Often I am better at tutoring than at fixing hardware problems. That was demonstrated again this week when I had a new client. He wanted several things. His computer was getting too slow. His wireless Internet connection did not work (and never had worked). He wanted to know how to organize his folders and thousands of photographs.

The computer getting slow was not a problem. It had the usual issues with aggressive startup applications, not enough RAM, etc.

However, his wireless router stumped me. His cable hookup and router were on the main floor with his main computer. He had another computer upstairs that was not on the Internet because a major beam prevented easy drilling for a wired connection. So he bought a wireless router and paid a technician at the store where he bought it to hook it up for him (names concealed to protect the guilty). After a few hours, the tech gave up and went home. The router was in place with an ethernet connection to the main computer, but nothing else functioned. It must have stayed that way for two years until the client finally got fed up and called me. He had seen me start from scratch and set up a wireless system at our PC users group as a demo, so he knew that I knew how to do it. Of course I knew that I knew how to do it, and predicted it would take less than ten minutes to get him straightened out.

I was wrong.

He was getting good connectivity on his main computer through the wired connection, and I could detect a strong signal from the wireless, but nothing could connect. I tried both his laptop and the other computer. At this point I was beginning to feel some sympathy for the first tech who gave up in frustration, but when things look black, follow the course of simplifying until things start to work. So I reached under his desk and blindly followed the cable from his modem to the router and removed it. Then I went straight into the computer and things worked. I started to put the cable back into the same place where I got it and realized something was wrong. The lights were not right and it did not feel right.

Then it hit me. The modem was plugged into one of the four computer locations, and his computer was plugged into the WAN input! This configuration apparently allowed the signal to go through backwards, but did nothing for his wireless. Duh…

When you are trying to inspire confidence in a new client, not seeing such an obvious error at first glance is embarrassing. However, he took it in stride and was glad to learn that he had not broken anything. That response always surprises me. Clients tend to either take responsibility for things they had no part of or blame me for things I had no part of.

But now I was on the alert so I looked more closely at the cable modem. Like many, it has both an ethernet and USB outputs. Both were occupied. The ethernet went through the router, but the USB went straight to the computer, which also had the ethernet connection from the router. So the computer had two wired Internet connections. Why?

I asked the client about it and he admitted that a friend of his had tried to help after the tech guy was not able to make the system work.

The final surprise came when we activated wireless on his upstairs computer. I suggested that we check for Windows updates as a routine thing. Minutes went by and finally we were informed that he needed to download and install 61 critical updates. That’s the world we live in.

Click here to read about my new tutorial on helping seniors. The new version has grown considerably over the original. It has more topics and anecdotes, and fewer typos. While you’re at it, check out my expanded tutorial on decision theory.

[tags]senior computing, adult learning[/tags]