Computer Technician

I spent part of this weekend fixing Dan's new Gateway laptop.  Cookie Queen bought him a new machine because the old laptop is the only machine at her house that will play the kids' games.  But apparently he got hold of it and it wouldn't work.  I think normally this would entail just taking the damn thing back to Best Buy or ordering the recovery software which they never seem to ship anymore and has a separate fee, but having been a consumer who wants a machine in a few days, not a few weeks, I can sympathize.  So I took it on, and booted it up.  I was expecting to find water in the boards, or a porn-related issue, but as near as I can tell, part of their OEM install was a copy of AVG that crashed Win7.  Or at least auto-updated to a crashable state.

I poked at it for a while, and then decided the easiest plan of action was just to nuke it.  So I installed a new copy of Win7 Home basic over the top.  Reminder - read the bottom of the machine so you know what version of Windows to install now that there are about a thousand of them.  I had to burn a second disk with Windows Premium Home on it.

That worked.  I followed it up with browsers - Chrome and IE9, both with their home page set to the theme song from Small Wonder.  Patched the Ethernet so it could reach the web (nice job of making that publicly accessible, Gateway.  Much appreciated).  Added Ghost Busters wall paper with nametags for Kyle, Dan, Ben, and myself.  Grabbed a bunch of pictures from Facebook for the screensaver so he can see his kids.  Installed  League of Legends.  Most of Lord of the Rings MMO.  And Steel Panthers (with a hack so it works on Win7).  And put AVG back on it - can't be too safe with a machine that's intended to be used in a solo pad with friends and beer (enabled the full scan three times a week with a failsafe to kick in on the next boot up as well if the scan window is missed).

Runs like a champ.  Cookie Queen told me Dan'l was dubious I could get it going because his friend couldn't get it going.  Dude - if your friend could fix PCs, he'd be making more money as tech repair, not working for the Catholics as a maintenance guy.

At least it wasn't f-ed up hardware.  I can fix that too - but it makes me cranky.