Not sure, but some doper has that as a sig.
Going in a slightly different direction, in my experience as someone who’s known as a “computer guy”, any time you help someone solve a computer problem out of the goodness of your heart, you’re asking for trouble. You will be supporting that piece of junk for the rest of your life. This is what I thought the title of the OP meant.
For instance, I spent all day reformatting a friend’s drive, installing the OS, drivers, software, etc. Every few days afterward I get a call from him: “Now it’s doing this.” And it was always some esoteric thing that took another chunk of my day to figure out: a corrupted driver, bad registry entry, or whatever.
For my own sanity anymore, I just say," Sorry, I have no idea," when presented with some problem.
Yorick, I do the same thing, and I think often times they KNOW I’m lying, but don’t persue it. “My printer isn’t printing- the light flashes, but nothing comes out. What’s wrong with it?”
Me: “Hmmm…I’m not familiar with that problem. You know, I don’t deal with computers much any more. Maybe Debbie (neighbor who is taking computer science in college) has an idea?”
Pass the buck, baby, YEAH!