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.

Reverting Back from Windows 10

As I promised before, I'll give directions here on how to revert to your previous operating system. If you're trying to Upgrade to Windows 10 or Create Recovery Media for Windows 10, the directions are in those links. These directions apply only to people who upgraded their computer from Windows 7 or 8 and have upgraded within the previous month. Now, you may have different reasons for wanting to return to your previous operating system. Maybe you don't like how windows 10 looks. Maybe some of your programs don't work. Whatever your reasons for doing so, here's how to do it.

First, you'll need to start by clicking on the start button:

Click "Settings". It'll be next to a gear icon:

In the window that pops up, click "Update & security":

Click "Recovery":

Now, on the next screen you should see something similar to this:

The middle option is what you should see if you are able to revert to your previous operating system. Obviously it will say either Windows 7 or 8 rather than 8.1 if you upgraded from either of those. If you are outside of the month, or you told Windows 10 to wipe everything during the install, you WILL NOT be able to revert to your old operating system. You will only see the other two options on this screen if that is the case.

After you click "Get started", you will see a popup similar to this:

You shouldn't have to fill in anything, but your answer doesn't change anything. From there, your computer will restart and finish the process to revert. After that, you're all set, and back with your old Operating System. Only takes about 20-30 minutes to complete the process. If you decide you do in fact want to go back to Windows 10, you certainly can. Just use that installation software you made before for ease of process.

The Brilliance of Microsoft

As I hope the title implies, this post will be a bit satirical. This occurred just a few days ago, and it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

An older gentleman came up to my counter for some help, and he looked rather upset. He starts going on about how he's mad because he got this popup that said to call a number (first red flag), and they said it would cost $200-$600 to fix (second red flag), and he just got it a week ago and how come the antivirus didn't stop it, and what good is that antivirus anyway if it couldn't stop it.

For my technically minded folks, this gentleman fell victim to a redirect that was locking up his browser. Keep in mind that this gentleman has Windows 10 and is using Microsoft Edge for his browser. For the rest, this guy had basically clicked on something he probably shouldn't have, and it took him to a fake website that was telling him his computer had all these issues (which it didn't), and that the number was for Microsoft support (which it wasn't), and the people he spoke to were wildly overcharging him for a service that he gets for free with his service contract through my company if there were any actual issue. Basically, he was mad at us because he was being told by scammers that his brand new $900+ computer was broken because of something that was his own fault, and he didn't want to pay to have it fixed, which, as I mentioned earlier, he wouldn't have had to if there were any actual problem, because he has our service plan. Weird how that works, huh?

Moving on, normally when I deal with a browser-locking redirect page, I can simply end the task, reset Internet Explorer through Internet Options, restart the computer, and we're all hunky dory. Well this isn't a normal situation. Apparently Microsoft, in all their brilliance, forgot to include a way to reset Microsoft Edge, meaning it isn't affected at all be resetting the Internet Options outside of the browser. Swell. Well, if I end the task, maybe it'll just close the program and start again as it should. No dice. Instead, Edge is setup in such a way that if it is force closed, as a matter of convenience, it just opens up all your closed tabs for you! No matter what you do. It's impossible, without changing the settings before a situation like this occurs, to tell edge to start with just a single brand new tab upon starting back up after a force close. So that means that same redirect that is locking up his browser is still active! Yay! (Are you sensing the frustration yet?)

So I go searching. I start in Task Manager after reopening Edge to see if I can find all processes related to Edge that are running, not just the main task in the foreground, but in the details pane, to see if a process there is keeping that tab open even after I end what appears to be the main process. And with luck, I find there are in fact two processes running for Edge. One just says Microsoft Edge (extra stuff here), and the other says Microsoft Edge (extra stuff here)CP. Well those seem important. Lets end them. So I do. I try ending the CP one. It appears to immediately restart, so I figure it must have something to do with Edge only while it's running. In hindsight, I should have thought more on that at the time, but it didn't occur to me that it was anything special. So I turn to my next best resource. In fact, it's every techs number tool for solving any issue that they are confronted with for the first time. I'm talking about the master with the answers. The legend above them all. Google.

