[Closed] Parents IT dramas and disbelief

Just chuck their existing PC into a skip and start again?

I would personally transition them onto W10 and gmail - that has two factor verification. But do they know how to use a mobile?

What are they using the Talktalk address for?

Take the pain of moving email. It'll be easier in the long run.

If they stop paying talk talk , do talk talk close the email and start bouncing anything back?

In the past, I set up both my parents up with new PC’s, emails and licensed applications. I also set up remote administration on both, so I could support from my home. It was easy because I knew the machines specification, OS and apps.

Both then chose to **** it all up - my late dads second wife, wiping the computer and getting some cowboy to install loads of bloatware and freeware. My mum, by getting my brother to request the admin password from me, which he then used to install Office 2003 on top of Office 2007 - because my mum didn’t like the ribbon…. no he didn’t uninstall Office 2007 first.

From those points on - I refused to help under any circumstance. My life was a lot easier that way. I also don’t listen to any of my brothers views on any tech other than TV’s and gaming - because I realised he knows naff all!

Feel a lot better now I have got that off my chest! Rant over!

Buy them an iPad. Tell them to call genius next time they have an issue 😂

as a result they can’t change their password without talking to an advisor as they don’t have an account

I take it you've tried this? https://myaccount.talktalk.co.uk/forgotdetails/index/webmailindex

Is there a way to add an extra level of security somehow

You can check https://haveibeenpwned.com and also register for alerts.

Should I just strip it right back, reinstall windows and try and get them to trust windows 10 security?

Probably. But do you know how the account got hacked? Was it due to a simple password, or a reused one? That's less concerning in a way than a Malware infection or something.

they don’t want to start again with a new address

Once someone has control of your email address any accounts registered to this address are so much easier to access - password reset usually works under the assumption no-one else can access your email for instance. Check especially any online financial accounts (remember savings, investments, pensions not just bank accounts) to make sure they are still in your parents control. If you can't guarantee no-one else can access that email address then you need to change it anyway.

Buy them an iPad.

My parents have stopped asking me for IT help as I tend to suggest this.

Yes, yes and yes.

The only concern I'd have is that "reset my password" on any number of accounts might be tied back to that TalkTalk address. As a random example, their bank. I'd be looking to address that first.

ISP-provided email is bollocks, it's not the 1990s any more. Get them on one of the web-based providers like Google, Microsoft or (ironically) Proton. Set up 2FA. Get rid of all the third-party "security" shite. Bullguard? Who pulled their pants down for that one?

From those points on – I refused to help under any circumstance.

One of the best moves I ever made was on my uncle's PC. He was an eternal fiddler and a bugger for magazine cover disks. He'd ring me up weekly with conversations like:

"My printer wasn't printing in yellow..."
Yeah, OK, that's easily addressed.
"... so I reinstalled Windows, and now..."
FFFFUUUUU......!

So what I did was purge the bloody lot, rebuild it and then install Acronis. Easy after that, "yeah, so Winamp wouldn't play Celine Dion, so I installed Linux, defrosted the fridge, bummed the dog and..." Yeah, sure, reboot it, hit F11, wait for it to rebuild to the last time I looked at it. "Cool, bye!"

He's dead now, mind. There's probably a moral there somewhere.

You should try my parents. Computing like it's the 1990s would be a quantum leap forward. They never made it out of the 1960s.

Most recent technology purchase:

A combined VHS and DVD writer.

Reason for purchase:

Transfer all the films (about 20 westerns, I believe) that had been recorded from telly over the course of, well, the entire lifespan of VHS really, from VHS to DVD.

£350 or thereabouts.

Amount of films transferred:

0

I’ve got used to things just working and so had forgotten about pc pain. Aaaaagh!!!

Buy them an iPad. Tell them to call genius next time they have an issue

Do people really still believe this? Its 2021 not 2011. Things have moved on since Windows xp. I cant remember the last time I saw a virus on a pc (and I work in IT support). Nowadays "things just work" in windows10 as well.

Thanks all. Great advice and humour as usual - good to know I’m not the only one suffering. They are now back on email and a little bit more secure. I’ll do the purge at the weekend.

Definitely install some sort of remote viewing application - teamviewer or similar.  I've found this saves a lot of pain just being able to take over at a moments notice from home and see exactly what random prompt my father is not reading and also triple clicking on.

Despite getting him onto Gmail and away from TalkTalk, getting him to move on from Windows Live Mail as a client to just using it in a browser has proved one step too far.  Sadly an increasing level of dementia is probably the main issue.

Nowadays “things just work” in windows10 as well.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

I'm a Windows fan but never underestimate the power of a belligerent parent.

Hotmail/outlook is also 2fa and completely integrated With windows, that's where I'd be heading.

I work in IT.

Not only do I have to deal with users who are unable to follow a simple instruction, or answer a simple, directed question, I'm also IT support for the whole family - parents, sister, niece etc etc.

It's great.

Chromebook? Do they do anything beyond browsing/email?

nope, and that is indeed the beauty of them

that said, might as well get a cheap tablet and use gmail

A chromebook won't help if they're clicking on phishing emails and entering their passwords etc.

I would bet they've fallen foul of at least 1 phishing email, ideally you want MFA set up on the new account, but that does mean another bit of tech for them to get their head around...

Luckily you can set the pc/browser as a trusted device and to not require MFA so in theory the only time it should prompt for MFA is when being accessed from an unknown device. Might be worth setting it to your device to stop them randomly approving requests.

Chromebook? Do they do anything beyond browsing/email?

Chromebooks do, or did you mean the OP's parents?

Not only do I have to deal with users who are unable to follow a simple instruction, or answer a simple, directed question,

This is something that grips my shit. I get that not everyone is particularly IT-literate and that's fine. But I've had conversations like:

"I got an error message!"
OK, what did it say?
"Oh I don't know, I've closed it now, I didn't understand it."

Gnnn... you don't have to understand it, that's what you called me for. You just have to read it out to me. Are you telling me that you can't read?

There's not being IT literate and there's being wilfully bloody dense. I have considerably more patience for the former.

TalkTalk have had numerous data breaches, and handled some of those very badly, I don't know why they have any customers anymore tbh! Just show your parents some of the news reports, and get them moved over to Googlemail or similar.

If they're happy with the idea of a tablet, there's less to go wrong (or them to **** up somehow) IMO. My similarly aged mum loves her iPad! (although she also loves her MBP 😃) Just sort them out with whatever you are happy to fix I guess, if you'll be doing tech support!

Thankfully my Dad has an iMac, and so does my brother. I refuse to have anything to do with them, much prefer Windows. So any tech problems are my brother's to sort out 🙂

Unfortunately my wife's uncle has a Windows laptop and lives about 10 minutes away 🙁

I don't work in IT but still have to field almost daily calls from my mother ranting that "this doesn't work" or "that's not doing what it should". After going round the houses several times it's almost always the first response I suggested that fixes the problem but was ignored because "I've tried that, I'm not stupid you know".

"It doesn't work" is also high on my shit-gripping list. Like, could you be any less specific?

Give us symptoms, we aren't psychic. Compare "I can't print" with "when I click the Print button it says 'error 37' and nothing else happens." For all I know, you can't print because you don't have a printer.

It's either nothing or everything I find.

"I can't log on."
"Ok, what's happening when you try to log on?"
"Nothing"
"....*Silently choking user through the internet"

Or

"I can't log on."
"Ok, what's happening when you try to log on?"
"Well, I turned on my laptop this morning but the cat was being sick so I got half through logging on then had to go clean up that then I put my username in the password box but then couldn't find my phone so it didn't log me on then I found my phone but it still don't log me and now it's giving me an error"
"and what's the error"
"it says my account is locked out"

[img] [/img]

this is like r/talesfromtechsupport

The best one I had recently was along the lines of:
Cust -"I can't print"
Me - "Okay" - wrongly assumes that the printer would actually be plugged in and then goes through a load of steps with her but crucially not remoted into the machine
Me - "Is it definitely plugged in?"
Cust - "oh, no...."

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...............!

My best is customer saying the monitors not working. asked her if it's switched on?
No I unplugged it yesterday because I needed the kettle lead for the kettle.
Can you plug it back in please.
No, that's not my job.

