Ugh... just spent an hour and a half on the phone with my tech challenged parents to try to diagnose an emergency on why my mom's computer crashed.
- Is it plugged in?
- Does it give troubleshooting lights or beep codes?
- Is the monitor plugged in?
She's the treasurer of her church and has all the finances on her computer (but supposedly their accountant has copies too). During the discussion, we touched base on random discussions on this that and the other thing over the past week (my mom is never short of words).
I should have sent 8-track over to be my eyes and ears onsite. [whip]
After many attempts on troubleshooting over the phone, it looks like the power supply $hit the bed. Dad seemed to confirm this diagnosis. He's from the vacuum tube era but computers don't use vacuum tubes or (rarely) parts that can be replaced on the motherboard with a simple solder iron and a resistors, capacitors, transistors from Radio Shack. My dad can fix anything circa 1990. Now days in the digital world, not so much.
He had a super cool HAM shack in basement when I was a kid. Spent many hours down there screwing around with stuff that I shouldn't have been playing with... luckily survived with with only a handful of shocks soldering iron burns.
https://tinyurl.com/4y52tkjc
Anyway, replacement computer ordered (check). Gonna do a laptop rather than a desktop so she can take it with her back and forth to church and the church reading room and stuff. Once delivered I'll purge it from all the crap that they preinstall and then send it back home.
Parents can be a pain. I was a pain as I kid and I owe them more than I can ever pay back.
In the spirit of Mark Twain quotes (edited and paraphrased):
When I was 18, my parents were so ignorant I could hardly stand to have them around. But when I got to be 24, I was astonished at how much they learned in six years.
BuckyB93 wrote:
