How to update your computer

Welcome everyone, and let's jump right in.

To start off with, find your way to the control panel as you did with creating the Restore Point. If you haven't yet done that, I highly recommend following these instructions.

Now, I will forewarn users of Windows 10, these instructions may not necessarily apply equally, and if you find that you cannot check for and install updates with these instructions, I will have Windows 10 specific instructions down below.

For Windows 7 and 8, go ahead and click "Windows Update" in the Control Panel. This will take you to the Windows Update window. The other method of getting here is searching "wuapp" in your search bar (wuapp stands for Windows Update Application).

Once here it may say that you're set to automatically install updates and that there are no updates available. If this is the case, click "Check for updates" on the left. This may take up to a few minutes before it finds anything. For both Windows 7 and 8 there is a known issue with wuapp taking long periods of time to find updates if there are any. Anything longer than twenty minutes can be safely assumed that your computer is suffering from this issue. If this is the case, you may have to let the computer sit for hours, possibly even days, to find, download, and install these updates. Some of these updates include a fix to this issue, and once the fix applies, the update process will drastically speed up.

If your computer does find any updates, it will give you the option to either install just the Important updates, or choose optional ones as well. I advise that you do check these optional updates and see if any of them say anything about being security updates. They will typically include an identifier that looks like "KBXXXXXX" where the Xs are numbers (ie KB419687). If there are any of these, select them as well to be installed as part of the updates. Once the updates have been installed, you will be typically instructed to restart the computer. After doing so, check again for updates. If no new ones appear, then you are ready to go.

Windows 10 Updates

For Windows 10 users, if these instructions do not work for you, there is still a way to find out what updates you need. I do not have visuals, but these instructions should be easy to follow.

Either go to settings from the Start menu, or press the Windows key and 'I' together. This will bring up a window with settings. There should be either 9 or 11 options, depending on what build of Windows 10 you have (most of you will be on pre-1703, which is the only build with 11 options in this Window). The last option should be "Update and Recovery." Click this option, then the next screen should already be on updates. If not, click updates in the options on the left. Now, it should automatically scan for updates, but if not, as above, you can click "Check for updates," and it should look for updates for you. If it finds any, it will attempt to download and install these updates. Once completed, you may be instructed to restart the computer to fully apply the updates. Though it does happen, rarely do you need to check for updates a second time, as they usually are all found on the first check.


And these are how you find and install your updates. With these instructions you can keep your computer up-to-date and keep it protected from potential threats.

How to create a Restore Point

Hello, and for those who are here to learn how to create a Restore Point, I want to start by informing you that Restore Points do not replace keeping proper backups and ensuring your hardware is in working order. However, if you make regular restore points (maybe once a month or so), it can help you in the event that you have Operating System problems and need to reset your computer to an earlier state.

Okay, to begin, there are a few different ways to get into the Restore Point Creation Utility. The most sure fire way to get there is through the Control Panel. Now I do not have images for Windows 7, but if you click on the Start button, Control Panel will be one of the options on the right-hand side of your start menu. In Windows 8 and 10, as demonstrated below, you can right-click on the Start button, or press the Windows key and 'X' and it will bring up the Power User menu. There you can press 'P' or click Control Panel.

From here here you will be presented with the Control Panel. For ease of viewing, I recommend changing the option next to "View by:" to "Small icons."

You can then click "Recovery" which will take you to "Advanced recovery tools."

In this Windows, click "Configure System Restore." This will pop-up a Window that says System Properties, and the "System Protection" tab should already be selected.

Now, most people will already have a pre-configured System Restore drive. You will know whether or not it is configured, because the "Create..." button will be greyed out and unclickable. Also the "Protection Settings" will say "Off" for all of the drives. If you need to first Configure your drive, select your drive under "Protection Settings" (usually it's the drive that says OS and is labelled C:), click "Configure...", and a new Window will pop up.

You want to fill the bubble next to "Turn on system protection," then click "Apply" at the bottom, then click "OK." The Window will disappear, and your drive will now have "On" listed next to it under "Protection Settings". Now you can click "Create..." and one more Window will pop up. In here you will put in a name for the restore point. I highly recommend putting the current date and either what you were during before making the Restore Point, or the reason for making it. For example, "5-13-17 Restore Point before updates against malware". This way you know exactly what to look for should you need to go back to an old Restore Point.