“I can’t log on.”
“Ok, what’s happening when you try to log on?”
“Nothing”
“….*Silently choking user through the internet”

I'm in this post and I don't like it.

Me – “Is it definitely plugged in?”

I once had this.

Is the network cable plugged in?
"Yes."
Are you sure?
"Yes, it's definitely plugged in, I've checked it twice."
At both ends?
"...
oh, it's completely coincidentally started working!"

No I unplugged it yesterday because I needed the kettle lead for the kettle.

She'd have been shit out, then. A kettle lead will fit a PC but a PC "kettle lead" won't actually fit a kettle. Kettle leads are heat-rated, they have a notch in the plug / ward in the socket to prevent you from using unrated cables

this is like r/talesfromtechsupport

More than once I've considered writing a book.

Also, if we're talking Reddit,

techsupportgore can be a fun read.

What I don’t understand is why people think it’s acceptable to use the phrase “I’m not IT literate” as the excuse for refusing to even try to understand anything at all about how to use a computer, despite the fact that 50% of their job relies on them being able to use a computer. And I’m talking basic stuff, turning it on, logging in, opening PowerPoint. I genuinely wonder how these people manage to get through the day.

She’d have been shit out, then. A kettle lead will fit a PC but a PC “kettle lead” won’t actually fit a kettle. Kettle leads are heat-rated, they have a notch in the plug / ward in the socket to prevent you from using unrated cables

No idea. Point was they had removed it and wouldn't replace it as it wasn't their job. I was contracting at a council about 15 years ago and encountered that attitude a lot.

oceanskipper
Full Member

What I don’t understand is why people think it’s acceptable to use the phrase “I’m not IT literate” as the excuse for refusing to even try to understand anything at all about how to use a computer, despite the fact that 50% of their job relies on them being able to use a computer.

My old boss, mid 40s, not a total moron in a lot of ways... complained to me one afternoon that he couldn't print on his own machine, got me to print something for him, no bother. About 3 weeks later, says the same thing, I turn and look at the printer, it's not on. For literally a month every time he wanted something printed he was putting the file on a thumb drive and walking around the building til he found someone that'd print it for him. When he couldn't find anyone, he took it home and printed stuff out there. Yes it was switched off at the wall.

You people that work in IT, you are heroes.

Can you plug it back in please.
No, that’s not my job.

In other words, I'm not calling support because I want the computer fixing, I'm calling because I've been told to. I would prefer to sit here and do nothing, which is what I'll do if you don't come and plug it in for me.

Yeah I used to use my tiscali email for everything (part of talk talk). When they said they wanted paying I swapped all my accounts to my Gmail and use that. It took over a year for talk talk to make using the tiscali email awkward and even now I still can, but have to log on to the website as they've turned off the support for the pop server so I can't get the tiscali stuff forwarded to my phone anymore. Charging for use of an email address is just pants, bite the bullet and shift them, it's less pain than you expect.

"And I’m talking basic stuff, turning it on, logging in, opening PowerPoint. I genuinely wonder how these people manage to get through the day."
I really do think that some of you don't realise how alien these things are to some people. I have no bloody idea what do do with powerpoint. I cannot create a spreadsheet, what ever that is and online banking confuses me. No idea but thankfully no damn need to either.
People seem to forget that computers are tools and our slaves but in reality nowadays it is the other way round.

I really do think that some of you don’t realise how alien these things are to some people. I have no bloody idea what do do with powerpoint. I cannot create a spreadsheet, what ever that is and online banking confuses me. No idea but thankfully no damn need to either.

Well that's my point really - if you have no need to use IT then there is no need to know anything about it and that's perfectly fine. I know nothing about farming sheep but I am not a farmer so that's OK! It is people in the workplace I am referring to, who are supposed to use IT for their job but refuse to learn anything about how to operate a PC using the excuse "I'm not IT literate" which they deem an acceptable caveat for getting someone else to do half their job for them. If you try and explain how to do it so they can do it themselves they just keep spouting the "I'm not IT literate" phrase as if that makes it OK for them to waste your time showing them (doing it for them) the same thing over and over again every time they need to do it.

