10 Hours of My Life I Will Never Get Back!

<begin rant>
Spent 10 hours restoring my Moms 4 year old laptop back to the factory setup, installed all the shitty Vista operating system updates, uninstalled all the free shitty trial software, installed MS Office 2007 and all those updates, installed antivirus then replaced her pictures and documents and set up her banking, Facebook and email (took two breaks for meals). She was actually getting pissed at me because it was taking soooo long on her old shitty computer! EVERY change I made involved a 5 min. reboot!!!

Anyway, I kept my cool and it's now running smooth. Glad it's over and I'm glad I did the job right!! I hope she gets another year or two out of it!!
<end rant>

 

...waits for apple fanboys...

 

Year or two with Vista?? Hmm.......

Edit: I'm sorry I just hate Vista, that may have been a bit harsh. Props to you for enduring the time it too to get through it. Did it myself for my mom, I completely understand how aggravating and time consuming it is.

 

I hate getting stuck with machines that take all day to fix and I always fix for friends and family.

My desktop came with vista and it was a pain in the ***...I downgraded to Windows XP as soon as I could. Vista belongs down there in Microsoft's history with it's worst operating systems ever. Windows 7 is quite the improvement, and friends' computers I fix now that are capable of running 7, i recommend they go out and get an install disc of 7. It won't be long now before Microsoft completely phases out one of it's best and most popular Operating Systems

 

Yea I hate it too. But if I switched the OS, she would never figure it out!!

 

She has a Celeron with 1GB of RAM?

10 hours seems ridiculous. I can usually knock those out in 3 hours.

 

You are a way better son than I am....I would spent the money to get her a new base model PC and told the lady to learn the new OS and like it.

But then again...My mom uses an iPad....

 

You are a good son.

But you figure 10 hours x what you make an hour at your job. Plus the two hours over time past 8 hours.

Maybe it would have been cheaper to buy her a new one on sale.

 

The difference between Win7 and Vista from a amateur end user's POV is minimal, mom should be fine if you end up upgrading.


I make sure that if I'm not paid in cash, I'm paid in homemade pie

 

you wouldn't have these problems with a Mac.. sorry just had to!

 

I've had Vista on my PC since it came out and don't have any real issues with it. But I built it and am capable of fixing anything myself .. I was a bit rough before SP 1.

 

Also wouldn't have a problem if they had spent their money better and bought a decent PC.

 

Yea I know what you mean .... my house and lab are FULL of Macs!!

As for payment ... I won't tell you what I make in 10 hours but I was on holidays so it doesn't really matter. She did leave me 3 bottles of homemade wine, a jar of homemade blueberry jam, and a jar of moose meat so it wasn't a complete loss! LOL

 

At least it was hands on. I hate when someone calls and wants you to troubleshoot\resolve over the phone and they know nothing about computers. I know just enough to be dangerous. But because I do software support for the company I work for they assume I know everything about computers.

 

lol my boss told me that when his parents still had a 386, his dad would read him the BIOS status messages

"Dad, I don't need to hear how much RAM it has, and I don't care what the BIOS revision is"
"No, it's OK when it says boot up floppy seek failed"

 

I know what you mean. When she got home she tried to connect to her wireless and didn't know the password. So I had to walk her through the steps of resetting the wireless an connecting. I didn't bother with the wireless security because I would still be on the phone with her. I said .... You MUST know someone local who can set it up for you! She is a couple thousand miles from here.

Because you know about computers, everyone assumes that you should be able to easily help them out over the phone!

Oh well..... she's my mom and you gotta love her!!

 

You're a good son. Just did something similar for my FIL. He's German and knows nothing about computers. Had to tell the wife who translated back to him how to set up his router. The things we do for our aging parents!

 

Ahhh

I wish I had a 386 that still ran.

Or an original IBM PC...

 

i second. I hated my pc's and always had issues but i havent had any in 2 years with my macbook pro. Good job on fixing it for her though. Was she at least thankful when you were done?