My dad volunteered me to help a friend of his with a computer he couldn’t get a file to open on.
I’ve informed my dad that he’s an asshole for not asking me first but I’m not going to refuse to do it… this time, I know who the friend is, only the computer itself is going to make this suuuck.
Anyway, he brought his computer over. A 15 year old Dell AIO running fucking Windows 11. :neocat_o_o:
He says he took it to some computer shop a few months ago and they removed some software and installed a 1tb SSD and more RAM.
While going over through all the things listed below I basically told him a 15 year old computer is never going to run very well with Windows 11 in so many words. (No way, at this point, am I’m going to try to switch this 60+ guy over to Linux which is really the only way this thing would be near what I’d consider usable. I am not prepared to do that kind of tutoring.) he doesn’t sound like he’s open or able to spend much. I tell him the cheapest machines are almost always trash out of the box. Torture machines with outdated chipsets that are full of Original Equipment Manufacturer installed garbageware and under speced any way they can. It’s customer-abuse for a quick buck. I hate everything. Blah blah blah.
He opens chrome. Sixty tabs. I point out that it’s better to use favorites than have so many tabs open, especially with such an old machine.
Downloads an excel file. Tries to open it, some app claiming to be an xls opener pops up, puts up an ad, never does fucking shit else.
After determining he does not have office installed, I search for libre office from chrome. “Norton safe search” :neocat_o_o:
Switch gears, download Malwarebytes. After installing it, it finds over 210 little rancid pieces of shit.
While that is going on, I remove all the Norton trash from his chrome extensions. I downloaded Firefox. I downloaded libre office. I installed libre office. I rebooted. I installed firefox. It took for fucking ever to install Firefox. :neocat_flop__w: I pull add and remove programs in windows settings. I remove some games he does not care about. I find McAfee. I murder McAfee with the murder this stupid application button. No more fucking mcafee pop ups. :neocat_peek_knife:
Firefox finally finishes installing.
Firefox imported stuff from chrome. I installed ublock and showed him how to turn it on and off at the top of the browser window.
Things are still slow, but not slooooow.
The excel file can open in libre office.
Firefox can open pages without erroring out, but his yahoo account wants him to verify with his wife’s phone number. Chrome is refusing to load yahoo mail. I pull up Edge and its lets him login to yahoo mail without sms 2FA.
I should have at that point looked to see if I couldn’t add his phone number to the yahoo account as verification option. I didn’t think to do that. :neocat_facepalm:
But it overall is still working better.. about as good as a 15 year old i3 dell AIO can probably be expected when it has Windows 11 installed.
He gave me some cash I did not ask for. Ok I guess. He was very appreciative.
I hate doing tech support for my family as it is. I’m still pissed at my dad. I don’t know what the fuck I’d even recommend this guy if he comes back to ask me. I don’t use windows regularly. I don’t know what it costs to not have windows suck the life out of you while it sits there and stutters and pops up useless shit. I buy a new Mac every six to ten years using Apple’s interest-free payment plan because I’ve been an Apple customer since 1994 and I don’t want to have to try to transition my parents to something else and it’s useful to keep aware of whatever shit I might need to help them with. I haven’t done work as a IT tech in five years because I don’t want to fix people’s shitty broken-out-of-the-box stuff nor do I want to deal with all the weird shit some company needs to run or deal with all the potential or deal with people as users, because they sometimes get really fucking mean or just impatient and that shit makes me fucking anxious. I just want to deliver something that’s actually fucking usable and not hear through the grapevine that I “didn’t do shit”(which is why I originally told my dad I don’t want him fucking telling anyone he meets that I can computer good last time.)
:neocat_angry: :neocat_yeet:
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