Once you've put in a name, you can click "Create" and the computer will begin to create your Restore Point. Now depending on many factors, including age of computer, speed of Hard Drive and processor, and what programs you have installed, this process can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. It is very rare that this takes longer than 15 minutes, and if it does, I recommend cancelling the process, restarting the computer, and starting again.

The shortcut to getting to the System Properties Window, where you make the Restore Point, is to search for it in your Search Bar using the phrase "Create a Restore Point," however sometimes the Search function can have issues, so this is the guaranteed method to getting to this Window.

Now you have just made your own Restore Point and your computer is just that much more protected against future issues.

How to backup your files

I initially wrote this article to show people how to backup their own files in preparation for updating their computer to prevent a ransomware attack, but this information can still apply whenever you need to backup anything important.

So, to begin, we need to first locate our files. To do this we most open File Explorer. In all supported versions of Windows Operating System, holding the Windows key (usually located between the CTRL and ALT keys) and then pressing E should open up the Explorer window. If that doesn't work, you should typically have an icon on your taskbar, similar to this one on the right of the start button in the image shown below:

Or a similar icon should be located somewhere on your desktop. After opening File Explorer, you then need to locate what you want saved. Typically, the most important files will be found in the Users folder of your C: drive.

In the Users folder you'll find your own User account, as well as any others that are on the computer. If you are not sure what you want or need to backup, you can choose to backup the whole Users folder. Be warned, you want to make sure that you have a large enough storage drive to backup everything you have. To check on how much space your files are taking, I will show that down below, but for now, we will continue on with copying the files to your external drive. (Note: External drives is used here to mean any storage solution that you connect to the computer via USB. This can include Flash Drives, External Hard Drives, and various other methods of backing up data.)

Once you have found the files you wish to back up, the easiest way to copy them is to simply right-click on the folder containing these files, then clicking copy on the drop-down menu that appears. (Note: Only the things that are highlighted when you click copy will be copied. Nothing more and, more importantly, nothing less. All highlighted items will be copied by this command.)

Now that you have copied your desired files, it's time to move them to your external drive. Once you have your drive plugged in, you'll need to locate it in File Explorer. Typically you will find it on the left-hand side below the item labelled "This PC" or something similar. If you see nothing under "This PC," move your mouse over it, and you should see a white arrow/triangle pointing to the right. Click it, and it will list the main folders and drives on your computer. One of these should be your external drive. Mine is listed in the picture below as Movie Backups, assigned to drive letter G:.

Now, once you've located your external drive, click on it and it will show you what is currently on there. If this is a new drive, either there will be pre-loaded software from the vendor/manufacturer, or it will be entirely empty. Either is fine.

Now that you are in your drive, you can do one of two things. The first is to create a folder with a label to let you know when you made this backup. You do this by right clicking in the empty space, and then mouse-over "New," and then clicking "Folder" at the top of the menu. After that, it will immediately allow you to name the folder whatever you choose. Once you've chosen a name, press enter, and then you can open the folder to paste your files into.

The second option is to just paste directly onto your external drive. Either method is fine, though if you plan on doing regular backups in the future (which is highly recommended), having dated folders can be useful for knowing when your last good backup was. To paste your files onto your drive (or into the new folder on your drive), right-click in the empty space, and paste will be a clickable option in the menu (assuming you've followed all the instructions above and haven't been print-screening like I have).

Now, when you click paste, you may get a popup window that shows the estimated time of completion. If you are backing up a lot of files, this process can take a long time. Even longer if your hard drive is failing. Just be patient, and the process will eventually finish. Be forewarned, that you may encounter some errors when copying your files. Most of these (if you even have any) will be unnecessary files that the computer uses for indexing purposes, and do not need to be backed up. But occasionally it will tell you it can't back up a file, and it may be a picture, word document, or some other file you may consider important. If this happens, make note of it, then allow to the process to finish (usually be clicking ignore or skip). Then, find then file later, and see if you can retry backing it up. Sometimes it's just a small goof up in the backup process, but occasionally it can be seen as a sign of a corrupted file.

At this point, you should have your files backed up. If you have other things to backup, go back and repeat these steps with your remaining files until you have everything saved that you need. Below will be instructions on how to check the size of your files and folders, so you can determine if they will fit on your external drive.

To see how large the folders/files are, simply locate what you intend to backup (as detailed above), make sure it's highlighted by clicking on it only once, then right-click the folder/file. This will popup a menu with many different options. One of the bottom options will be "Properties." Click that, and a window will popup that should show the size of everything that's in the folder/file, as shown below.

