Tech Supporting Family

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

I got asked to help my father figure out why Quicktime wouldn't install on my family's XP box. Simple enough, right? Sure, until I found out what was doing it.


Cut through 3 hours of hacking away at an installshield error 1607, cut through the knowledgebase articles, the installshield help files, the dos commands, the registry fixes, the downloads, the identity permissions, the folder permissions, the file permissions, Mcafee firewall, noscript, and the test identity. At the end I faced my father, the man who works with networking equipment the size of a single tower system which costs more than a Dodge Viper, and could conceivably be used to DDoS God. I could only say this to him:

One: The identity you installed Windows Defender Beta on is hosed somewhere in the registry. I could fix it, but I'm not a developer and I don't have the time to run through the registry keys with a decoder ring the size of the house trying to find which part is trying to call which file in which directory of InstallShield that Defender suddenly decided was evil hackware that needed immediate deletion without leaving so much as a log entry. It be fucked, and there no be fixin' it. Make a new identity and pray nothing else got hosed even deeper, because this problem seems confined only to this one.

Two: For the love of my sanity, stop installing beta ANYTHING from Microsoft unless you do it on a test partition. We finally get 3rd party developers to stop installing shit in the windows directory, to stop installing shit with DOS installers, and to stop fucking up registry entries or memory location assignments only to have MICROSOFT pukes come along and do the same thing. I can't believe you installed a BETA release of a program that is supposed to make very advanced heuristic decisions about SPYWARE, some of the most insidious and ever-changing crapware on the planet, and then you act suprised when it fucks up? NORTON has been in the business since day ONE, and their shitware still says the Users menu in the Control Panel is a dangerous script and should be stopped. I'm suprised Windows Defender didn't build it's little ramparts around C:\windows\system32\ and then decide the ramparts and everything inside them were spyware.

Jesus. Christ.

Being unemployed is stressful.

Comments

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

I am STILL trying to figure out why ANY [l]user would EVER deliberately infect their system with install a Microsoft beta of ANY PROGRAM... but especially something system critical, like, say, the OS.

Seriously, have these people been living in caves all this time?

[torkell]

It's quite simple. The thoughts that go through a [l]users head when faced with beta are roughly "Hmm, beta, blah blah blah buggy (what's that mean) blah blah bl- OOH SHINEY!!!!"

[ebtb.livejournal.com]

hah! See my earlier post. I get no less than 5 emails a day (I don't know how many the other techs get) saying "I'm running Vista and now won't run! Do you have a fix or version compatible with Vista?"

or "Now my system is vulnerable because your firewall doesn't work on Vista. fix it!"

I always include the words "should" and "test environment" in my replies.

[flainn.livejournal.com]

This is why it's a bad idea to let anyone other than MSDN subscribers run beta software.

[ebtb.livejournal.com]

Amen!

[dog-star-man.livejournal.com]

Fuckin' Quicktime....*shakes head*

[mouser.livejournal.com]

In fairness to Microsoft's Defender:

It's cleaned stuff "the usual suspects" don't recognize, and on the 80 machines I manage there have been no problems.

That said, I've GOT to use it because I can't convince my idiot users that some places aren't thier friends. I don't care WHO sent them the damn link!

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

Did you jump or were you pushed?

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

I was trying to jump, I belly flopped. See below.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

When the fuck did you become unemployed?

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

June 19th or so. I took a risk on a job interview that fell through. The asshat doing the interview said I was 'too intimidating' to my inside man. Also some bullshit about how I could sue them for tonna cash if I suddenly decided to claim they 'made' me buy a car, or some such. While I can appreciate the desire to not get fucked, I really wish these HR types wouldn't Politically-Correct themselves so obscure and uptight that they can't come out and say "No."

Anyway, my attendance was on edge, so my callcenter job canned me. It's ok though, I was getting crap money, and assuming I ever actually get hired anywhere I'll be making 5-12 dollars per hour more than what I made there, which is nice.

I didn't post it here mainly because I didn't have a funny tech support story to go along with it. This has been pretty stressful time, frought with disappointment and more than a little doubt of my own self-worth. If not for my girlfriend and friends to help keep me on an even keel, I'm not sure how I'd be. I didn't think people would want to see that kind of shit, so I've basically been avoiding LJ except for occasional phone posts until lately.

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

Well, I hope things pick up soon for you. Being unemployed sucks ass (I was unemployed for 8 months when I first moved to the US and it was no bueno).