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My wife gets paid to fix computers for local businesses she works with as part of her seamstress business. Apparently it is getting harder to find help that can computer. But my wife and I came from the era of DOS as the default OS. So these skills we got early on. Windowing type OSes have made things easier, but it also makes a person less prepared to fix harder issues. It has been a while and I not sure my wife knows how to use the command terminal is modern Windows.
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@tosensei > "would be not among the first things i'd try"
TL;DR, her computer has random quirks and the flushing the DNS usually fixes whatever problem she's having at the time. Ex. a lot of 'DNS server could not be found ..blah blah blah' errors.
I'm guessing her network card+drivers are flacky, but suggestions to get a new computer (hers is well over 10 years old) is met with "I'm not spending that kind of money on a stupid computer!"
She's the kind of person who would spend $199 on a Wal-Mart special and complain that she can't play Call of Duty. -
@PaperTrail my power supply for my laptop is $200... But laptop also plays CP2077.
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@PaperTrail Honestly if this happens *often* you could make her a batch script that runs the ipconfig call and possibly some others if anything else helps that she can just double click :)
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@NoToJavaScript > "let her just use EDGE. problem solved"
Yea, I'm leaning towards moving all the bookmarks and such to Edge.
She "has" to use multiple browsers because she uses/monitors multiple email accounts and could never keep them separate/organized using Chrome by itself. -
@NoToJavaScript I don't see how this fixes the problem if the issue is the network card.
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@Demolishun > "I don't see how this fixes the problem"
I'm 50% sure a lot of the problems are related to the multitude of tabs she has open at any given time and she's not always discerning about the sites she has open.
It's not unusual for her to say "My computer is running really slow. I keep asking you to fix it and you ignore me."
Then I look at the running tasks, Chrome is using 6 gigs of ram with various tabs running some kind of media nonsense. Close Chrome ->wait a bit->restart Chrome -> everything back to normal.
Then it's "I could have done that. I want you to fix it so that doesn't happen again."
My brain shuts down at that point. -
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@NoToJavaScript which flavor of google boot do you prefer?
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@fruitfcker > "Opera Tab Islands"
I cannot express how non-technical my wife is.
She can get obsessed with researching a particular 'thing' and have dozens...dozens! of tabs open at random sites. I've tried to show her how to group tabs (tabs for ebay, facebook, pintrest, etc) and it was like explaining CPU multi-threading to a toddler. No clue what I was trying to show her.
And she's not dumb. She's a nurse with a level 100 on the empathy+people scale. Her type-A personality combined with OCD, she could easily run a hospital admin (she's had offers), just cares zero about technology. -
@daniel-wu > "The first step to misbehaving browser should be 'reset' it."
Agreed. That's what I do.
Resetting the browser (cache, cookies, etc) also resets a lot sites she's logged into. For example. when she navigates to facebook, it asks her to log in, which is auto-filled anyway, but still calls me over to 'fix facebook' again.
On her computer, I'll do everything I can before resetting the browser. -
@PaperTrail mmmmm
i like when dat happens.
And when i tell my friend "no it's not fucking normal, mine works as fast as it can" they tell me:
1. Its fiiine (nah, you complained it first)
2. Nah firefox is always slow (they are using it since around the time of rust rewrite)
Hi, I've tried to open this strange Hard Disk, I was wondering if it was an old model.
I mean, I can't find a ...
This happens when your feedback is too important.
'I’m sorry I didn’t read your marketing email within 2 m...
Spent the last half hour helping my wife over text trying to "fix" FireFox. She said any site she tries to go to just "spins and spins". Chrome, Edge, all work fine. Tried the trusty 'ipconfig /flushdns'.
Me: "Open the command line, by selecting Start and start typing cmd. You'll see the Command Prompt application. Right click and run it as an administrator"
<15 seconds later>
Her: "Do I left click or right click to run as adminstrator?"
Me: "Left click. You'll get a pop message, just click yes"
<about 10 seconds later>
Her: "This thing popped up, what do I do?"
Me: "Click yes"
<more waiting>
Her: "Says something about making changes to my computer, what do I do?"
Me: "Click yes"
Her: "Is it going to make changes? Are you sure I should click yes?"
Me: "YES!!"
Her: "Don't yell at me. You're supposed to know how to do this, not me. What do I do now?"
Me: "Type ipconfig /flushdns"
Her: "OK, is this right.."
<sends a screenshot of 'Type ipconfig/flushdns'>
Me: "No, just ipconfig /flushdns"
Her: "OK, is this right.."
<sends a screenshot of 'ipconfig/flushdns'>
Me: "Yep, just put a space between ipconfig /flushdns and press enter"
Her: "Is this right.."
<sends a screenshot of ' ipconfig/flushdns'>
Me: "No, the space goes between ipconfig /flushdns, not before."
Her: "You're not making yourself clear. OK, now what?"
Me: "Press enter"
Her: "It didn't do anything."
Me: "Did you press enter?"
<more waiting>
Her: "OK, it's done. Now what?"
Me: "Restart FireFox"
Her: "Still not working. Just spins and spins."
<not 100% sure restarted FireFox>
Me: "I'll look at it when I get home."
rant
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