Tech Support

From time to time, when Amy and I head back to NE OH, I'm asked to provide tech support for varying family and friends. Being the pseudo-tech-weenie-wannabe-in-training that I am, I'm happy to help. This past weekend involved two separate support calls, both of which were simultaneously edifying and frustrating.

The first call was for my in-laws, and requires a bit of background. When Amy and I first met, she was a dial-up girl using an old Compaq all-in-one computer. It did what she needed: e-mail checker, minor word processing, a game of solitaire here and there. However, when we decided to get hitched, and we found out that I would be moving down with her, the first thing that had to be changed was the computer and her connection. I spruced up one of my computers for her, we got a cable modem, and we've been a high-speed family ever since. At that point, rather than sacrificing the Compaq to the scrap heap, we wiped it out and introduced her mom to the internet and e-mail. Again, it was perfect for her: e-mail checker, mah jongg, a little surfing over a dial up connection. And all was bliss and peace for two and a half years.

A few weeks ago, the sturdy little Compaq started giving indications that it would not be much longer for the world. I happened to luck into a deal for a spanking new Dell that was a definite upgrade from the Compaq, but wasn't needlessly powerful, and didn't break anyones wallet. I purchased it, got it last week, and spent the week loading AV, anti-spyware, OpenOffice, and a few utilities on it in preparation for the swap. Friday night, we made the trip, and my adventure began.

You'd think that MS would make moving from one Windoze computer to another an easy thing. It, in fact, is, so long as you don't want any of your old data. The Compaq didn't have any ethernet connection, nor did it have even a serial port, so a direct connection with the new computer was out of the question. There wasn't a lot of data, so I could send it through e-mail over the 28.8 connection, but I saw that as a last resort. Ah, it has several unused USB ports! I have a thumb drive! I'll use tha... hmmm... Drat. I forgot, Windoze98 doesn't natively support USB thumb drives. Well, OK, I'll download a driver. Crap. Doesn't look like there's a universal driver. At least not according to MS. Well, lets download one and see what happens. Hmmm... it's a zip file. Crap. The Compaq doesn't have an unzip utility. OK, download one of those. 'K, install the unzip utility, open the driver, install, reboot and.... nothing. USB thumb drive is dead as a door knob. Figures. I wrack my brains, but aside from physically removing the hard drive and installing in the Dell, I'm stuck with sending data through e-mail. Sigh...

So, it turns out that I only need to transfer e-mail address book and folders. Mother-in-law uses Outlook Express 5, so I find the export utility in the application and export the address book... WHAT?! What's this mean, the address book is corrupt?! It works fine within OE5, how can it be corrupt? I try a couple more times, I can't even export as a freaking CSV file. 'K, fine. I poke around the file system and find the actual WAB file and copy to the desktop. Now for the mail folders... figures, OE5 doesn't want to export those, either. I can't figure out where they are on the file system, but after a bit of internet searching (all on the blazing 28.8 connection, mind you), I learn where to look, and copy all that data to the desktop as well. Zip, zip zip, and e-mail to myself. Finally, I'm ready to fire up the Dell. Disassemble the Compaq, assemble the Dell, connect to the internet, wait for the file I mailed to myself to download, unzip and try to get things working. First the address book. Try the "right way" first, using Outlook Express 6's import utility. Yep, you guessed it, it claims it's corrupt. I try a few permutations, no dice. Fine. I know where the local WAB is located, copy the old address book into place... Yep, corrupt. The old address book is shot. Fortunately, we found a hard copy of the addresses that someone had mysteriously printed, so Amy offers to re-enter all the old addresses by hand. Now for the old e-mails.... yep, those are corrupt as well. No matter how many permutations and kludges I try, the old e-mails are lost. Fortunately, mother-in-law says she doesn't need the old e-mail anyway, and gives me a beer as a consolation prize.

Next morning, mother-in-law asks, "Did you save my favorites?" Well, no, noone mentioned those. Re-assemble the Compaq, find the bookmarks file, send to self, fire up the Dell, download, install, and... hey, it worked! Woo-hoo! I'm one for three, batting .333. I'd be a star in the major leagues. Too bad this isn't baseball...

Now that you've stopped reading my rambling, we get to my second support call. I provide infrequent support for my friends, Xabu and Piglet. I've helped throughout the years assemble computers, reformat hard drives, I set up their original ethernet network, as well as their current wireless network. This weekend, the task was to finally lock down the wireless. Without going into details, MS and Belkin should both be taken out and shot. Each does rather stupid things that the other isn't expecting, turning a 10 minute job into a 2.5 hour ordeal. Lemme just say that I've boned up on my ASCII to hex conversion, and leave it at that.

But, at the end of the weekend, with both jobs done and all my customers satisfied, I feel pretty good. I'm glad that my meager technical skills are sometimes useful. So tonight, as I sip my port and solve my Sudou puzzles, I'll toast myself to a job reasonably well done. And hope that the next tech support call is easier to handle.