Extreme tech support

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Don't you love tech support in adverse circumstances? Mine yesterday was two hours of troubleshooting my parents' wireless router while making sure my sister's ten-month-old did not reset the desktop computer or eat the cords of the two laptop computers, and the last half hour of which was spent with my sister telling me it wasn't worth troubleshooting, that they should buy a new router, and that it was probably "all Comcast's fault anyway."

Now, I'm all for blaming Comcast when they're at fault, like the 239842398744 times a day my Internet connection goes down, but how on Earth could it be their fault if any computer connected to the router with a cord works just fine on the Internet, but wireless isn't working?

I seriously wanted to shut her in the bathroom.

And just in case anyone wants to feel my joy vicariously, the WLAN light was on on the router, but both portable computers (Dell Latitude D630 and Thinkpad T60) insisted there was no wireless network to be discovered, and Linksys's own diagnostic program run on both laptops insisted that both laptops' radios were off (verifiably untrue as they could detect all our neighbors' wireless networks). GRRR.

I was there till 10:30PM getting harangued about how it was all Comcast's fault and how I should just give up and go home and that I was wasting all my time and all my sister's time. Yeah, spending my whole evening punting around a router is my idea of a good time.

Comments

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and I forgot to add, part of the time was spent preventing my sister's two boy cats from getting it on and knocking half the paperwork to the floor (http://redqueenmeg.livejournal.com/251362.html).

[shadowfairy.livejournal.com]

I had that exact same issue with my linksys. The solution was changing the broadcast channel. It seems a neighbor got a new wireless and was broadcasting on the same channel and some how it made it so our two laptops couldn't "see" our wireless any more.

Of course I George figured that out in about 5 minutes after I spent 3 hours going around and around with linksys.

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Thanks; that was one of the first things I tried. Checked every available channel, no dice on either wireless computer. Could find all our neighbors' networks, though!

[yayweredoomed.livejournal.com]

your evening is worth more than the cost of a new router. So go let your sister out of the bathroom so she can tend to the baby that's either dead or driving you nuts, if the gay cats(...) haven't eaten it.

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Sadly, they are going to have to get a new router. However I wanted to make sure I exhausted every other possibility first. Besides, she's fun to irritate, in a way. :)

[yayweredoomed.livejournal.com]

So really, do did this to yourself :P

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Deriving some joy from the lesser of two options doesn't mean I did it to myself. Having quiet while trying to argue with Linksys would have been preferable. :P

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Um, after the first haranguement, why didn't you say "fuck you and your 'diagnosis' of the problem - have fun wasting your own time and money with Comcast or whatever other shonky outfit you choose to sign up with in your ignorance" (however politely or not you'd want to express those sentiments)? Because? If they're not paying me, either they appreciate my efforts or they can screw themselves. Family or not.

As for Comcast's reliability problems, as their home networks are the source of a huge proportion of our spam (due to the botted machines - thousands of messages a day, every day, to Australia), perhaps if they addressed that problem, they might find quite a bit of their bandwidth freeing up.

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

I didn't quit because even though my sister lives there, it's not her router. It's my parents', and I work on it for them, and because my mom was watching my kid for me too. I did it as a favor to them. Unfortunately the router is located right outside the rooms of my sister and her kid, and so her presence was unavoidable.

Yes, Comcast definitely does suck!

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Oh I see! Memo to sister: "You want to help? Get me a nice chilled glass of wine and STFU. KTHKSBAI".

Ah, sisters.

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

My wireless router is displaying very similar symptoms. 'cos it's old and crappy. *sigh*

[emerald-embers.livejournal.com]

Ah, the wired connection working and wireless connection not working days of fun.

The $ISP where I work decided to start shipping wireless routers out for free with upgrades to their larger internet packages (well, until they ran out of the first lot of routers), only to announce pretty much three days after the launch that oh, oops, the first lot of routers were actually incapable of broadcasting their SSIDs.

Those were fun, fun times.

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Hah, awesome!

Comcast obviously wouldn't give out routers if their lives depended on it as it might show up how awful their bandwidth-choking is (witness them telling us straight out we should not be using more than one computer at once and should NEVER use a router). That's why when my dad told me his company told him to call Comcast, I told him not to bother. I knew that call would get as far as, "You want to use your computer upstairs and the router is downstairs? Bring your computer downstairs. Hook it up with a cable to the cable modem. NOT THE ROUTER. The modem. Does it work now? OK, I'm ending the call."

[cjkline83.livejournal.com]

SSID Broadcat turned on?

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Thanks, yes, that was one of the first things I checked. I even re-ran the whole router setup, taking it back to factory settings, put everything back on, etc., that thing was NOT broadcasting, though it said it was.

[cjkline83.livejournal.com]

Weak...

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

It really was... I think my favorite part of the whole stupid thing was that when I ran the Linksys diagnostic thing on both wireless computers, the Linksys diagnostic said that the computers' radios weren't turned on. Yeah, OK. Except they were. Try again? Nope, that's the answer.