Now, the difference between the two sizes are how big the actual files are, and how much space they take up on the drive. Think of it like a bookshelf containing books. Each book on the bookshelf may only take up a certain amount of space, and added together may be less space than how much the bookshelf can hold, but if there is no room for more books on the shelf, even if there is technically empty space open, you could effectively say that the books actually take up the whole space on the shelf. This is similarly applied to the files on your computer. The "Size on disk" is going to be the more important size, because this is roughly how much space it will take up on your external drive. And you may have noticed it earlier, but your external drive does not actually hold the exact amount of space that you may have thought you were buying. It holds a little bit less. This has to do mostly with unit conversion between different number bases (a bunch of math stuff), but it also is a little bit to do with rounding, so you lose roughly ten percent of the space you were advertised (eg 32 GB flashdrive only has about 29 GB of storage). With this information, you can now ensure you have enough space on your drive, or go purchase a drive large enough to hold all of your files.

To reiterate once more, it is highly recommended to make regular backups of your files, and I always recommend multiple backups. If you have data that absolutely cannot ever be lost, then have multiple backup drives with copies of that data, and make sure one of them is in a secured location (eg A fireproof safe, a safety deposit box at a bank, or buried in a cement casing). I am entirely serious about this, and I hope that you are now able to keep all of your important files safe.

My Favorite Virus

Something most people may not know about IT is that we eventually begin to root for certain viruses. There's the big names, like Cryptolocker, Mindspark, and Conduit, but then there's my favorite one of all, that not many people know. It's called not-a-virus. Wanna know why not-a-virus is my favorite virus? Not just because of its humorous name, as if somehow you won't know it's a virus, but also because it has the guts to pretend it isn't. It's such a cute little virus. It just hops onto people's computers, doesn't do much, and just acts as a nuisance. I mean, sure, you never really want any viruses on your computer, but this one I sometimes think about just copying onto a flash drive, throwing it onto an old computer, and watching what it does with itself. I know, odd, but you know what, sometimes you want to root for the bad guy in the superhero movies.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

My favorite stories come from phone calls, partly because I don't have any preconceived notions about the person while talking to them because I can't see them, partly because that's where the best stories all come from, and partly because I rarely have to take calls. Here's a fun quick call, kinda similar to this.

Call comes in, I answer, "Thanks for calling. How may I help you?"

"My computer has frozen up and I don't know what to do."

"Have you tried turning off and back on again?"

"Yes."

"Okay, can you describe to me what's going on?"

"Well, it's stuck on my sudoku page that I was playing."

"Alright, can you locate the power button on your computer for me?"

"Okay."

"Alright, push it and hold it for about 10-15 seconds." Wait a bit. "Did the screen go black?"

"Yes it did."

"Alright, go ahead and wait a few seconds, then press the power button again."

"Alright."

"Is your computer coming back on again?"

"Yes!"

"Then you're all good to go."

Yup, that easy. Yes, she lied to me, but one of the rules of IT: Users always lie.

How to setup a printer

The call started with an older lady calling our store and asking for the General Manager. That's never a good start. Apparently she had bought a printer earlier that day and was having trouble getting it setup. Alright, that's fine, well, we'll get it figured out. She should have been sent to our remote support line, because they can remote in and take care of what's needed on the computer while she takes care of the printer. Apparently she had tried that, and had told her it would be $50 to handle it, and that nothing could be done over the phone.

At this point I figured there was a miscommunication between her and the remote support, but our GM figured he could hand off the phone to my direct manager. My manager can't help, because she knows nothing about printers. Guess who was the closest person who knew how to solve this? Yup, me. So I'm handed the phone. Now, I didn't know everything I'd mentioned earlier, so I tried to connect her with our remote support, and this is where I found all of that out, so I tell her I'll help her and we'll get the printer set up. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

It started out pretty well, I got her onto HP's website, got her to download the software for the drivers, and was getting her through the installation. That's when it stopped being easy and everything turned south.

Part of the setup process for the majority of HP home printers is to connect the printer to the computer with the help of the setup software. So I start leading her though getting the printer connected. I tell her to follow the directions on the screen of her computer, and it will help with getting them communicating properly.

Well she hadn't even turned on the printer. That's fine. Turn it on, and we'll go on from there. Well the printer itself has its own initial setup process, which can take quite a while. Now, mind you, as easy as it was to lead her through downloading the proper software for her printer on her computer, that still took about 20-25 minutes. Leading her through the setup process felt like an eternity.

