on its own so you're still screwed in court.
It looks like some of the most heavily Republican states are actually welfare states that pull in more tax dollars than they contribute and some of the most heavily Democratic states give way more than they get back. That's pretty damn ironic.
Is this a private college? I work at a college and the only people who follow a schedule like that are the students. The faculty get a lot more days off too of course, but everyone else at the college works even when the college is "closed" because there is always work to be done. I've never heard of a college shutting down for spring break, there are always administrative tasks to be completed - transcript requests to process at the very least.
This reminds me of the SF book Signal to Noise (Eric Nylund I think was the author - if you haven't read it and want to don't read the rest of my comment). In it the main character makes contact with an alien who trades him info about the earth for various technologies which all have a dark side. One of the technologies is teleportation, except each time something is teleported it draws energy from the rotation of the earth. That's no big deal if you don't pull too much energy...
At work we use Clientele by Epicor. It's an old version though, not sure what the newest one has in it but probably close to what you need.
At the place I worked before that I built a custom system that was all web-based, if you're small enough and have the available skill-set that might be a good option.
I had one a lot like this except it only happened in one room. We pulled the machine back for testing and could never find a thing wrong with it, we return it to the field and the problem returns randomly. After wasting too much time trying to figure it out I think we just gave up and swapped the damn thing for an identical box.
I've yet to meet someone experienced with fixing computers who does not have this happen. It is very weird and after awhile the people you support start noticing it and telling jokes about how the machines either fear or miss your presense.
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Rather ironic to read this as my washing machine is about one year old and is currently dead. I have to take off the entire afternoon from work to wait for the washing machine repairman to come and take a look at it and tell me how much it will cost to repair.
I agree that things are generally not made as well as they used to be. Go look at the construction quality on a McMansion and then compare it to a pre-ww2 house. Or for an even better example, check out your dresser or table or other big piece of furniture. Chances are it's a bunch of particle board slapped together with glue and staples in an assembly line in some third-world country. It might have a nice veneer on it but give it some time, it was not made to last.
I recall there was (is?) a married couple who are both astronauts. No idea if they have ever served on the same mission, but assuming they have I would expect NASA wouldn't object to allowing them to "conduct some research"...
That is odd because you always hear about how Europe is more heavily regulated than the US, France in particular.
Wow, that is a good deal. Cheaper than anything comparable I've seen in the US, and you get a free computer out of it.
I ran into this exact problem once and used proc explorer to figure out wtf was going on. It does the job. In that case it was some new spyware, I updated spybot to the beta definitions and that took care of it without a problem.
It's probably feasible but I personally hate doing remote support and I think it scares customers that you can hijack their computer over teh intarweb. If you cover a large geographical area or have a lot of customers with simple software issues it may be worthwhile.
If you have techie friends let them know what you are up to. Every IT person gets asked by non-IT friends and family for help regularly - most of us don't want to deal with random home users though. When I was doing freelance work I got a lot of referrals this way. Now that I have a full time job I give out a fair number of referrals to a guy at work who does freelance stuff. I'd guess that if you offer $10 or $20 per referral you will get even more of your IT friends passing people to you.
You can configure Spybot to auto-update, auto-scan, and auto-clean. I've had to do it a few times for those re-infectors out there.
In a worst case scenario you can do a dirty reinstall by backing up their Windows directory, reinstalling Windows, then pointing the fresh install at their backed up Windows directory when it asks for drivers. Most of the time it works, at least in Win9x. In any situation where you are doing more than messing around with some settings you should always explain up front what you are doing, what the consequences may be, and then get their explicit consent. Even if you are uninstalling shit like Weatherbug - make sure they know it. If you install any new software, even Firefox or Spybot - make sure they know it. If you back their data up onto your hardware - make sure they know it.
On those really old machines that are totally fucked, explain that the cost to fix it will likely meet or exceed the cost of replacement. Usually they won't care, but if they do tell them you can provide consultation on a replacement (assuming you can) or can build them a new box for $x (assuming you are willing).
The worst situation to be in is when you have done something the customer didn't expect and are not happy about. I had a situation once when I was in college where a girl lost all her data because I asked "do you have data back ups?" rather than "I am about to wipe your hard drive, you will lose all data on the machine, do you have your data backed up somewhere other than on your computer?". She didn't understand that saying yes to "do you have back ups?" was the wrong answer when your back up is another folder on the same fucking hard drive. Make everything explicit and explain the consequences of your actions before you take them.
