Experiences with non-techies

[CarlBar]

 

19 hours ago, Juniiii said:

Today in class we were getting into a lesson on how to write essays, get to a point and she asks what’s the crucial element that’s in the iphones that uses child labor? I know what she was talking about and I said silicon, what electronics are mostly made out of, and she said yes “ silifan” some started yelling and said sliver. Wtf

 

What age group if you don't mind telling me?

[Billy Pilgrim]

I have a friend, who at the beginning of the summer of 2018 decided to build his first gaming PC.

 

I didn't hear much about it until the end of the summer, a few months later, when he asked me to help him with some problem.

 

He brought me his computer and informed me that it has never booted. I took the tempered side panel off and I instantly noticed the cable management that happened to closely resemble spaghetti or abstract art.

 

The motherboard had debug lights, but they were to obscured by wires to be seen. After a few boot cycles I found out that they said something was wrong with the CPU, or so I thought. I took the GPU out to make things easier, but I was still unable to figure out what was wrong. I think it was when I noticed a case fan plugged into a fan header to molex adapter that I came to the conclusion that this was a problem on layer 8.

 

I asked my friend why he didn't use the cable management features built into the case and he just shrugged and said, "I dunno, I didn't really notice them at the time."

 

So, I removed all of the cables and rerouted them neatly and although I never figured out what was wrong the computer booted.

 

And so, two months after buying all the parts he finally got his gaming PC working. The sad thing was that for the price of the 1060 he bought, he could have bought a 1080 when I fixed it.

 

A few weeks later I found a case filter that he had taken off and forgotten to put back on. To this day he still refuses to take it back.

[xKyric]

1 minute ago, Billy Pilgrim said:

I took the tempered side panel off and I instantly noticed the cable management that happened to closely resemble spaghetti or abstract art.

This is a wonderfully worded sentence. 

[Bitter]

5 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

I had the same mistake. I bought a 1060 3 GB for $250 and then I found that, a few months later, the price fell to $170.

I bought a GTX 960 4GB like 2 months before the 10 series dropped LOL.

[Teddy07]

21 minutes ago, Bitter said:

I bought a GTX 960 4GB like 2 months before the 10 series dropped LOL.

same when I bought my1070 ti and the 2000 series released 

[Bitter]

8 minutes ago, Teddy07 said:

same when I bought my1070 ti and the 2000 series released 

The GTX 650 I was using wasn't cutting it for the post processing that I wanted to do to my anime so...I bought when I bought and didn't wait, I didn't know to wait. Whoops tho, oh well. I love the card I got, that EVGA magical cooling is awesome, it never runs hot and it never runs loud, fans don't even spin till it hits 50C and even running at almost 100% the fans never get over 50%.

[schwellmo92]

My aunty told me that her laptop "isn't working".

The next week she brought it over and showed me.

Her Norton Antivirus subscription had ended and the pop-up warning screen is all red so she thought her laptop wasn't working?!?!?

 

Another one... same Auntie.

 

Her e-mails stopped working in the Windows Live mail client (from Windows 7), I had to clear some cache to get it working which meant you had to re-link your e-mail account to the client, she has no clue what her password was and we had to contact some Microsoft help-line to get her account back, it took about 2 days...

 

Another one... same Auntie.

 

"My laptop keeps turning off when I'm using it", she brought it in, got her to replicate the "crash", turns out she was just running out of battery (note: laptop is 8 years old at this point, it manages about 20 minutes of battery life).

 

 

...how did I solve the family tech support commitment? Moved cities!

[Juniiii]

On 3/23/2019 at 8:36 AM, CarlBar said:

 

 

What age group if you don't mind telling me?

16

[CarlBar]

39 minutes ago, Juniiii said:

16

 

I feel a need to facepalm epicly. I could understand it in lower age groups. But seriously, at that age?

 

Hmm wonder if he/she was confusing gold and silver because of the teacher? old is used in semiconductors.

[Juniiii]

10 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

I feel a need to facepalm epicly. I could understand it in lower age groups. But seriously, at that age?

 

Hmm wonder if he/she was confusing gold and silver because of the teacher? old is used in semiconductors.

