wizz kids
A long time regular customer called saying she needed me to fix a few things on her PC.
She runs a business, so needs the PC running reliably.
When I get there, I’m told that a 20-something year old “wizz kid” had worked on her PC about 2 months ago…
Apparently, the PC was very slow to start, so he enthusiastically volunteered to fix it.
The more I worked on the PC, the more I wondered about what had actually happened.
First, I noticed that the RAM had increased from 512Mb to 1500Mb. In this case, an unnecessary RAM upgrade, as 512Mb is plenty for running outlook, word, and some very rare web surfing… and I’m sure it wouldn’t have fixed the slow startup.
Next, I see XP only has SP2. I’m sure I installed SP3 about 6 months ago…
Customer also tells me she cannot understand “godzilla”, and wants google back… OK, reading between the lines, I go to make ie7 the default broser (instead of firefox)… but the PC has IE6 🙁
So I spend the next hour installing SP3, then IE7, and various other microsoft updates, so that the PC is less likely to be hijacked.
All this detail would be over her head, so I explain it as “I had to do a lot security updates”.
Along the way, I see my automatic backups to the external USB drive no longer happen, and there is no antivirus nor any antispyware. So I also install antivir, windows defender, and re-install logmein (which I use for remote emergency maintenance).
Now for the main reason for my visit: Customer is only getting some of her emails… for the last 2 months, people have told her they sent emails, but she never receives them…
The customer has 2 main email addresses: her ISP address, and her website address (which is redirected via gmail, to minimise the amount of spam she gets).
The wizz kid had only setup her ISP email (ie he took the easy way out), so all her website emails were building up on gmail.
Teaching her how to use gmail was not an option, so I had to re-do the outlook settings.
By this stage, its looking like wizz kid probably re-installed windows.
I ask the customer if she knows what he did, and she says he had to return a few times, as she couldn’t use the PC at all.
This customer has a sharp tongue, and won’t take cr*p from anyone (ie a “challenging” customer to deal with).
So I reckon wizz kid probably got what he deserved, and will be staying far away from this customer… he might even give up on computers and become a monk 🙂
But it still makes me angry, given that it was unnecessary. Its probably the same feeling you would get if you spent a month buiding a wooden fence, then hand painting it, then a truck destroys it in just a few seconds.
Anyway, I went to re-do the gmail account, followed googles instructions on setting up gmail on outlook 2003, but found I could receive, but not send emails.
After trying a few combinations of settings I eventually decided to just use the ISP account for sending emails (until next time when I’ll look at this more closely)
“Wizz Kids” – the bane of our existence, I’d say. Just an idea with the inability to send emails out via google – a lot of ISP’s (telstra for sure) block you from using an SMTP server other than their own – hence, receiving mail from a 3rd party server will always work, but sending them out via a 3rd party server won’t. It’s all in the fight against spam, but very frustrating. just use the ISP outgoing server and all will be fine.
Gmail actually use non standard SMTP ports other than the port 25 that is filtered by rounded-corner ISP’s such as Bigpond. This is simply a measure employed by Bigpond to make running an SMTP relay non viable and also stops the unknowing customer from relaying mail unbeknowns to them having been botnet’ed, which is on the rise these days.
You will find most of the config settings on this page https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=13287 and notice the TLS type as this differs in description between mail clients.
Good luck, and don’t hate on wizz kids because they cut corners and don’t care to fully articulate what they have done on a computer to the customer, they will learn in time or move onto something else.
In other words I would be suprised is ISPs like Bigpond use a form of deep packet inspection to filter SMTP/MX transit or switch it out through MPLS techniques, this would not be unrealistic though as anyone on their Bigpond Home /24 running attempting to run business services should probably be on the appropriate plan structure. But how would they go about juggling that kind of policy for the person who needs to work from home for some reason occasionally?
Let’s hope that Wizz kid doesn’t have a remote control of that computer. Ugh!
I had one in the house too.
Re-installing windows over and over again.
Duh!
I’m 53, but I know it’s now worth destroying the sweater when a button is off.
Now I’m the “Wizz kid” in the house, thanks to a good library book, study of help sections, a bit of thinking and people like you who want to share their knowledge and who can be called in when they’re at school. LOL!