Product Review (and Plug)

First, I want you all to know I am an affiliate for the product I am going to talk about.

Okay, now that is out of the way...

XP Repair Pro is an excellent and fast product.

I know this, because I had to use it before to recover a crashing system.

The BSOD (blue screen of death) kept on coming up, and I had scanned, defragged, ran anti-virus, anti-spyware tools.

I had done F8 during startup and went into safe mode and disabled as many devices and drivers as I could...I even disabled some stuff in the BIOS.

Still BSOD...

I then did a step-by-step load from the recovery console, and this seemed to help.

The computer ran okay for a few days, and then bam...BSOD.

Okay, now it is time to get serious...I pull out the Ultimate Boot Disk and test the memory with Memtest and test the hard drive. All is good.

Desperate to fix the problem, I search the web and stumble across XP Repair Pro.

What the heck...?

I download it, keeping my fingers crossed that it isn't some kind of malware/spyware...

I run it.

It identifies lots of things, which I have to fix manually, because I only have the demo version.

I fix the problems with broken registry links, broken GUIDs and sketchy device drivers.

No BSOD for several months.

Now XP Repair Pro is not a panacea, but it is darn good in my opinion. It would have been worth the price of a full license to not to have wasted 10 hours trying to fix an obscure problem.

*** Note: I wasn't in front of the computer for 10 hours...you can start scans with the various tools and go do something else.

Okay...if you have a problem, download the demo here.

There is nothing to lose, and you might just save 9.5 hours.

The Barter System

So your mom(sibling, friend) wants you to fix her computer...?

Who does your "client" know?

Do you need something?

If you can link your want/need to something your client has (or a clients immediate network), then try to get them to swap their skill for what you want.

Radar O'Reilly from MASH always used to horse trade like this.

Even if this doesn't get you out of having to provide free support, at least you have made it clear that what you do has value (just like the thing your client does).

I always get the "I don't know anything about computers" line, but I don't know much about the following:

• Cake decorating
• Landscape architecture
• automobile window tinting
• automobile detailing
  
• carpentry
• welding
• metal working
• massage therapy
• picking out matching clothes at the mall
  
• ad infinitum

I guess the problem is that computer people somehow became people-pleasers back in high school or college to become popular.

Stop the madness.

You don't have do someone's homework for them now without receiving back something more tangible than a "thank you".

I know geeks like to show off their intelligence, but find some other way.

Here are some suggestions:

• make a blog
• write a book
• get published in a journal
• learn math and card tricks
• learn to say the Pledge of Allegiance in Latin (or whatever is an analog for your country)
• start learning about business and finance
• win a contest or award
• learn to do something weird, like one arm handstands (Luke Skywalker-style)

Learn to negotiate.

Junkware Interception

If I could intercept a computer right when it comes out of the box, I would be much better off.

Most of the computers come with a lot of junkware installed.

This junkware is totally unnecessary, slows the system down and is downright annoying.

The Advanced->Tools on Spybot Search and Destroy has a startup section where you can go in and uncheck this garbage.

Toshiba seems addicted to filling their laptops with junkware and useless wizards.

The most annoying one is the wireless connection "wizard" or whatever it is. It takes up half the screen and only provides a larger version of the signal strength icon that is the default in the Windows tray.

I don't suppose all of the vendor installed apps are useless, but it is a lot easier to support your F&F if all the tools are standardized.

Perhaps even tell them that you won't touch their computer unless you set it up for them in the first place (recommended for first degree relatives only).

3 Essential Tools to do Family Tech Support

No matter how much you deflect the inquiries, you eventually will have to do free technical support for friends, family and others.

Perhaps a larger business deal or relationship may be on the line, or maybe you are just tired of being nagged.

The most common complaints I get are about pop-ups, the computer running slowly and the "my computer has a virus" issue.

So far, I have have found three tools that go everywhere with my on my thumb drive:

• jkdefrag, for rapid and efficient defragging, http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/
  
• Clamwin A/V to clean off the viruses, http://www.clamwin.com/
  
• Spybot Search and Destroy, http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Do not go over to someone's house and run these, unless you want to spend about 6 hours staring at boring status bars.

Usually, I run Spybot S&D first, use Advanced Tools to disable useless startup items (expand the info bar on the left for detailed explanations of what the startup items do). Do not forget to download the updates before starting the scan.

Then I run Clamwin A/V.

Finally, I run JKDefrag. At this point the system is running remarkably better in most cases.

Of course, I also check to see that the Windows Firewall is up and running (as a minimum).

A good resource for putting tools on your thumb drive is http://www.portableapps.com

In the next few segments I want to cover various tactics for avoiding work in the first place, then I want to discuss some jiu-jitsu that will greatly diminish the work that has to be done when it is required.