When my mom first got her new computer, she was scared of it. She was scared of the Internet, everything basically except the card games; those she adored. I told her to have fun, explore, do whatever. She couldn’t hurt the computer, anything she did I could fix. I did however, warn her about viruses and such, that she should only download things from people she knew, if she knew that they sent them. She was warned of nasty viruses that would go through people’s address book and pretend to be an email from a friend (easiest way to explain it to her).
Now, every two weeks (because I’d rip my hair out if it did it more often ;)) I spend oodles of time at my mom’s computer fixing it. I check for spy ware, viruses, anything and everything. She’ll try to fix something herself, and end up making it worse. As it stands, I know there’s still something floating around in her machine, because its practically empty and so slooooooow. That has actually led to humorous discourse between my dad and I. He’s an electrician, and gets frustrated when people try to fix their a/c unit themselves, and then call their pal to help. These conversations usually end with me being frustrated but laughing, and my dad just being frustrated, wanting to know why I can’t fix it and why I’m annoyed
So Dopers, please take a moment to wish me well, as I delve into the insanity that is my mother’s computer.
P.S. I think the worst thing I found was when I was cleaning stuff out and realized that a lot of porn sites that had been visited. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I don’t want to think about my parents having sex any more than they want to think of me having sex. I went to my happy place then.
:eek: I could have posted the same thing. I don’t understand how my mother, who uses her computer for Spider Solitare and 15 min. on dailup to check email continues to fuck up her computer so bad. I tell her not to do anything until I get there and she runs to WalMart and buys some $20 piece of crap antivirus software that is useless.
Oh, and the porn sites, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. My mom had all kind of stuff bookmarked that I am very, very sure she wouldn’t bookmark. Not unless mom is all of a sudden into …
Years ago I got a job with a software company doing their support. (I won’t say who, let’s just say the CEO’s name rhymes with Gil Bates.)
Bad move. Every member of my family called me every single night wanting to know how to fix something or other. I had no time left for myself. 1-3 hours per night on the phone, every night of the week. This went on for 2 years.
It got to the point where my sister was asking me about game strategies for some Little Mermaid game. Hello, I support VB – I don’t know, nor do I care, about some Disney crap game! And my father would ask my advice, then promptly ignore it.
I finally had to tell them that I was going to start charging them for support. Two dollars per minute. Put a stop to that right there.
Thank God my parents have zero interest in the Internet. They have a laptop, but they use it for word processing/spreadsheets, trip planning with a map CD, and so on. My mom uses a little text-only Pocketmail gizmo for e-mail. When she needs something looked up online she just calls me to do it for her.
My dad is Mr. Ham Radio Electronics Guy. If it has tubes he can probably fix it but I shudder to think what he would do with a futzed-up computer. My mom actually did use a computer at work before she retired, but it was a big corporation with an IT department, and she only had to know how to use Excel, whatever company software they had, Lotus Notes, etc. – no maintenance and I think no Internet.
God help me if they ever did want to get online. I’ll probably have to move to Antarctica.
Hate to break the news to you, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered whether you told her you could fix it or not. She’d still be asking you to do it. Between my mother and my mother-in-law, my husband and I have spent lots of time using our computer “expertise” (which we have, apparently, because we’re under the age of 50) to fix their problems.
When my mom got a new computer a few years ago, she called me, frantic, because she couldn’t print. So, good daughter that I am, I drove over and spent about an hour trying to figure out what was wrong. Finally I said “screw it” and decided to reinstall it, following the directions exactly. I got to the part about removing the protective strip from the printer cartridge, and discovered the problem - she hadn’t removed it. :smack:
I still give her crap about that.