Once she started going through the setup process, it starts telling her to make sure the ink is snapped shut. So I tell her to open the lid and make sure the ink is in there nice and tight. Based off my knowledge of various HP printers, I knew there were a few configurations that their ink is in, so I tried to get her to describe how it all looked, because I didn't know that particular model off-hand. Mind you, I'm flying blind. I have no idea, so I have to hope she describes it well enough for me to understand so I can continue to help her. I tell her to make sure the ink pressed in correctly, and the way she's describing everything, it sounds like the setup of a certain line of products, so I try to help her based off what I think I'm hearing. She tells me that the one ink cartridge went in fine, but the other just isn't going in. I think that's strange, so I tell her to try taking the other cartridge out to put it back in to make sure she's doing it the same way. She tries to take out the cartridge, but she says she's having trouble taking that one out. Strange. So I tell her to hold for a moment.

I run over to the section of our store with the printers and grab the shelf display for that model and bring it back to the phone I'm talking on (it's unfortunately corded). I open up the printer, look at the ink and think that maybe she's just having trouble slotting it in correctly. I get back on the phone and ask her if the ink is sliding in correctly. She says it's just not going down, and ask her if the lever on top is all the way up. She says it is, and then starts describing the ink well. At this point we've spent about 15 minutes trying to get her ink in there correctly. As she's describing how the ink well looks, something she says finally clicks. She says the back looks light with some gold beads. It hits me like a ton of bricks that she describing the connectors on the back of the well that tell the printer that ink is in and checks levels. The ink well is empty and she has no ink in it.

I ask her if the ink is still in the box, and she gets excited, because she thinks she remembers seeing something else in the box. I hear her set the phone down, rustle around in the box, and grab plastic packaging. She comes back to the phone, then tells me she needs to get scissors to open it up. She gets the ink out of the wrapping and gets them into the printer. All right, I think, we're on track, we should be done soon. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Once her ink is in, I tell her to close the lid and the printer should finish the rest of the setup. "The listed ink cartridges are missing." DANGIT!!! Well I tell her to open it up again and make sure the inks were in there nice and snug. She checks, and she says they are. She closes the lid. "The listed ink cartridges are missing." Well, alright. Let's turn it off and back on again. Let's see what happens. "Cartridge Jam." Wut? Okay, open the lid, check the inks, close the lid. The printer is running its checks. "Success!" What!? YES! Okay. Now let's connect to the network.

I tell her to follow the directions the computer gives to connect to the network. This seems like it should be fine, but we run into a snag. She doesn't know her wifi password. So I try to figure out how to get her password. I ask her if her desktop is wired or wireless. "Wired." Nuts. Okay, well, maybe I can lead her to finding her router. Maybe it has the password. Well, that was almost impossible. Thankfully, she thought about using her cellphone to call the guy that setup her wireless network. She doesn't get a hold of him right away, but says hopefully he'll get back to her soon. Great. We're stuck without that password. I go back to trying to lead her to finding her router, until she gets distracted by a phone call. It's the guy! I here, in her responses, that he's telling her how to find the password. Yes!

She puts in the password. It connects! She runs the alignment pages on the printer. On the computer, I tell her to continue doing the setup with process. The printer list comes up. She selects it. The computer says it's connected! She prints a test page, and it goes through! She thanks me for all the help and I hang up.

All in all, leading her through a process that normally takes me maybe 20 minutes on my own, took over an hour and a half from handing me the phone to hanging up. Gotta say, that's the longest support call I've ever had to take, and I normally don't have to take any support calls. Not gonna lie though, I hope I don't have to do another one again.

Google is your friend

I know most of my stories and posts will be about people who don't know much about that device they call the computer, but this one is a bit different. This one is about my own mom.

My mom was never one you would call tech savvy when I was growing up. She knew how to use what she had, and had no real need to learn more. Now my mom is by no means an unintelligent person, so it's not that she didn't learn more because she couldn't, she just didn't need or want to. That is until recently.

Until a few years ago, if my mom had issues with her computer, she went to my dad, and if he couldn't fix it, well.. I don't actually know what they did. I've never been told. I like to believe that my dad had all the answers back then. But as I got older and started learning more about computers than what my dad knew, my mom started coming to me. I would help her with what I knew, but most of the time I just googled the answer (now class, pay attention, because this is what's called foreshadowing). And I knew how to google the answer to almost any problem.

