Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Computer Maintenance for a Creative Soul - A Whine

This morning I have spent several hours so far working on my husband's computer. We let our grandson use it while he stayed with us, but when he left, we discovered that he put himself as administrator, locked us out, and while surfing game sites, caught a number of nasty trojans, virus thingys and on top of that, added and deleted things that made it impossible for Jim to use. When asked for a pass word so we could correct things, he conveniently couldn't remember.

So, I had to rummage through storage, locate recovery disks, and then reformat EVERYTHING. Now I am attempting to update all the Windows Service Pack garbage before I can re-add programs that we want to use. I predict that this will eat up my entire morning, and leave me with little time to put toward my own work.

There are several nasty thoughts and names that are rattling around my brain regarding our grandson, a 17 year old know-it-all that I think of as butthead. He, of course knew better than us about security on computers, which is why the one he was using is now having to be brainwashed and reprogrammed. I can't wait until he has a teenager of his own, should he live that long.

Oops, have to restart the other computer for the zillionth time. Back in a minute or two...

So, you might wonder why I am doing this instead of my husband. (Sometimes I wonder that very thing...) Well, Jim is one of those people who refuses to learn touch typing on a keyboard, never remembers how to use shortcuts, and when you ask him if he remembers how to do something on it, he gets this "deer in the headlights" look on his face. I don't comsider myself knowledgeable on these things, but for self-defense alone, I end up having to spend hours with them.

Let's get this straight from the get-go: I do not like time spent in updating, fixing, maintaining my computers. I resent the time, suspect that most of it is actually a monumental waste, and am always left with the feeling that I've either forgotten something, been swindled, conned or fooled into thinking that "now things are safe".

This belief has been reinforced by a run-in I had recently with Norton Symantec. So, $240.00 later for their virus-removal-tech-support, with a computer that no longer functioned in the real world, I ended up taking it physically to a local electronics megastore (Fry's), paying another $70.00 and getting it fixed. I spoke to multiple technicians in Mumbai. Each and every one did the same thing every time. After the 3rd day of spending hours on my cell phone with them, I could have told them what they were going to do before they did it. The virus-removal team took control of my PC remotely (anyone else think this is creepy?), went through my files, moved things around, and then declared me virus-free, then transferred me to the installation team for Norton 360, because THEY couldn't seem to install their own product without screwing up my internet connection and/or leaving me in "SAFE" mode. Hmmmm. Strange, No?

The installation team did the SAME things that the virus-removal teams did, then declared that I must still have a virus, and told me that they would forward me on to the "expert" team, who looked at the files, and told me that they had to "research" further, and would call back within 24 hours.

You might have guessed it already. No call-back. So, I call them, go thru the virus-removal tech, his/her supervisor, and then another transfer to the expert team, and another promise of a call back because this was a complicated issue. This went on for three days, for a total of 6 days futzing around before I said forget it and took it to Frys.

I know that I am not the only one in the world who goes through this, not the first and certainly not the last. There is a special place in one of the multi-level hells reserved to house the nasty pock-marked vermin who create the issues that make this work necessary. I personally hope that they will spend all eternity watching one of three episodes of Barney cartoons.

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