And I Googled the crap out of that problem. I searched every forum, looking for every conceivable way to reset Edge. Nothing. I search anything about browser redirects in Edge, and I find one post with an appropriate answer. Guy was in a similar pickle as myself, had tried resetting everything, tried ending tasks, nothing worked. A support rep chimed in with a response that basically may have been telling a guy with a broken leg to see his ophthalmologist to see if his broken leg was caused by cataracts. Finally someone towards the bottom of this posting had a solution I hadn't tried yet. Remember that process I mentioned earlier? The one that ended in CP? The one that I tried to end but it seemed to restart on its own? Yeah? Guess what? I was supposed to end that multiple times until it stops restarting, then I can close the redirect tab, close the browser, reopen it, and no more redirect. Oh joy.

So finally, after all this time, and easily 20-30 minutes have gone by with me trying to figure this issue out, I manage to end the process, close the tab, close the browser, reopen the browser, and big surprise, Edge is working the way it's supposed to. Lesson learned, if it restarts, hit it again. And a shout-out to Microsoft for once again having zero foresight for their products.


Note to anyone from Microsoft that might read this: Fix Edge, give it customizability like Firefox and Chrome, and I won't have a problem. Well... maybe.

Create Recovery Media

Yesterday I posted how to upgrade to Windows 10. I had initially said during the instructions that recovery media could be made if you need to reinstall Windows 10 later. I later realized that what's being made is in fact installation media, and is only an upgrade and cannot be used to install Windows 10 on a new hard drive if it's needed. Something to be aware of, however, is that when upgrading to Windows 10, a new product key is created for activation related to your hardware configuration. In plain English, that means that when you upgrade to 10, your hardware is like a unique lock, and the key is unique to that lock. If you change any of the hardware, you change the lock, and so need a new key to make sure you can stay activated. Whether it's upgrading your RAM, your hard drive, or even your processor, the activation key will change. That means you will need to reinstall your previous operating system from recovery media, and then upgrade to 10 again with the installation you created in the previous post.

Now, if you need to do a clean installation of Windows 10, the easiest route is to install from recovery media, if you haven't changed your hardware. In this post I will describe the process to create recovery media. In order to create recovery media, you will need to have upgraded to Windows 10 already.

To begin, click here:

Type "Control Panel" and press enter:

In the window that pops up, click "Category" and select either icon option:

On the next screen, click "Recovery":

 

 Now, click "Create a recovery drive":

Click "Yes" on the popup that comes up. From there, follow the prompts, and if all goes well, you'll have created your recovery drive.

If you have any comments or questions, feel free to leave them. I will later post how to revert to your previous operating system if you need to, which is only available for up to a month after upgrading to Windows 10.

What'd you do?

Got a short one today. Many of my stories likely will be, but I have lots of them, so you'll have plenty to read.

This one happened within a few days after Windows 10 released, so, sometime last week. I had a couple come up to me because they were having an issue logging into their computer since they upgraded to Windows 10. For anyone who hasn't upgraded yet, there is a part in the process where you have to login to your account, if there is a password, before you're allowed to continue with the process. Unfortunately, Microsoft forgot one teeny little thing when developing this upgrade. They forgot the habits of older folks. And since many older folks click every button rather than just pressing enter, this makes it difficult for them to finish the setup process, because this part of the upgrade where you have to login to the account doesn't have a login arrow or button that says "Login", or anything else similar in nature. You have to press enter once entering the password, barring an existing PIN. So these folks, once showing me they can't login after entering their password, think I'm some sort of magic man when I press enter and they're able to log in.

"What'd you do?" They ask.

"I pressed enter." I answer warily.

"Now why couldn't Raymond have told us that last night when we were on the phone. He said there must be some kind of glitch, and so we should bring the computer back to the store we bought it from."

"Nope, no glitch, just gotta press enter."

They seemed happy to have a working computer again, and I got a great review from them when they took the survey.

Upgrade to Windows 10

Important Notice: I wrote incorrectly the other day that these directions would help in creating recovery media. That is not the case. I have edited the instructions here to be more factually correct and will post new instructions later on how to create recovery media. I will try to post a link of that on these instructions once I have completed them.

Second Edit: I have now created a post for creating recovery media here.

Final Edit: If you have decided you want to revert to your old Operating System from 10, here's the post with directions on how to do so.

Hey there, I know this post isn't on the 9:30 schedule that I've done for the last two days, but for those of you who want to upgrade to Windows 10 and haven't, here's the easiest way to do so. I'll also be showing how to create installation media if you can't download Windows 10 directly onto your PC.