A couple years after high school, I finally moved out of my parents place and moved into town, partially because I wanted to finally live on my own, but mostly because I wanted good internet, and my parents had no options where they lived. Once I moved out, my parents didn't get to see me much. My mom started to miss me, so she'd call me up asking me for help with things, and I'd do what I did before, and simply google the answer and fix the problem quick and be on my way.

Now, my relationship with my parents back then wasn't the greatest, so when my mom's issues started to become repetitive, I started to get irritated with helping her. I stopped wanting to help, and so I'd make up excuses about why I couldn't come fix her problems. Finally, because she wanted to see me again, she started to bribe me with home-cooked meals, something I didn't do enough for myself, and still don't for that matter. So she'd call me up with an issue, I'd come fix it and stick around for food, because mom is one of the best cooks on the planet, and we all know that.

As I became more mature over time, and my relationship began improving with my parents, I tried to find time to spend with my parents, regardless of helping them with anything. But I wanted to make that clear to my mom what I was doing. So I took on the task of teaching her how to google.

Now, I'm sharing the tech industry's number one secret, and may be outcast by my peers for this, but knowing how to google is every computer techs number one tool. You could literally have never seen a Windows operating system in your life, but if you know how to google, you can do almost anything. In fact, I'd say 90% of the time when you talk to a tech over the phone, they're just googling the answer if they're not on a script. And I taught my mom this secret.

It started with something easy. I taught my mom how to use Google Now on her phone. I very vividly remember the very first thing she googled, because it was probably one of the funniest things that has ever happened in our family, but given the nature of it, I'd rather not share this particular part of the story over the internet, but will be glad to tell you should you ever ask me in person. Her first few things were asking google how to spell certain words, because though my mom knows everything a person could know about the human body (she's a nurse), spelling was never her strong point. That's fine. She just has to ask google, and it'll read off the proper spelling for her.

From there, it went to minor technical problems. Her laptop was having issues connecting to the internet. She googles it on her phone, and it tells her to try restarting the computer. It happens to work, and she's back to doing work on her computer. She has trouble with saving a word document to her flash drive. She googles it, it gives her the instructions, and she saves the document without any problems.

Then one day, she takes on a task that I wouldn't even be comfortable with unless I was the supporting tech for this piece of hardware. My mom and dad used to own their own medical clinic, my dad being a family physician. They needed a file server to keep all of their patients' records backed up as part of HIPAA guidelines, but one day their file server starts beeping. To give a little background, this particular file server was an older model Dell server, running Windows Server 2003, with RAID. To the non-techies reading this, the server is like a giant file cabinet, keeping copies of all of the files. RAID stands for redundant array of independent disks. What that means is there are multiple hard drives all working together, kind of like having multiple file cabinets. In this particular kind of RAID setup, if one of the hard drives goes bad, there are copies on the other hard drives of everything, and when you replace the bad hard drive, the others work together to repair the server, and replace the files on the new hard drive as needed.

My mom had learned to google many an issue, but this was something I would have thought a bit beyond what she'd learned to do so far. But she managed to find the model number of the server, google what the beeping meant, figured out which hard drive needed to be replaced, then found where my dad kept an extra hard drive, pulled out the old one, put in the new one, then sat and waited for the server to repair itself. And she didn't have to do any of that either. My parents have a tech service they pay for, and could have just had the guy come out and fix it. But she fixed it all on her own!

When my dad told me later the story of what happened, I was amazed. I figured my mom would be able to handle her day-to-day issues no problem, but I didn't expect her to progress that far! I started joking with her that if she kept that up, she could do my job. She didn't think that was quite as funny as I did, but she's become quite capable with her google-fu. Here's the moral of my story: It doesn't matter how old you are, you can always learn something new, and the best skill in this technologically advanced age to learn is how to properly use google. If you know how to google, you know how to do almost anything.

What do you know?

I know a lot of my stories focus on old people, but that's because they are the majority of my clients. This story, however, is about a much younger person.

Contrary to popular belief with my typical clientele, I do not know what I know because of my age. I know what I know because I was either taught it, or actively sought out the information. A lot of what I know I was taught by my dad. My age had nothing to do with it, I learned it because I wanted to. But to be told that I know about computers because I grew up around computers I think would be similar to telling a guitarist he's so good because he grew up with a guitar in the home. He's definitely not good because he practiced constantly and worked to perfect his skill. No, it's simply because of the presence of the guitar.

To refute this kind of thinking, one of my favorite stories to share with those who would make these kinds of statements is about a college student I had to help, someone a few years younger than me. Now, I've helped lots of college students, and will help more as time goes on, but this one in particular stands out because of what happened.