However I do agree that in a lot of cases they have never been shown properly and people just assume that everyone knows how to use a PC which I totally get, but also they don't help themselves either, I do plenty of things at work that I have had to work out how to do for myself. Maybe that's just me. 🤷‍♂️

The scary thing is that, according to friends who teach at university, undergrads also have no idea about how to use Windows, office or how to organise a filing system.  It's all mobile apps and touch screen experience, so are stuffed when they're asked to work with a data set in excel, or make a presentation.

Bonkers eh?

how to organise a filing system

Interesting thread about just that - it seems today's students never really use a file system, and have never needed to learn about one:

https://twitter.com/mcsquared96/status/1440677446014029836

It's certainly something I've seen with my daughter, she never really worries about where she's saving a document, as she can just search for it.

I had no idea you could use TalkTalk for email without actually having an account.

I've been elected as IT tech support for our small close of 5 houses. Next door has a laptop so poor that I can go round, turn it on, request and drink a cuppa, before it boots. And when it does, it's soooo slow.

Last time he was having issues I just said out of frustration "why don't you just get an ipad?". Fortunately his wife was listening and next thing is he's despatched to the apple store.

He then got a friend to set it up, unbeknownst to me.

Next thing, "I bought that ipad thing, but I can't get into it" . I mean, wtf?

I tried to make sense of his passwords and his passcode pin for the ipad wasn't working.

After downloading ios onto my laptop whilst sitting on his lawn connected to my wifi and his home phone,then removing his account and reupdating his ipad I finally got him to set up his fingerprint again, and a PIN.

He also got a 2FA notification via sms and it suddenly dawned what he'd done - his helper had assumed the original 2FA sms code was his pin. 🙄

He now has a fully working ipad and I know what his passwords and codes are 😁

As mentioned above, never underestimate an old dudes ability to **** up something really simple.

IT support also works in the other direction.

Had a laptop that couldn’t access the net at work. Tried other PC’s and they were fine. IT support guy asked for my IP so he could dial in through the net that it couldn’t access. Acted surprised when he couldn’t access my laptop.

Explain in detail, including screenshots and links to web pages highlighting an issue with Sage and get a response along the lines of “that can’t happen” despite providing screenshots and link highlighting the actual issue I was experiencing.

Handheld scanner from the warehouse with a crazy barcode read error issue. “Operator error by your staff” so forwarded a video of me using the scanner with same issue “that can’t happen” 🤦🏼‍♂️ Yes, I took the time to edit a video of myself faking and error.

This shit works both ways! 😄

I’m talking basic stuff, turning it on, logging in, opening PowerPoint.

I really do think that some of you don’t realise how alien these things are to some people. I have no bloody idea what do do with powerpoint.

I have no idea what to do with Powerpoint either. But I know how to open it.

In any case, that's not the (ahem) point. I have every sympathy for someone who doesn't know how to use Powerpoint if they're a dairy farmer. I have less sympathy if they're at a senior level in Marketing. I have zero sympathy if they think their deliberate ignorance is hilarious.

Because, I used to argue in defence of this, I get it. These things are new, there's an expectation that you should just instinctively know what you're doing and that's totally bogus. But that was thirty years ago. Today it's like crashing your car and going "well I don't know anything about this car shit, LOL!" Watch a video, buy a book, ask someone to show you.

mattsccm
Free Member

I have no bloody idea what do do with powerpoint.

Make really boring presentations. Ideally, put literally every word you intend to say on the screen, so that not only is it really hard to read, you also might as well not be there.

IT support also works in the other direction.

Well yes it does. Some of this stuff is really complicated though and people expect the junior IT person to be able to instantly diagnose and fix any and every issue. In the same way you wouldn't ask a GP to do brain surgery some problems require expert knowledge of a particular system and are not easy to pinpoint. That said, the attitude of some IT support people does leave a bit to be desired as per your example above.

.

My parents special IT skill is to call me at random time and tell that "computer does not work" and when asked about it is usually "we don't know, there was some error message 3 months ago and we can't remember what it was".
To be fair, it is usually about some service or subscription and not the computer itself.