this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
11 points (82.4% liked)
Melbourne
2188 readers
45 users here now
This community is a place created for the people of Melbourne and Victoria. We are a positive, welcoming and inclusive community. We might not agree about everything, but we always strive to stay civil and respectful.
The focus of our discussions is based around things that affect Victoria, but we are also free to discuss our local perspective on wider issues. Or head to the regular Daily Random Discussion thread to talk about anything.
Ongoing discussions, FAQs & Resources (still under construction)
Adoption Certificate for Nellie, the Daily Thread numbat (with thanks to @Catfish)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I got very lucky with my tech support session yesterday. I just had to set up a scanner, which could have been simple enough, but the laptop wasn't connected to wifi, nor was it picking up the hotspot from my phone.
Fortunately, the laptop was old enough to still have a disc drive. So I was able to install the drivers from the disc that came with it instead.
Every house with those demon driveless devices should have at least one usb cd/dvd rom. People mock the humble optical drive until the shit hits the fan, then they roll around squealing
It worked in this case. But it was so weird with this laptop, it wasn't picking up any wifi networks. They had an ancient laptop at home as well and that one was connected to the wifi there. I was even able to connect the printer to the wifi via WPS. This laptop was picking up nothing. I was ready to drive down to the nearest Jaycar and pick up an ethernet cable.
I think I assume to much of a tech competence baseline in these sessions. At first I was worried they wouldn't be able to login to the laptop because they bought it a while ago specifically to scan photos and hadn't touched it in years. I should ask people to have their diaries with their passwords handy, make sure they can login to the devices and accounts they want to work on, and I should bring a couple of common cables just to make sure as well.
My older laptop stopped working with my WiFi at some point, I had to buy a wireless dongle to work with the newer wifi equipment.
That's what's so weird. This laptop isn't ancient but it couldn't find anything. The older laptop looked like it was from 2009 and was connected to the internet
what os on the non-ancient laptop? I'm guessing some proprietary wlan handler that windows is having a bargy with
It was out of the box Windows 10. It seemed like a mid-tier laptop for the time, I can't remember brand. These people probably just go to JB Hi-Fi and buy a $500 laptop when they're on sale so I haven't seen anything too exotic in my support sessions so far