First, you need to go to microsoft.com. The first thing you'll see will look like this (click on any image to increase its size):

Next, click "Upgrade for free* >". The star means it's only available for those with Windows 7 (non-starter edition) and Windows 8.x.  Scroll down, not too far, and you'll see a screen that looks like this:

On the bottom of that image you'll see a line that says, "If you'd like to create a USB drive or DVD to download once and upgrade multiple PCs - click here." Click that link, and it will take you to this page:

 From there, scroll to the bottom and you'll see this:

Now click the download that you need. I personally recommend to download the 64-bit version, but if you know you need it, the instructions will be the same for the 32-bit. On Internet Explorer, I do recommend you click "Save" rather than just "Run" when the download prompt comes up, because if it doesn't download properly, you'll know right away, and not have issues later. For those using Firefox, just click "save file". For those on Chrome, it should download automatically once you click the link. After downloading the file, click on it to open it. Internet Explorer, that means you can click "Run" now once it has run its scan. Firefox, click on the blue downward-pointing arrow on the top right of your screen. Chrome, click on the download bar that popped up when it began the download.

Click yes on the prompt that shows:

You'll then get a window that looks like this:

If you need to create installation media, I highly recommend using a flash drive, because the process is much easier than burning onto discs.

Here's where we diverge on instructions. If you choose to "Upgrade this PC now", it will lead you through some prompts that you just have to click "Yes" or "Next" on. After it finishes downloading what it needs to, it will perform several restarts on your computer and then perform the upgrade. If you do not have a Microsoft account, which it will ask you for during the process, you do not have to create one or sign into one. There is an option to continue the process without one, which I recommend for ease of use. Once the majority of the upgrade is done, it will then ask you to login to your user account. This part is important, as I've had to help many older folks with this. If your user account currently has a password, enter it as normal, but then press enter to login. There will be no login arrow next to the password field during this step, but it comes back after the complete upgrade is done. Once you've logged into the user account, the last bits of the upgrade will finish, and you'll be the new owner of a Windows 10 computer.

For those of you who choose to "Create installation media for another PC", or those of you who upgraded already but want to create your installation media for another computer, these next steps are for you. After you select to create the media and click "Next", you'll see this screen:

I hope you already know what language you speak, but in the Edition and Architecture, let me give you a good rule of thumb. In the Edition, if you know you have Windows 7 or 8 Pro, select Windows 10 Pro, if you know you have Windows 7 or 8 Home, or don't know at all, it's safest to select Windows 10 Home. In Architecture, if you don't know it, select 64-bit (x64). All others will know what they need. Once you have the right information, click "Next".

The next screen you should see is this:

If you choose the option to create an ISO file, after you click "Next" your File Explorer will automatically open, asking you where your disc drive is that has the blank disc for creating the installation media. Just select the drive and follow the prompts. The method I recommend, as stated earlier, is to create the media on a flash drive, mostly because of its simplicity, but also because flash drives don't get scratched, discs do. If you select "USB flash drive", you will see a window similar to this (Note: You do need at least a 16 GB flash drive for this):

If you have more than one flash drive, select yours from the listed options.  If you only have one plugged in, like I do, simply leave it highlighted and click "Next".

A new screen will pop up that will look like this:

It will then quickly move on to a screen similar to this:

Once that is complete, you'll see this screen:

Just click "Finish", and you can either go back and re-run the download from earlier to install Windows 10, using the same steps, or you can use the installation media you just created (the easier route) to install it. To install from the installation media, just open it up in File Explorer (flash drives will usually get renamed to "ESD-USB"), double click "setup.exe", and it will run you through the same screens from earlier to allow you to now install Windows 10.

I hope this post was helpful to everyone reading it. If you have any questions or comments, absolutely leave them. I will try to answer every question I can, and will read every comment, but I am working a full-time job, and will soon be back in school, so what I will do and when I
can do it are two different things.

I think I need a new hard drive.

Howdy folks! First official post, and this one goes back a few months. As I begin posting more regularly, my posts will become more recent in memory for myself, but for now, I'll be sharing stories as they come to me from the time I've spent in IT. On to our story!

