I’m a believer in giving you what you pay for. My services have been offered for over a decade now. I do just about everything. My prices are the same as they have been for over 5 years. I haven’t increased my costs.
- Today though I received two calls. One was from someone that wanted to know if I could install Windows on his computer. I explained that I do that all the time virtually every day. I checked further by asking if he had the product key for windows. He said he did not have the disc and didn’t know the product key. He said he had a virus that he couldn’t get off his computer. He said he had a second hard drive. He said the virus was so bad it was using all his CPU time and he couldn’t tame it. I explained it might be best to get rid of the virus and if he couldn’t then he could pay me to do it. I explained that I do the OS install and I do all the updates and various other things to ensure that his computer is as secure as I can get it given that it is Windows. I told him that if I could get the system to boot off the old drive I could get the product key that he used to do the install in the first place. He apparently didn’t want to pay me to do this and he hung up without really understanding that everything that I told him was as a favor and that he really should understand that thanking someone for their help is the best thing to do.
- The second call that I received today was from a guy that just installed Windows and forgot his password. I gave him some idea of how to go about removing it. I told him that he could try to activate the administrator account and then use that to clear the password. I told him that that used to be an option though I don’t know if it is still available as Microsoft changed things under Windows 7 and newer. He didn’t appear to understand what I was saying and asked about booting into administrator mode (which isn’t something and not what I told him), and then he didn’t understand what it means to enable the administrator account. I’m not sure what to say about that. I also told him that there are other tools if that doesn’t work. I also told him that I can do it for a fee. He didn’t even thank me. He just hung up.
Do people really think that computer shops are here for that? I am not Microsoft’s unpaid technical support. If either of these guys want to know how to get it done they have a plethora of resources one of which google provides (their search) to locate sites that can explain this