What basic Windows tech should I know as a professional tech?

Factual Questions
1

So I really screwed the pooch on a job yesterday, I lost a client over it. I find myself making dumb mistakes due to lack of knowledge or lack of focus. Yesterday, my focus was actually pretty good, but it was constantly being derailed by the client that I was working with who had SOME computer knowledge. So basically where I fell short was that I wasn’t stellar enough in my skills to just tell him to sit down and shut up (tactfully of course).

So my question is kind of broad, and I would like a broad range of answers. I support up to small business level domains, so if you can send me some resources as to what I should know, I’d appreciate it. I am looking for little tips and tricks, good utility software, and basic windows utilities that I need to know about. Don’t assume that your statement is too dumb. I mean, I know how to format a hard drive of course, I can even setup an exchange server, but there are little bits here and there that I am missing that get me into trouble from time to time.

So if you can lead me into little things that don’t come up on a daily basis, but I should still know, I’d appreciate it. I find oftentimes I get in over my head and don’t understand the Microsoft Knowledge base articles, and other times I can just set something up no sweat, and don’t even need documentation. Answers need not be limited to Windows specifically, but any suggestions regarding habits a basic tech should utilize are also useful.

Thanks,
Erek

2

This should probably be destined for IMHO, but anyway here goes:

To be honest, if you don’t know what you should be learning, maybe being a professional tech isn’t an appropriate line of work. If you do want to persue this, don’t ever (no matter how tactfully) tell a customer to sit down and shut up. I do realize what you mean by this phrase (ie, you want the customer to be so confident in your computer skills that he won’t bother you while you’re working), but this is still the wrong frame of mind to have for handling clients. You want to involve them in the process wherever possible, even if it is just talking to them as you go along, explaining what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. If you don’t understand why what you’re doing fixes the problem, you’ve just learned the tips from some old copies of PC Magazine or something, again, you might be in the wrong profession.
That being said:
As a baseline, you should have at least A+ and MCSE certs (yeah, I realize how useful they really are, but it gives the client more confidence - they’re generally not aware of how dime-a-dozen A+ and MSCE certs are nowadays, plus it will give the OP a lot of what he’s looking for at picking up the knowledge he’s missing) - get a set of books like Sybex’s Study Guides, study the books thoroughly, make sure you UNDERSTAND the material, not just memorize answers, and then take the tests.

One set of books I would recommend you not do without is Que Publishing’s Upgrading and Repairing series - Upgrading and Repairing PCs, Upgrading and Repairing Laptops, and Upgrading and Repairing Networks.

The most important thing to know is not specific problems and fixes, tips, tricks, etc. It’s knowing WHERE TO LOOK for the answers and being able to interpret those answers intelligently. If I’m working with a client and I don’t know the answer, I have no problem telling the client something like “I’ve never run across this particular issue before, but let me do a little research and get this issue resolved as quickly as possible.” I would then start searching Google for the error message, checking out Microsoft’s Knowledgebase, searching experts-exchange.com, etc. until I find the answer. If I don’t find the answer to the exact issue I’m facing, I will try to extrapolate an answer based on my research (ie, if error message x keeps coming up, but there’s no fix listed anywhere I will research error message y in hopes that there might be enough similarities to be applicable in my current situation).

Finally, at least in my case, a lot of my knowledge comes from trial and error (usually on my own PCs :slight_smile: ) rather than picking up a lot of tips/tricks - I’ll break something, then find cause and fix the issue.

I hope this helps!

Oh, one other thing - check the Computer sticky at the top of GQ - it has lots of good links to technical information

critter42

3

Hmm… you say you can set up an Exchange server? Do you do this by rote or do you know why you’re choosing option A over option B and are able to tweak it and fine-tune it?

I’m a PC tech and very good at what I do - at least, that’s what my users say.

I’m not going to repeat what critter42 said except that it’s good stuff and in your market segment you only need a MCSA, which is rather easier to get. You need two sets of skills: technical skills and customer care skills, and the latter are actually the more important. You must learn to listen. You must learn when to step back and go and think.

