Tag: captain support

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Captain Support…

I’m starting to think I’ve made a move into the PC support business, without wanting to or being paid for it…

Over the last couple of weeks my brothers laptop (one of my old ones) has been acting a bit strange. Nothing I could put my finder on, but something was not quite right. Yesterday my “Support Senses” started to tingle when I noticed some files and directories had become read-only for no apparent reason. A meer mortal might have considered trying to diagnose the problem, but this looked like a job for Captain Support. Quicker than a flash Captain Support did a fresh backup of all the photos and documents, then wasted that no good son of a… Dell.

Several hours and many Windows updates later there was a fresh copy of Windows Vista installed. Piece and harmony returned to the world. Captain Support even remembered to configure the VPN connection so his brother could connect to work.

Cheers

Tim…

Captain Support is the ongoing tale of a science nerd who was innocently sequencing sex-incompatibility genes in Brassica oleracea (wild cabbage) when he was spiked by the pins of a radioactive “i386 DX2/66” chip, transforming him into a PC support superhero.

More PC support…

One of my Yoga buddies was given a laptop by is dad and wanted to get it connected over wireless. His dad also gave him a wireless ADSL router, but couldn’t get it set up.  This sounds like a job for Captain Support…

The router wasn’t able to connect to the internet. It turned out that the router was not working properly and needed a firmware update. Next issue was the wireless connection between the router and the laptop was kinda funky. The connection would never work when any form of encryption was turned on. In the end I had to turn off encryption and stopped the router from broadcasting in an attempt to reduce the chances of people piggy-backing on it.

How are normal folk meant to cope with this? The answer is they don’t and they need Captain Support… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Computers are still complicated…

A couple of days ago I was sorting a printer out for my mom. It was a 5 minute job, but it was preceded by over 2 hours of getting the laptop up to date…

She only turns it on to do a specific task, like send an email, then it is switched straight off, so it is never on for very long. As a result it had not done a Windows Update or AVG update or a Virus scan for ages. I dread to think of the state of the PCs out there where the owners don’t have a friend or member of the family providing PC support.

This sort of experience makes me think that maybe something like the iPad is a good idea for most regular folk. Keep everything on the net and use the simplest client possible, so you can’t screw yourself up.

Cheers

Tim…