Screw the USB key - get an external hard drive. If you're concerned about size you can assemble one from a laptop HDD. If you ever support Macs you can put a bootable partition on there loaded with your diagnostics.
Also, the Ultimate Boot CD - bring a copy, it's got a bunch of useful tools on it.
Does it still break Siebel?
I played Doom3 on minimum specs - the gameplay obviously wasn't there so I never played it again. I also played HL2/HL2DM/CS:S on minimum specs for almost a year before upgrading my computer so it runs better and looks nice now - the gameplay obviously was there. For people who play FPS games, particularly multiplayer, the PC is where it is at and probably always will be.
Isn't that how it works already? I vaguely recall when I went to public highschool that there was a special school where they sent the kids who got into trouble often enough or who had other issues.
There ASRock 939Dual natively supports both AGP and PCI-E and it has a riser card to upgrade it to AM2. Check out the performance comparisons - it runs full speed with whatever combo you throw at it - people have even gotten it working with a video card in each slot (no SLI that way unfortunately).
I've had one for almost a year now and it runs great. OC'd an A64 in it without issue - plays games at framerates comparable to similar boards, no stability issues, and I've got an upgrade path to a new video card and CPU.
I love the 3com 905's - they are cheap and durable and work in everything. We have a huge amount of them floating around at work. They don't help performance much but they do perform better than anything else I've seen besides the NICs built in to nforce boards.
Not sure if this is still the case but AMD was putting some fairly decent heatsink/fan combos on their retail CPUs for awhile. I have an A64 that can OC a huge amount on stock cooling.
Some video cards come with stock cooling that is fairly decent too - LeadTek in particular has a long history of putting higher quality cooling on their boards.
Another cooling option that might work for a media PC is to underclock/undervolt - I know at least some of the time you can undervolt and get a decent heat reduction without sacrificing performance/stability. In the cases where stability is affected a bit of underclocking will usually solve the problem, if you're willing to trade in a bit of performance. I once had a AXP that would overheat in certain circumstances (it was heavily OC'd) - I dropped the voltage on it to a little below spec and it still ran without a hitch but stopped overheating. It ran like that without issue for years before I upgraded.
I have the same problem. I would go with a local DSL provider instead of Comcast, even if it were a little more expensive or slower. But when it comes down to Qwest vs. Comcast I have to go with Comcast.
You can even adjust how long it stays up and how transparent it is. It really is one of the most useful features in Outlook2k3 for those of us who get a lot of email in a day.
At work we had some old drives we had to "erase" before they were disposed of. We powered them up and then took magnets from previously destroyed hard drives and rubbed them back and forth across the HDD casings. It made lots of very exciting noises. Not sure how effective this is (we took the drives apart afterwards just to be sure) but it seems like attacking a spinning drive with a powerful magnet should do the trick. Of course it is probably obvious that the drive didn't die on its own so you're still screwed in court.
It looks like some of the most heavily Republican states are actually welfare states that pull in more tax dollars than they contribute and some of the most heavily Democratic states give way more than they get back. That's pretty damn ironic.
Here is the report from the Tax Foundation:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr139.pdf
Is this a private college? I work at a college and the only people who follow a schedule like that are the students. The faculty get a lot more days off too of course, but everyone else at the college works even when the college is "closed" because there is always work to be done. I've never heard of a college shutting down for spring break, there are always administrative tasks to be completed - transcript requests to process at the very least.
This reminds me of the SF book Signal to Noise (Eric Nylund I think was the author - if you haven't read it and want to don't read the rest of my comment). In it the main character makes contact with an alien who trades him info about the earth for various technologies which all have a dark side. One of the technologies is teleportation, except each time something is teleported it draws energy from the rotation of the earth. That's no big deal if you don't pull too much energy...
At work we use Clientele by Epicor. It's an old version though, not sure what the newest one has in it but probably close to what you need.
At the place I worked before that I built a custom system that was all web-based, if you're small enough and have the available skill-set that might be a good option.
I had one a lot like this except it only happened in one room. We pulled the machine back for testing and could never find a thing wrong with it, we return it to the field and the problem returns randomly. After wasting too much time trying to figure it out I think we just gave up and swapped the damn thing for an identical box.
I've yet to meet someone experienced with fixing computers who does not have this happen. It is very weird and after awhile the people you support start noticing it and telling jokes about how the machines either fear or miss your presense.