You must learn to say, “Before we do this, can we just check your backups?” :smiley:

4

Well, I may very well be in the wrong profession, in fact I think I am. However, in the meantime while I am building up other skills in order to find a way to change the way that I work, I need to hone the skills that I currently do have because I am kind of stuck in this profession. I’ve been doing it for 8 years, and I have skipped around from one area of expertise to another, so I have a broad knowledge, and am missing some fundamentals.

As far as setting up an Exchange server, I am not the best at it, and what I do when it gets too complex is subcontract. I have a group of subcontractors that I use. What I am working toward now is not so much being able to fix problems myself but being able to see what the issue is, and knowing who to call to fix that problem, which I am fairly adept at, and that’s the goal I am working toward at the moment.

However, the point of this thread, was that I just wanted to fill some gaps in my knowledge, and hopefully get pointed in some better directions. Thanks for your help. I’m not going to waste my time getting any certifications, as I am not looking to prolongue my career as a tech, but in the interim I’d like to be a little more savvy at it than I currently am.

I don’t really know things by rote, I suck at learning things by rote, that’s part of my problem. I am much better at intuitive learning, and I am not the most linear thinker in the world. As far as Customer Service tips. I would never actually tell the customer to “Sit down and shut up.”, but this particular case in point involved a client that was taking an active role, and actually changing settings on the router while I was in teh process of narrowing which router was the culprit. It’s really hard to work when the client is changing IPs and pulling out cables while you are doing it.

I suppose my question was overly broad, but still, if anyone can offer some good tech tools, or good message boards, or anything of that nature that will help facillitate my superior performance while I position myself into a different arena, I’d appreciate it. Because clearly, I am not going to change careers tomorrow, and unfortunately all of my other career paths involve working with non-profits and other organizations that don’t really have any budget to speak of, so for the foreseeable future, I will be working with computers to earn my cash.

Erek

5

Some message boards from my bookmarks:

http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?b=1

Also, you’ll be competent at Windows if you read and digest everything written on Windows by Mark Minasi:
http://www.minasi.com/books/

Good luck. I interned my way into a career in computers, so I’m a jack of all trades myself.

6

I gave up professionally supporting PCs years ago when I figured out that compared to unix boxes and mainframes, pc hardware basically sucks (as a server).

However, that being said, I still end up helping out friends and family with their PCs all the time, so I guess I still do it non-professionally as a favor.

I could go into a detailed list of what you might want to know, but instead I would just ask you to question where you are going. If you like computers/IT, if I were you I would set my sights higher. Windows techies are a dime a dozen, I mean, companies can basically find them anywhere; therefore the pay is low.

Find an area to specialize in, but know the underpinnings. Know all kinds of OSes, and the hardware they run on, get a very firm foundation of the hardware and OS level. After that I would learn some programming skills in languages of your choice. Then pick an area to specialize in eventually. Get your job now as Joe PC Tech, but in your spare time work toward something better. Learn programming in depth, network design, storage, backup and recovery, disaster recovery, etc. Just pick something that sounds interesting and try and work your career in the direction that will make you an expert in that field.

7

Ok just to preface, I don’t have any certs but have taught myself a lot (mostly through trial and error). This is just my personal opinion and I do not intend to step on anyones toes about what was already said.

I worked tech support call center so tech and customer service was a big thing. I found that most of this type of work involves empathy. I treated every problem as if it happened to my own PC. I was good enough at what I did that I was a senior support tech in 14 months, 10 months before the minimum required time in. (note, I now work at a thin-film deposition company and left call center on Jan 1st of this year)
Start with the basics:
What is going on? Do you have any errors? Has there been any type of errors like this before? What did you do when that happened? (Side note, I loved the call where the guy who was having server problems informed me that in the past to fix the locked up server was to press the little button(reset) that you are not supposed to press) Are there any strange noises?

So after hearing about what is going on, restate to the customer what you believe the problem is. I know that this seems redundent but it allows the customer to know that you understood what he said. Include the symptoms and solutions that he described. (about that call, I restated “so you pushed that little button that you were told not to push and rebooted the server. That fixed the problem in the past but it is not working now?”

Some tips/tricks:
Find out if this is the only PC/server having the issue. It will help you to determine if this is a local or a network issue.

Find out if there have been any recent changes. I know customers loved installing stuff they were not supposed to.

As mentioned before, find out if they have back ups.

I have noticed that Windows can start kicking up pretty weird errors because there is not enough cooling on the processer.

