The History of Tech Support

An interesting concept that means different things to different people is technical support. Curiously enough, it started out as something truly technical.

In the olden days, technical support was designed to assist technicians. A programmer or hardware engineer would call tech support to get honest, raw technical information. The person answering the phone was usually one of the designers or someone well familiar with the topic.

As computers moved into the hobbyist realm, tech support changed. No longer were technicians fielding calls from other technicians. Instead, the phone lines were manned by people trained to help troubleshoot and offer advice for everyday folks. Technical support changed from being geeky to providing much-needed after-sale support. It worked well, but soon the bean-counters took over.

Over time tech support devolved into what appears to be reluctant obligation. For a time, some companies even tried to get rid of support altogether. Those efforts failed. So rather than ignore the need, the trend began to offer poor and rude technical support. Whether true or not, that’s the reputation tech support has today. (And why I’m thankful that organizations like PC Live step up and help fill the gap.)

Stuck Pixels

Your LCD monitor may have a suck pixel or two. They appear like dead pixels (see yesterday’s entry), but unlike a dead pixel a stuck pixel can be fixed.

The way to fix a stuck pixel is to wake it up. That’s done by flashing colors on the monitor, one after the other, to hopefully get the stuck pixel to forget which color it’s currently showing in favor of the one the computer wants it to show.

While you can use a graphics or paint program to fill the screen with various colors, but the best way to wake up stuck pixels is to use a display adapter diagnostic tool. One may have come with your PC. If so, you can use it. (Look for it in the Start menu.)

When you can’t find a display adapter diagnostic tool, consider going to another source, like PC Live. The PC Live technicians can help you diagnose whether your computer’s monitor has dead pixels, stuck pixels, or really any pixels at all!

Dead Pixels

What the heck is that dot on the screen? It’s red. Or green. Or perhaps it’s some other color — or even black. Despite what you show on the screen, the dot stays there. It’s eternal.

Welcome to the era of the LCD monitor. Unlike the old, glass-faced CRT monitors, an LCD monitor features electronics for each pixel, or dot, on the screen. Sometimes those dots screw up. There are two varieties.

First come the dead pixels. A dead pixel is merely a dot that doesn’t work. The pixel’s red, green, or blue element’s (or a combination) fail to light. The result is that the pixel appears to never change color. What you see on the screen is an unchanging dot.

Sometimes the only way to detect a dead pixel is to use a display diagnostics program. The program fills the screen with solid colors that allow you to easily spot dead pixels.

Sadly, there’s nothing you can do about dead pixels. Each monitor manufacturer allows for a certain amount of dead pixels before you can return the monitor. Check the warranty to be sure.
Tomorrow: the second plague of the LCD monitor: stuck pixels.

Things That Go in the Middle of the Night

Sure, you can wag the finger of energy efficiency in my face. I deserve it. Despite putting my computers into sleep mode when I’m not using them, I do leave the beasts on all day. Yet there is another advantage to having Mr. Computer up in the wee hours.

A computer neither rises nor sets with the sun. While a computer does have an internal clock, it’s used for timing things, time-stamping, and scheduling. It’s that scheduling aspect that makes keeping a computer on all the time convenient.

For example, during the night I run my backups. I know I’m going to be in bed by 1:00 AM, but the computer is up. So I set my backup software to backup the computer every night at 1:00 AM. On Monday mornings at 3:00 AM, the entire computer gets backed up.

I run the Windows Update utility at 4:00 AM. Virus scans, disk optimization, all that stuff that would otherwise impede my computing during the day takes place at night. By scheduling things properly, I’m reminded of those old “do it while you sleep” commercials touting modern convenience!

Save Energy with Your PC

Don’t waste electricity! I confess that I’m old enough to remember the original “energy crisis” of the 1970s. Man, did we turn off a lot of lamps in the house. My mother’s home is still quite dark; I don’t think she ever got over the shock of those high energy bills.

