Sometimes outsourcing works magic in the strangest ways. Let me share a tale of something that happened this week to explain what I mean.
We have a friend who has recently gone away to college for the first time, armed with a new Dell notebook. Usually, when she has tech questions, the techie in my household can answer them. But not this time. After a really long session on the phone with her, my in-house techie was stumped.
The main symptom: Internet Explorer appeared to be broken. And without IE — or some functional browser — school work can’t be done anymore. Course management systems — which give students access to assignments and enable them to upload homework — don’t work without a browser.
She took it to the campus help desk, but these were the same folks who had earlier in the semester uninstalled her Norton Internet security suite, turned off her firewall and installed a shareware anti-virus system in its place. Back then, my techie had talked her long-distance through the process of reinstalling Norton, and we could only assume it had worked for her, since we couldn’t see her machine for ourselves.
We’re still not sure about the thinking around that decision on the part of the college’s help desk, but it led us to wondering if perhaps her machine had become infected with a virus. The problem was that we couldn’t have her run a virus scan since Norton opens using IE. Likewise, she couldn’t get to the online virus scan offering offered by the company for the same reason. IE didn’t work.
We considered having her call Dell to work through the issues, but the thought just depressed us. We’ve experienced their tech support ourselves, and we didn’t imagine our young friend would have the patience to wade through the automated system or hold times required for that approach.
The next tactic was to consider uninstalling and reinstalling IE. But, of course, Dell didn’t ship the Windows XP CD with the notebook and my techie was unsure where to have her look for an image on the hard drive. By this point, Add or Remove Programs didn’t work at all — it wouldn’t even open.
Nor could she return to an earlier restore, because the campus help desk person had also, apparently, turned off system restore.
That’s when my techie had an idea. We have a friend in Redmond, WA — just down the street from Microsoft — who acts as a service provider for individuals and small businesses. His company, Quicksolve.net, provides computer help remotely. She sent a quick email to him — spelling out the problem.
He immediately called her back and they worked through possible scenarios. He thought he might be able to help our young friend resurrect her computer.
My techie called our student friend and assured her that Bryan — Bryan Lockwood — could be entrusted with her computer. Then Bryan called our student friend and put his service to work. Here’s how he operates:
Remotely, he installs a small remote control utility on the computer that’s having problems, which allows him to see exactly what’s happening on the machine. As he works, the client can watch what he’s doing — and end the session at any time. If he resolves the problem, he charges the client $1.25 per minute. If the client doesn’t believe the problem has been fixed, the charge is $.62 per minute. He takes payment through PayPal.
So, could he resolve this particular problem? Yes. As relayed later to my techie, here’s what he discovered:
AutoUpdates initiated an install of IE7. Webroot SpySweeper has a feature called IE Hijack Protection which makes sure certain parts of IE cannot be over-written.
So, IE7 install gets partway through its course of modifying DLLs and so on, then runs smack dab into Spysweeper, and this breaks the install.
IE7 is now half-installed and IE6 is deinstalled. Given Windows’ dependence on the DLLs that were replaced or deleted, and their need to interact properly with one another, any part of Windows or third party programs that calls these functions fails.
Solution = Disable SpySweeper’s IE Hijack Protection, and reinstall IE7 from the http://www.microsoft.com/ie location.
[Our student] tested all the things that were broken before (IE, MSN Messenger, Norton) and they were working properly. She’s all set!
The troubleshooting would have cost $112.50 — and we would have gladly paid it to get our student friend back up and running. But he didn’t charge us because we’re family. 🙂 (If you decide to use his services, you probably won’t be so lucky.)
No RFPs. No contracts. No relationship management. No governance. Just a guy with a remote troubleshooting tool and the brains to work through computer problems. (If he happens to be out of the office, you’ll see a “closed” sign at his site — along with a time when he’ll be back in action.) And, if, like our friend, you can’t get online at all, you may want his phone number: (425) 296-4403.
If you’re looking for a backup to your usual technical support system, quicksolve.net could be the answer. Micro-outsourcing is a beautiful thing.