As stated before, if it is not something you seen before, let the customer know that you need to research it further. Some people out there are learning enough about computers to be annoying or dangerous.

Be open to customer suggestions. If you know they are full of BS, explain to them why their paticular idea may not work. (Adding ram will not improve cooling by making the computer run fastert and therefore the cooling fan run faster)

I know that this sounds like sabotaging(sp?) future business, but I like to explain why I am doing (or having them do). This education allows them to look for importiant clues in the future if something happens. (You are getting this error because this software did not finis installing as opposed to completing the installation for them and saying, “it’s fixed”). It also shows them that you know enough about what you are doing to teach them why it happens.

Also a big customer service tip, it is not what you say but how you say it. “You really F-ed up when you got pissed and threw the PC on the floor” can be stated as “It appears the issue is that the hard drive failed because the PC fell from the desk when it was moved”.

http://support.microsoft.com and of course, http:// www.google.com are great sites for researching problems.
Well I hope that this post makes some sense and I apologize for spelling and grammer, been writing while working and had to jump back and forth between tasks. Once again, this is just my personal opnion and I am sure that there are people out there that would disagree with me.

Oh ya, one final note, another tech I used to work with always would say,

Tech support frog :stuck_out_tongue: says “REBOOT REBOOT”

when you asked him a question. I found that sound advice that fixed a lot of problems.

Hoped this helped.

8

I did call center work for AOL for a while, and yeah Reboot was the first solution in the little program we had that we looked up the problems in. We always asked them to reboot.

As far as going deeper into programming languages. I’m not interested in that at all. Right now I am working on folding my operation into my friend’s operation, and we’ve got a lot more stuff to work on. I am going to work more on the marketing angle, and he is a super-genius as far as programming goes, so I’ll leave that to him, and let that be his milieu. I know where I want to go in the future, and that doesn’t involve being a deeper tech guru, however for the time being I need to hone my windows skills. This thread as well as a couple of my queries and such over the past few days have helped me out a lot. I know where I am heading, but right now I am in the position I am in, and would just like to improve myself in that particular position. Like I said, I’ve been in this industry for 8 years. My first real job was at a computer store building boxes when I was 18. I’ve supported a Desktop Publishing department (All Macs) for a Translations company. I’ve been back and forth, I haven’t done much with Unix since HS, but I am gonna throw Linux on my work laptop because my partner is a Unix head. I’ve got a background in the Entertainment Industry also, and I am going to continue to work with both the IT industry and the Entertainment Industry, I’m folding the two together as much as I can. We’re working on doing support for Art Galleries right now.

So really all I need from this thread are tips and tricks. I know where I’m headed, and that isn’t the issue. I’m more of an entrepeneurial type, and am more into designing organizational structures, than I am in getting into the nuts and bolts of a computer, though knowing the nuts and bolts of a computer certainly helps when organizing a business structure. However, as such, I do need to be able to go and fix problems for people even if I subcontract the bulk of the work at a certain point. I subcontract a portion now, but I am not at the fully subcontracting level just yet.

I appreciate the reminders people have posted about basic stuff that I need to keep in mind, I went through a period of life where it was very hard for me to maintain focus, and this industry was good and bad in that regard. It was good that I could walk into a place and make 500 dollars in a single day, and didn’t have to work very much to feed myself, but it was bad in that I wasn’t able to really advance in the career path I was currently in. A lot of that is behind me right now though, and I’m looking to fill in the dark spots. I’ll definitely be using those web resources that people gave me.

What do people think in terms of programs like Registry Mechanic or Norton Win Doctor? Which of those types of programs are the best to use? Do you use them at all? Any suggestions on that level? What about hardware utilities?

I really started doing tech because it was easy, and I continued to do it because it helps to facillitate my longer term goals professionally. Now I’ve run into a block where it’s not so easy. So I’m still all ears for those of you that have some tips and tricks but thought about suggesting a career change. I’m still interested to see what you have to say in that regard.

Cheers,
Erek

9

I work in a HR environment but have ended up taking over most of the general maintenence and upkeep of the departments computers. When I get stuck my first port of call is to the message boards at CyberTech Help. I also use this site for help with my own and my friends computers. I haven’t yet found anywhere better. I’ve learnt a lot just reading through the site.