This student comes running up to my counter, clearly in a panic. We weren't busy that day, so I was free to help her right away. She seems mortified and ready to break down in tears. I get her to calm down long enough to tell me what's going on. She tells me that her mouse has stopped working, and she can't use the touchpad because it's been broken for a long time (she'd had the computer for a few years by that point) and she didn't know what to do, because she didn't have any money to buy a new mouse right then, and she had a paper due that night, and she couldn't do anything without the mouse.
 

I'll say this, because of my knowledge and skills with computers, and many other tech people reading this will relate, it is entirely possible to do everything on a computer without a mouse, and if you learn what to do, can make certain tasks even faster without one. I wasn't going to teach her the intricacies of using keyboard shortcuts right then, so I figured I'd fix the issue at hand. Why her mouse wasn't working. So I ask her if she has the mouse with her, she pulls it out of the laptop bag, and hands it to me. I notice it's wireless, see there's no dongle plugged into the laptop, and find the dongle in its compartment in the mouse. I take out the dongle, plug it into one of her free USB ports, and... the mouse works! I ask her if the issue is intermittent (read: random), and she tells me no, it didn't work at all. She's overjoyed that I fixed it! But then she asks me the question I always get.

"What did you do?"

I tell her I only plugged in the dongle and moved the mouse to see if it had connected and nothing else. She looks at me confused.

"What did you plug in?"

I show her the wireless dongle for the mouse.

"This is the wireless dongle that tells the computer to connect to the mouse."

She goes wide-eyed and her face turns red. Apparently, she'd never thought to check for that. She tells me her brother had borrowed the mouse right before it stopped working, and he must have returned it to her with the dongle in the compartment, and she'd forgotten it existed because it had been plugged into her computer since she bought the mouse.

So that's one of many stories of young people who don't know something about computers. I see it often, and I always wish those same older folks were around to witness it so they'd see that their age has nothing to do with learning how to use a computer.

Always Ask Questions

Here's another recent one from a few days ago. I'm already getting people in who say they absolutely hate Windows 10. I'll be completely honest, it's no surprise to me. Anytime changes are made to what's familiar, no matter how much better the new thing is, there will be someone who hates it. Enter today's player in our theatre. She's an older lady who has her laptop in a bag. I'm in a particularly busy rush, so when she comes up to the counter while I'm helping two other people and sets her bag down, I'm not inclined to rush to her aid. I finish with the people I'm helping and finally make my way over to her.

She says that she absolutely hates Windows 10 and wants it reverted back to the way it was. This is absolutely possible, as long as you didn't tell the upgrade to wipe your computer, so I open up the recovery window to revert it back to her old operating system. It (thankfully) gives me the option to revert to Windows 7, and since she has our support plan, I start making paperwork for it while starting the process to put it back to 7.

The whole process of reverting it took only about twenty minutes, and once her login screen came up, I had her log in to see how things look and she says to me, "Oh, my husband will be so happy he has solitaire back." My jaw drops. I ask her, "Was that why you didn't like Windows 10?" "Of course, my husband can't play solitaire on it, so it was basically useless." What I could have done before reverting the computer back to 7 was find out why she didn't like 10, then explain to her that solitaire was still there, and create a pin on the taskbar for it. What I didn't do was find out why she didn't like Windows 10 before reverting it, and so just let her leave. I didn't feel like taking the time to explain it.

So this one is partially on me. As part of my job I'm supposed to ask questions to properly understand the issues at hand. However, I let my exhaustion, and the fact that I found her a tad rude, get in the way of me doing my job properly, and so left her without knowing full well what options were available to her. I could have explained to her where Solitaire was, taught her some of the differences between 7 and 10 (of which there aren't many), and possibly gotten her to keep it on 10. Oh well, if she comes back later and wants 10 back on, I'll gladly do it for her.

The Magical Button

I got another quick one today. This one happened really early on in my career in this position. A couple comes up to my counter and tell me their brand new computer is already broken. I open up the laptop to look at what might be going on, press the power button, and turn to see their faces, wide-eyed, mouths open, looking like they'd just seen a ghost.

"How'd you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Turn it on?"

Yup, they hadn't pressed the power button. They apparently had had a desktop before they bought this laptop, and it had been setup for them to power on automatically after returning from a power failure of any kind. So they literally had never turned on their old computer. I wasn't about to change that for them, for fear of ruining the battery in the long run, but I explained to them that they would now have to turn on the computer, and would occasionally have to shut it down.