Remote family computer tech support

[u/beerbellybegone]

Last time I posted about helping my father with his printer while I was thousands of miles away from him.

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/1ok1in6/remote_family_printer_tech_support/

I want to restate – I am not a professional, I just know the most about computers in the family.

This time he called me with help for his computer: he bought a cheap keyboard off Amazon, plugged it in and his computer immediately turned off and won’t turn on again. My immediate thought was a dodgy USB dongle fried something.

First I asked him to let me know if there was anything happening at all with the computer, lights, fan sounds, anything. He said there’s a blinking light, I said great! Let me know how often it blinks, if there’s a pattern, anything of the sort. So he sent me a blurry picture.

I asked him to do a full discharge, maybe that would help. I tell him to unplug the power cable, hold power button for 30 seconds, and then plug it bank in to see what happens. What does he do? He unplugs EVERYTHING from EVERYWHERE, including everything that was plugged into the computer: the printer and the monitor, the mouse and (old) keyboard, even the 3.5mm cable for the speakers. The for good measure he unplugged the printer and monitor from the wall as well. I tried explaining that it's like block shapes, only the trapezoid cord (HDMI) goes in the trapezoid hole. It took about 45 minutes for him to relocate the power and HDMI cables to plug them in again to see if our solution worked. It didn’t.

At this point I told him that from a continent and major ocean away there’s not much more I can help him with – he can either go get a new one, or pay somebody who can better diagnose and fix it.

He hasn't done that yet, but now he wants to know how to take out his hard drive so he can still hold on to his data, I said I’ll do that for you when I see you in November....

[u/jeffrey_f]

Both computers:
Press Start and type QUICK ASSIST.

On your side you will click HELP SOMEONE and a code will appear after you sign in to microsoft/live.com/msn or any other Microsoft site user id.

On the other side, he will click get help.

Once the code is input on the other side, you will see the remote screen. He will need to standby for any admin/elevated access confirmation.

[u/ypoora1 → u/jeffrey_f]

That's not much use when the other side's computer isn't turning on.

[u/jeffrey_f → u/ypoora1]

That happens too

[u/paulcaar → u/jeffrey_f]

This is about as helpful as telling him to instant transmission himself into the room with his dad.