“If this was 2008, the customer would have completed the upgrade in two minutes from his kitchen”
Lee Grant shares tales from one of the toughest areas of tech support: running a local computer shop, and dealing with Microsoft’s odd software
If you’re the “techno-hero” for your friends and family, I salute you. Our business has been providing techno-hero services to home users since 2003 and we’re needed now more than ever. I’m not using the term as a self-aggrandising label, but it’s the kind of compliment given after rescuing customers from tech snares, scams and other nonsense.
Obviously, customers do ridiculous things – such as sawing the end off a stick of DDR RAM to fit it into a laptop. However, most make rational assumptions with the vague information given by tech firms that often presume too much knowledge.
Take the term “wireless”, for example. One lady reported that her laptop wouldn’t connect to Wi-Fi, but her other wireless device was fine. We discovered that her router was faulty and the functioning wireless device was a mouse. Rational and sensible, but technically wide of the mark.
We specialise in offering services to the technically bewildered, from a reassuring phone call to clarify that it’s safe to click “OK”, through to the full techno-hero rescue when scam phone calls have encrypted data and disabled machines. On occasion, even experienced PC users need our help…
Memory moans
A tech-savvy customer dropped his gaming laptop into the shop to have the RAM maxed-out to 16GB. Seemingly straightforward, but have you attempted this on a modern laptop? Gone are the days of flipping it over, removing a solitary screw on the access hatch to reveal empty DIMM slots. Demand for super-sleek machines means solid backplates, no handy hatches and an obstacle course of traps. This customer has tinkered with machines for years, but admitted that “the one thing YouTube videos don’t teach is bravery”.
There are 21 screws holding this HP device together; 20 came out smoothly, but one has a stripped head and won’t budge. It’s the first time I’ve seen such damage directly from the factory, and neither the trusted rubber band nor glue techniques were helping. So, we moved to option three: cracking out a popular brand of electric rotary tool to grind a groove large enough to accommodate a flat-head screwdriver.
I’ll confess to having mixed feelings about these sorts of jobs. Delighted that the customer has enlisted my services; relieved that they can’t see me take a power tool to their pride and joy. A steady hand, a fountain of sparks and the screw is out, leaving the machine undamaged.
Prising the laptop agape reveals the web of ribbon cables attaching things at the top to things at the bottom. One assumes the lengths of such cables are precisely calculated using Excel: long enough to facilitate assembly, but short enough that when the unsuspecting upgrader pulls off the keyboard, they’ll be shopping for a new laptop. Thirty seconds with a spudger reveals the motherboard, but there isn’t a single RAM slot in sight.
Of course, they’d be on the motherboard, face-down in a location that would be staggeringly convenient to access via a hatch on the case. Another four screws come out along with the wireless card, the speakers and four ribbon cables before I can lift the board, fit the RAM and rebuild the laptop. It goes without saying that I replaced the damaged screw.
If this was 2008, the customer would have completed the upgrade in under two minutes from the comfort of his kitchen. Remember when your Grandad could service the family car? Under the bonnet of my current car is a huge plastic engine cover that says, “There’s nothing for you here. Take me to a professional before you break me.” Most modern laptops are much the same.
New laptop time…
It isn’t only hardware problems we resolve. I’ve just sold a laptop to a family, and Mum wants everything transferred from their faulty laptop, which operates for around three minutes before having an electrical meltdown. This isn’t an unusual job, but it throws a spotlight on the operational procedures of a computer shop that you may find surprising.
The old laptop is a Windows 7 device with an email archive of organised folders within Windows Live Mail (WLM). I stopped counting at 20 main folders and over 100 sub-folders, but a few clicks tell me we’re dealing with an archive of around 30,000 messages. Not an unusual amount.
Microsoft discontinued WLM in January 2017, so the objective is to import the email archive into Outlook 2016 – the family has also purchased Office 365. Now pay attention to what is about to happen.
As you know, Office 365 needs a registered Microsoft account, but this customer doesn’t have one. In order to proceed, I need access to their email as the registration requires confirmation. A sensible move from Microsoft, but this customer doesn’t know their email password since WLM
“Demand for super-sleek machines means solid backplates, no handy hatches and an obstacle course of traps”
was set up years ago. I’m able to keep the machine alive long enough to use the Mail PassView utility to reveal the password, which I use to webmail into her account for verification. A few clicks and codes later, Office is hauling its 3GB bulk towards the new laptop.
The email migration requires a different approach. The by-the-book way of exporting mail between WLM and Outlook is a non-starter, since the laptop won’t operate for long enough. However, this method rarely works before both clients point fingers at each other then hide behind an error message. Once the hard drive is extracted and slaved to our workbench machine, I unleash the snappily titled “Kernel for EML to PST Converter” by Lepide Software. I point it in the right direction to transfer all the email into a new PST file, which I copy to the new laptop and import into Outlook 2016. Job done? Ha! Microsoft has a trap for us.
The email folders are intact but the folders and sub-folder names are gibberish, because WLM has a quirk. No matter what the folder is named in the WLM interface, the actual folder name on the hard disk has a maximum of 15 characters. For example, the customer’s Car Insurance Renewals folder is actually named Car Insurance Rhez, and it’s this naming convention that’s imported.
This customer had stressed that her email archive must be complete, so I use Acronis 2018 to make a VM from the old hard drive and load up the defunct WLM to reveal the folder names in all their loveliness. This final stage requires a cushion, some coffee and a packet of biscuits; I spend two hours renaming folders. The result – and this is the most important part – is that the customer is very happy to have not lost their email archive.
Ever wondered why people persevere with such aged machines? Allow this scenario to highlight a typical reason. It isn’t the fear of change, so much as the fear of being unable to make the change. Building systems is easy: giving customers the confidence to retire a system they know will fail is much harder.
You may be thinking that these are insignificant revelations, but I hope there are some of you screaming “YOU HACKED HER EMAIL PASSWORD!”
Absolutely, but entirely with the customer’s knowledge and approval. The customer is paying me to set up the machine so that once she’s home, everything is pre-loaded and ready to run. I could have asked her to return to the shop, log into her webmail with the hacked password to authorise Office, blindfolding me while she changes her email password before typing it into Outlook 2016. Sometimes, we have to go looking for long-forgotten passwords and codes – just think about that the next time you hand your machine over for repair.
Installation aside, Microsoft has failed to improve the tools for Outlook Express/Windows Mail/WLM users to migrate their mail; the Windows 10 Mail app can’t import anything at all. There are alternatives to Outlook, of course, but these have their own import traps too.
More Microsoft moans
We install around 95% of our Office 365 sales, so this sort of scenario is common. Often, the other 5% struggle to navigate the setup process too.
One customer was told by Microsoft support to return the faulty Office 365 for a refund. I examined the bit of card, which flexed, created wind when wafted and, printing errors aside, was incapable of developing a fault. The issue was that the customer was attempting to install Office 365 Academic version with a personal email, instead of his university one. The Microsoft tech failed to spot this, but we had the customer smiling and out of the door within ten minutes.
While on the subject of Microsoft moans - during Steve Balmer’s pirouette at the launch of Windows 8, he introduced the online “Microsoft login” to sit alongside the local login that home users didn’t know they were used to. The Windows 8 setup procedure makes it super-difficult to evade a Microsoft account; Windows 8.1 is worse, and Cortana resorts to blackmail during Windows 10 configuration. There’s nothing wrong with it unless you’re sitting on my side of the counter, because the question I must ask each customer is: “What is the password to log in to Windows?”
I need to access a machine to fix the problem. Some users do remove passwords before arriving, but this is impossible if it won’t boot. This wasn’t a concern with local accounts, but now this single password controls email, Skype, Office 365 and Xbox... Terrifying, isn’t it?
Windows allows the creation of a PIN alias, but when you start digging in the back-end of Windows 10, the PIN mysteriously becomes insufficient and the proper password is required. I’ve raised this numerous times with Microsoft, offering a simple solution. Make PIN access-all-areas. However, I’m a small, family-run business and seem unable to shout loud enough.
Some advice to pass around
Independent repair shops provide services that large retailers don’t and online can’t. I’m one of the many good guys, one of the multitude of technoheroes that will treat your data, machines and passwords with more care than you do, so avoid the “tech-villains” that won’t. Do your research and ask repair shop owners how they operate; demand to see their terms and conditions. If you don’t get satisfactory answers then go elsewhere. This is your digital life – and you need to protect it.
“Building systems is easy; giving customers the confidence to retire a system they know will fail is much harder”