Sysadmin’s worst client was … his mother! Until his sister called for help

Can I recommned

something like DeepFreeze for the really tech illiterate for those that need to use Windows. It's a wonderful life saver.

I used to use SteadyState on XP, but alas, they couldn't be arsed to create it for 7/8/10/

Don't tell my mother I work with computers...

...she thinks I play the piano in a brothel.

Who else has to lie about their job to avoid being "free unlimited tech support forever ?"

Worse than a mum

My job, ( the main non-IT part, which is important in this incident) meant going into schools to talk to the Special needs staff. One day, not too many years ago. I had a 10:00 appointment, arrived punctually at the Coordinator's office and was told, very grumpily to wait outside. Which I did, for ten minutes. There was a sound of typing. Then printing. Then I was allowed in.

She explained that she had to finish typing a report and printing it so that she could turn the computer off, before she let me in, because it was confidential. I must have looked puzzled ( or cross or both) because she explained that every time she got interrupted for a meeting or because she needed to leave her office she had to turn off the computer if there was anything confidential she was typing, and lose all her work. So I asked if it was not saving. And she told me that she didn't know how to save. So she wasted vast amounts of time retyping documents whenever she got interrupted. I didn't offer to help her - I was being paid to be a Special Needs Expert in that role, not an IT coordinator. And she was in a school chock full of people she could have asked. Fellow teachers, the school's IT guy, the admin staff - and most of the kids come to that. I still shudder to speculate at how much of her valuable time was wasted retyping documents instead of helping kids.

I want a nailed-down-by-default

VM image that kids can't tamper with too much. Noted there are some "kid" Linux distro's but never looked yet. That could be a good option (no flames as I really have never installed one to take a peek).

All sorts of talk about family though, even doctors can be this bad with technology, resulting in mess that can be hard to distinguish from their handwriting...

Like the bootnote, I learnt something new!

Haha. Over the years on PCW Tech Support I've heard many names for the computer

Modem was a favourite, but also The Internet, Power Supply, Hard Disc, CPU, Driver, or Disc Drive. Most of which are highly confusing when reporting a fault - "the hard disk won't turn on" etc. What?

Or they'd refer to it as what was written on the front - "my Pulsar is dead" for example. One lady was insistant she had a "Twenty-Four-Ex" model computer - it was a totally blank fascia with just the "24x" written on the CD-ROM drive.

Once had a call from someone who complained they kept losing their work because the machine would reboot when he walked away. Much diagnostics later (including having him keep walking away from the PC in case it was a lose cable moved by his desk or something) and he mentioned something about a sleep button. These don't have sleep buttons.... "Well it says REST on it, which is like sleep".

So he's found the Reset button then, that's good. Someone had told him about putting the computer to sleep and theirs had a suspend button on the front, as was the trend in the late 90s. Squiffy eyesight meant REST was the nearest thing he could find.

I'm now much more grateful for my parents. They don't fully embrace computers, but don't get themselves in trouble with them. The main use of their laptop is looking up information on soul & Motown discos, holiday destinations and things like that. The only quirk is that they will text me to tell me they've sent me an email - they seem to think it might get lost in the post.

Peculiarly, my mum has embraced text speak, but nobody else in the family does, so I've got no idea where she's picked it up from. It's quite amusing to get messages along the lines of "Hope u r OK. Will we c u soon? Know u have ur own plans but would be good to c u. xoxo"

Users ticking the "use proxy" for FTP check box, and then wondering why FTP delivery is not working... GAH.

It is a tick box and it must be ticked for some "speshul funkshun" to work, right. Right??

There are two types of family members:

- Those that want to use you and appear friendly while feeling nothing but contempt for a techie idiot.

- Those that use Chromebooks and phones & tablets.

The trick is to move the family to b and prevent them landing on a.

Decided that I wanted to get my dad online. Built a PC from him and gave it to him for Christmas.

Came over set it up and showed him how to use it.

Cam back 3 weeks later, and asked whether he had used it "No he said, I didn't want to turn it on in case i broke it"

As far as I know he never used it and 5 years later I found it hidden under a ton of other stuff when clearing his house out

There was also the time when he bought a digital camera even though he had no way of uploading the photos..

Tech is not elderly-friendly

Both my parents, now getting on a bit, have Macbooks. Both of them like the '3 finger drag' gesture because they can move things around one handed, and it must be good because they've actually remembered it, unlike the screen zoom or two-fingers to right click, or.. I could go on.

Anyway, the problem is that, with their now shaky hands and reduced motor control, just moving the pointer around the screen often results in 3 finger dragging happening unintentionally and unobserved. 'I've lost an email folder!' is the latest one - yes, you've accidentally dragged it onto another one. Again...

Bless 'em

Worse when they don't

My late mother bought a PC. But instead of asking me she asked a "friend"- and so called friend got her to buy a PCworld machine ( not too bad as it went) with a shit load of other crap she didn't need. Said friend then abused the machine for her own purposes. Nothing too terrible, but when I visited I spent most of a day clearing clutter, locking things down and putting an icon on the screen that said "help" and launched teamviewer.

My sister, who lives 5 minutes away got one of those scam "tech support" calls and let them into her machine.

Then, realising what she'd done took her machine to a local computer repair shop who replaced her HDD and lost all her data.