Technogory

I just came in from a meeting with a potential Web and IT client. The meeting was to discuss their web needs, email, and potential office support needs. While I was there, we were going to do some demo’s of various options using their office PC’s. What happened next was, well, typical of what I see often…

The owner of the company fired up is desktop PC, and after it booted pulled up Internet Explorer. He was anxious to take a look at some of the website options he could choose from to meet his business needs. He hit the first page, and everything was fine. He clicked a link, and Internet Explorer displayed a page that said “this page is not available.” Along with it, all of the great Microsoft suggestions just short of “reboot your PC!”

I had them try a few sites that they liked to visit. Same thing happened. They would hit the first page, and try a link, and nothing. I noticed they had AT&T as their service provider. So, I offered up my time to take a quick look at the internals of the AT&T DSL modem. Maybe something wasn’t right, and needed to be corrected.

While I was sitting at the desktop PC, I noticed a “lot” of icons in the desktop tray. You know, that little place on the menu bar far right side that has little icons that tell you about all the “crap” - er, I mean important stuff running on your PC that you can access really fast! I asked them if they actually used all of that stuff. the reply - “Heck, I don’t even know what most of that is!” I asked them how their desktop systems were managed. They proceeded to tell me that their IT guy took care of the PC’s, and when they needed to be reloaded, that’s what he did. Let me repeat that - “when they needed to be reloaded!” I guess the shocked look of WTF was all over my face! I replied - “Really?”

Back to the modem - I noticed while in the configuration that the DNS was not configured. It was reported on the modem as “Invalid.” So, I reset the modem taking everything back to factory defaults. Logged in to the DSL, and the same problem with the PC was happening.

A couple of windows popped up on the screen on the desktop. One of them wanted me to register for “Obscure Drivers” and the other one wanted me to log into a MySpace account and talk to “Sweet Lips.” The owner, standing behind me says - “You know, that stuff pops up all the time. What is it?” I had to tell him, “i don’t know what ‘Obscure Drivers’ are or who ‘Sweet Lips’ is…”

Back to the DSL modem - I told them to get on the line with AT&T, let’s ask them some questions. Typically, I can get to AT&T level 2 support within about 5 minutes of getting a live person. However, this time I must have been speaking directly to India, because my Level 2 request got me transferred to a “Line Specialist - Level 3.” Okay, that was a waste of that guys time and mine. you see, I could tell him I had a good signal to the modem! So, after about 45 minutes of wait-and-do-nothing, I finally got to Level 2 DSL support. I explained what I was seeing on the modem, and within about 10 minutes, the problem was resolved. Here’s what we did…

First, we set the computer into save BIOS boot mode. We also selected Network capabilities for this mode. We rebooted, and tested the browsing. Guess what - it worked. Now, we haven’t changed a thing. I am beginning to think it must have something to do with “Sweet Lips,” but am reserving my theories…

We set the PC back into normal boot mode, and rebooted. After everything came up, and I noticed it took their PC about 10 minutes to come all the way up, browsing worked! Okay, so at this point we have still not changed a thing. The AT&T Level 2 tells me that sometimes booting Windows in safe mode fixes problems - sounds like the old, reboot your PC! But, for whatever mystery, it was now working…

Today was a day of giving, and I’ll probably win their business for life! I took the time to blow away every piece of software they had never run, i then questioned them on the “rarely” used apps, and blew them away as well. Next, I ran disk cleanup, which they had never heard of. I finally ran Disk Defragmentor, again they never heard of. The PC was flying - I mean really running fast! It booted in about 1 minute, everything worked they needed, and their Internet was going! Through all of this, I learned that they had just payed their IT guy $900 in the last month to rebuild this PC I was cleaning up. I joked, maybe it was due for a “reload!” They took it well!

Bottom line - if you are one of these folks that just assumes you should trust your IT guy and write checks for $900 and wonder what was fixed, I wish you a lot of luck.  However, you ahve choices out there; look at them, interview them, find out if they have similar values as you do when it comes to saving money on IT!