So in walks in a gentleman with his desktop computer. He sets it on my counter and I ask him, "How may I help you?" It's my standard go-to greeting, but you'd be surprised the responses I get from it. He says to me, "I think I need a new hard drive." I look at him for a brief moment because usually when someone needs a new hard drive, they generally don't need to come to me unless they had previously been in before and were just now coming back to have their hard drive replaced. So I ask him, "Were you in before with your computer?" He says no and begins to tell me what's wrong.

"You see, a couple months ago, it started blinking, but wasn't affecting anything, so I just didn't worry about it. Then a few weeks ago, sometimes it would go out on me for a couple minutes, then would come right back on. Now, whenever I try to use the thing, I can't get it to come on at all."

Now for those of you who know anything about computers, you may have an idea of what's going on. For those of you who don't, well, I'll explain in detail a little further. So I move on. I start to plug his desktop into my monitor, get it connected with mouse/keyboard/power/ethernet, and start to power it on. As the computer powers on and starts to POST, he starts speaking again.

"I figured it would probably work with yours. That's why I need a new one."

"A new one what sir?"

"Hard drive. I need a new hard drive."

"But your hard drive seems to be working just fine."

"Well yours is, but the one I've got at home isn't. That's why I need a new one."

Finally it clicks. This man had managed to find a new way to use the phrase hard drive I hadn't heard yet. He was calling the monitor his hard drive. Once I put two and two together, I got him connected to a sales associate to find one that he liked and would work with his computer. Turns out, the reason he brought his whole desktop was to make sure he got a monitor that had the right connection, which is better than the people who come in for a new monitor without a clue what connection they need.

Too Long; Didn't Read I went to the mechanic because my engine was blinking and now not turning on. He tells me my headlights are burnt out.

New Starts

I've had this blog for many years now, but I originally started it as a place to post old comics that a buddy and I had come up with, but I've since changed the name, removed the old comic posts, and will now be posting stories of my time working in IT.

I currently work as a counter tech at a large chain store, one I'm proud to be a part of. It's a lot of fun, but it's also hard work. I meet new challenges every day, encounter new names for standard hardware constantly, and always have a new story to take home with me. If I were to post a single story a day, I'd have to retire from this job before I'd run out of stories, and even then I'd likely die first.

I will soon be returning to school to earn my degree in Computer Science. I'm hoping to focus on programming, as that has been a passion of mine for a time, though unfortunately, for someone of my young age of 22, my skills are a bit lacking. Within the new school I will be attending, I have already obtained a job in the IT department, which is great, because then I'll continue to have stories to tell. I do hope to make my classmates aware of this blog, because I hope to keep it lighthearted and I want them to know I will be making fun of them on occasion, though, as with my job, I will anonymize all info about my classmates and school. Don't want somebody to misunderstand my intentions and complain to someone.

Although I am young and quite knowledgeable with computers, I have also had to work with rather elderly people on a consistent basis (read: all the time), and so I have learned how to explain things that they don't understand in a language that makes sense to them. Given that, I hope to make this a blog that is enjoyable by everyone who comes to visit, techie or not.

On occasion, because I do hope to draw in an audience of non-technically inclined people, I will explain certain concepts to make them more easily understood. I feel I have a particularly great advantage in this area as I grew up in the south originally, and besides blessing people's hearts while telling them how terrible they are, I also learned how to speak in analogies. This warning I give to IT personnel of all flavors because I will be explaining such things as hard drives and PSUs to be understood by the layman so that they can also enjoy the story, and to make this blog semi-educational. In fact, if I explain a piece of hardware or a process in a post, I will be marking it as "Educational", so that if anyone wants to go through and learn a little bit about their computer, they certainly can.

Finally, I leave you all with this: Please have fun here. I'm not here to make fun of people because I'm a mean, spiteful person. I'm here to make fun of people because I happen to be knowledgeable in an area that many people are not. If I went to a mechanic (and fair warning, I use mechanic analogies a lot without knowing much about cars), I'm sure I would seem to them what almost everyone seems like to me. Someone who just doesn't know something that I do.

P.S. If you go to anyone to have your computer fixed/looked at/worked on, please don't mention that you aren't tech literate, tech savvy, or whatever the new phrase is these days. I get maybe one person a day who doesn't say it, because somehow everyone thinks they're original for saying it. It's really my only pet peeve, and I can't publicly say anything. So just tell the person you're asking for help what your issue is, and let them try to find what level of communication you need to be on.