[ale] [Fwd: New users and laptops shaken, not stirred]

[BruceG]

On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 23:02, BruceG wrote:
> Darn, I posted under my home smtp/ipopd/cyrus/squirrelmail thingy.
> Resending from my normal account.
> 
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Subject: [Fwd: New users and laptops shaken, not stirred]
From: BruceG <griffisb at bellsouth.net>
To: ale at ale.org
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Darn, I posted under my home smtp/ipopd/cyrus/squirrelmail thingy.
Resending from my normal account.

**
And I forgot the original message. Guess it's REALLY time to call it a
day.Anyway, here's what I meant to post:

My sister got her laptop last week. Looked at it for a few days, then
turned it on. Signed in, then turned it off again. I talked with her and
stepped her through getting on the Internet (phone cord goes in 3rd
orane hole, then plugs into the wall). She got online, browsed a while,
and tried e-mail. Progress!

She called today. The laptop was frozen, no mouse control, couldn't
start apps or shut them down. I tried walking her through opening up a
shell and doing a "ps aux" to find what was eating CPU.

She ended up powering it off. Wouldn't restart. Made sure power was
plugged in. I stepped her through connecting the external floppy disk
and putting in the boot floppy. Still no good. I recommended she take it
to a friend of her's that has a PC shop (at $50 an hour, man I
undercharge!!!)

Just got a call back.She got it started again! And here is a horror
story. If any of you have young children, have them leave the room. She
turned the laptop upside down and shook it. Shook it a little more,
listening for rattles. Then powered it up.

Argh!!! We had a brief "do not shake the laptop" discussion and a "try
not to hit the power button" discussion. Anyway - she was able to log
back in and it seemed stable. 

The program that probably caused the problems was a game. I was talking
her through starting apps we know work well - when she decided to play
the game again. Laptop is hung. No cursor control. Can't start apps or
shutdown apps. We called it a night after a third discussion of "if a
program seems to cause your laptop to hang, then try to open some
programs you know work well just to make sure it isn't a hardware
problem. Don't try the game."

I'm calling it a night.We'll get there.