No she was actually talking about copper, not even something that would be found in a iPhone...

[CarlBar]

Copper is the second major component in semiconductors and is also heavily used in PCB's.

[Juniiii]

26 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

Copper is the second major component in semiconductors and is also heavily used in PCB's.

I thought we would’ve moved on from using copper in computers

[Drak3]

Just now, Juniiii said:

I thought we would’ve moved on from using copper in computers

No, copper is a great conductor and relatively abundant compared to gold.

[Juniiii]

Just now, Drak3 said:

No, copper is a great conductor and relatively abundant compared to gold.

I haven’t thought of that, and in phones too?

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, Juniiii said:

I haven’t thought of that, and in phones too?

Yes. Copper is a staple in just about all modern electronics.

[CarlBar]

22 minutes ago, Juniiii said:

I thought we would’ve moved on from using copper in computers

 

Nope. Copper is still the primary conductive component in virtually all commercial PCB's and Semiconductors. Some specialist applications do exist for non-copper conductors in semiconductors.  But they're rarer than rocking horse dung. In commercial house wiring and some other applications you'lls see aluminum, but it's not great for semiconductors where every bit of conductivity is desirable.

 

You'll probably only see it replaced in semiconductors if we get a room temperature superconductor. 

 

Gold for reference is generally used to coat surfaces that need to be exposed to air to prevent corrosion as gold is much less reactive than copper. CPU socket pins are generally gold coated AFAIK.

[Necrocomputing]

On 6/13/2013 at 4:13 PM, Beskamir said:

wow I never knew ctrl+shift+esc opened Task Manager! I always used ctrl+alt+del or right clicking the taskbar... thanks I learned something!

This is quoting a 6 year old comment but just want to point out that it was CTRL+ALT+DEL before windows 7

[SenKa]

6 minutes ago, Necrocomputing said:

This is quoting a 6 year old comment but just want to point out that it was CTRL+ALT+DEL before windows 7

Or in windows 8 and above you can do Win+X

[Necrocomputing]

You know what, I have my own story about my non-techie family. First of all I am like so many others in this thread the "family IT guy".
Last month I had to talk her into spending 40$ to replace her defective printer... She complained about having to get another one all week despite literally having found the last one in someone's trash 5 years prior.

A few days ago I get a call that her printer isn't working and that she lost display on her PC; I get over to her place and find nothing wrong with the printer (she probably was pressing the wrong button to turn it on). THE PC HOWEVER; oh boy somehow she managed to completely kill the GPU & corrupt the windows install on the SSD at the same time by playing around with the wires coming out the back of her PC (she thought something was unplugged).

I ended up setting her up with an old I3 laptop and told her to wait 6 months cause I'll likely be upgrading my Ryzen build.

[Necrocomputing]

Also you know those fake windows security alert, you have a virus pop ups ?

Well I once met a guy who called up the number; then since he was having a hard time understanding the Hindu scammer on the other end, decided it was just easier to throw his PC out.

[PsyPriest]

I have two brothers who are overly competitive and not supportive of each other.  My mom, unsure of which of her sons had the capability to do a computer fix, unsure whether we could even do a fix because none of us had any formal training in a classroom setting, and unsure whether or not she was about to lose her files and have to buy a new computer.

 

I'm just going to say this for some context, I've never blown a HD, never had a virus (well post year 2000, got to learn when your young), never crashed computers or corrupted them severely enough they become unusable, but have watched my brothers burn out PSU's and HD's as if they had a 6 month lifespan wondering how that's even possible.  

 

My mom asks me to come over because my brothers are ripping her computer to shreds "fixing" the thing and they started to tell her she needed to buy new parts.  They also told her that of the three of us they were far more competent, despite explaining that they didn't.  She was sure she didn't need to spend money.  She was right.

 

At that point I got there the brothers have the PSU out, looking at the motherboard like its nuclear reactor terminal, wondering why the heck this hard-drive wont work and are tossing ideas back 'n' forth like Sherlock Holmes and Watson solving a crime. 

 

I don't know why I was reading some random manual the literal day before about old school HD's and the physical jumpers they used to set the "primary master" or "primary slave" thought that would be the first thing you should check.  

 

Thanks to the magic of Google, I was able to get a diagram describing what jumper configuration did what, pulled the jumper, put it into a new position, put everything back, made sure I double-checked their wiring (they have started fires inside machines by leaving a molex lazily inside the case and it somehow gets a prong stuck and shorts cause a flame and obviously destroying the components to some extent)

 

[Necrocomputing]

11 hours ago, Schnoz said:

She is at an advanced level of techtard: She broke a PC by messing with external cables.

 

My father believes she emits some sort of electromagnetic field when emotional. Apparently she managed to kill 3 alternators in my dad's car in the first 3 months of them dating. He claims to have resolved the issue by making her wear a ground strap attached to the car body.

 

[Juniiii]

20 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

Nope. Copper is still the primary conductive component in virtually all commercial PCB's and Semiconductors. Some specialist applications do exist for non-copper conductors in semiconductors.  But they're rarer than rocking horse dung. In commercial house wiring and some other applications you'lls see aluminum, but it's not great for semiconductors where every bit of conductivity is desirable.

 

You'll probably only see it replaced in semiconductors if we get a room temperature superconductor. 

 

Gold for reference is generally used to coat surfaces that need to be exposed to air to prevent corrosion as gold is much less reactive than copper. CPU socket pins are generally gold coated AFAIK.

Ah thank you for this information, turns out my story has everyone being the non techie, including me hahahah irony here is great.

[NunoLava1998]

2 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

A guy at my school was bragging earlier how he had got PC Optimizer Pro for him and his entire family, and how there was a new "System64" folder in the C drive, and how his PC had 13000 issues or some shit and it fixed it...

 

The PC Optimizer Pro program is a well-known scam. It does nothing except take the user's data. 

 

I tried explaining to him how he just got scammed, but he wouldn't take my advice. However, you can deactivate anyone's license by going to pcoptimizerpro.com/admin and entering a SINGLE SPACE for the username and password. I found his email and terminated his license. 

 

The next day, he asked me how his license wasn't valid, and I told him to let me install Malwarebytes (he's pretty gullible if he doesn't know what he's doing). One scan revealed exactly 416 malware results on his PC, including a non-running copy of NotPetya (I have no idea either). Before removing them, I found most of them and backed them up to an external HDD for my virus collection (I can provide a Drive link if you're planning to destroy a PC). I then told him that this was a legitimate antivirus and PC Optimizer Pro does nothing, showing him the bootfile.txt file in the System64 folder, where all his data and system specs were there. He finally believed me, due to a noticeable speedup due to idle memory usage being halved. 

 

Today I heard from him before school. He had put full Malwarebytes licenses on all his family's computers. 

Well, that is a happy ending. Nice!

[GilmourD]

37 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

A guy at my school was bragging earlier how he had got PC Optimizer Pro for him and his entire family, and how there was a new "System64" folder in the C drive, and how his PC had 13000 issues or some shit and it fixed it...

 

The PC Optimizer Pro program is a well-known scam. It does nothing except take the user's data. 

 

I tried explaining to him how he just got scammed, but he wouldn't take my advice. However, you can deactivate anyone's license by going to pcoptimizerpro.com/admin and entering a SINGLE SPACE for the username and password. I found his email and terminated his license. 

 

The next day, he asked me how his license wasn't valid, and I told him to let me install Malwarebytes (he's pretty gullible if he doesn't know what he's doing). One scan revealed exactly 416 malware results on his PC, including a non-running copy of NotPetya (I have no idea either). Before removing them, I found most of them and backed them up to an external HDD for my virus collection (I can provide a Drive link if you're planning to destroy a PC). I then told him that this was a legitimate antivirus and PC Optimizer Pro does nothing, showing him the bootfile.txt file in the System64 folder, where all his data and system specs were there. He finally believed me, due to a noticeable speedup due to idle memory usage being halved. 

 

Today I heard from him before school. He had put full Malwarebytes licenses on all his family's computers. 

Your post history in this thread is beginning to scare me a bit. A virus collection?