Your computer doesn’t really use that much electricity. A typical PC sucks down about as much juice as a 100 watt light bulb. That’s far less than the power-hungry refrigerator or your air conditioner.
It’s possible to make your computer use even less energy.

Oh, yeah: you can turn it off and not keep it on all the time like I do. But even I use, I use power management tools so that the computer’s are wasting electricity overnight. After 45 minutes, my computers go into Sleep Mode, where they use a lot less power: more like 25 watts instead of 100.
But there is another advantage to keeping your PCs on all the time, which I’ll cover in tomorrow’s post.

The 24-Hour PC

Don’t freak out: I leave my computers on all the time.

Yep. That’s 24-hours a day, 7 days a week. The only time I turn a computer off is when I know I won’t be using it for at least two days. Otherwise, I keep at least three of my PCs on all the time. (That ‘s one writing computer and two testing computers.)

Back in the old days, I turned off my computer whenever I left the room. Then DOS 5 happened.

DOS 5 was a good release of MS-DOS, but it began a trend where the computer started to take longer and longer to start. It was just easier to leave the computer on all the time instead of turning it off.

Things are better today than they were under DOS 5. For example, you can use power management tools to ensure that the computer doesn’t waste electricity over night. Plus, you can schedule various activities to take place at night so that they don’t bug you during the day.

A Good Automatic Restart

Has this ever happened to you? You go to your PC in the morning, jiggle the mouse or turn on the monitor, and you look at the screen to discover that the computer has been reset during the night. Yes, this strikes fear even into my nerdy heart.

Chances are that your computer restarted because a critical update was automatically installed. The installation required that Windows restart itself. What you see on the screen is exactly that: Windows has restarted itself.

With both Windows XP and Windows Vista, you can confirm an overnight-restart by logging into Windows and waiting a tick. Soon a bubble pops up from the Notification Area, announcing that updates have been installed. Ta-da! Mystery solved.

It’s those vexing times when the computer automatically restarts without installing an update that can puzzle you. In that case, the computer may have a power supply problem (or there was a power outage). Odds are good that the problem will happen at times other than when you’re away, so keep an eye out.

Using System Restore

It’s advisable to set a restore point every time you modify Windows, add new hardware, or install or upgrade software. By doing so, you ensure that recovery is possible when something weird happens.

To set or use a restore point in Windows XP: from the Start menu in Windows XP choose All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore. The main screen in the System Restore window lets you either restore you computer or set a new restore point.

Windows Vista sets restore points automatically; there is no need to manually set a restore point after installing software or hardware. To use System Restore, you pop up the Start menu and choose Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore. You’ll see a User Account Control warning; click the Continue button or type in the Administrator’s password. Then you can use the System Restore window to restore the computer to an earlier point in time.

When System Restore doesn’t work, the problem is either with a specific program or some piece of hardware that Windows cannot fix. You can do more testing on your own, or just phone up PC Live for a friendly walk-through and solution.

It Was Working Yesterday!

When restarting your computer doesn’t fix one of those “it was working yesterday” type of problems, your next step is to try the old standby: System Restore

The System Restore utility has been around since Windows 98. (It was available only at the command prompt.) Starting with Windows XP, System Restore has become a main feature, saving thousands of computer user butts across the country.

How System Restore works is like this: Every so often (usually once a day), Windows creates what’s called a restore point. That restore point is a data file that saves information about the computer’s currently configuration: settings, options, vital files, and other key information.

Because most computer problems are related to change, the way System Restore works is to restore those vital settings back to a certain point in time. By doing so, the changes that cause trouble are affectively undone.

Phishing Scam from Bank of Armerrica

Remember a few blog entries back when I was talking about phishing scams? Well I just got an e-mail in my inbox from “Bank of America.” Now you probably can already guess that it’s not from Bank of America, simply because you know I’m talking about a phishing scam.

At first I thought the message was legitimate. Remember my discussion of “human engineering?” The e-mail message was plain: It wanted me to fill in an on-line customer satisfaction survey. That seemed innocent enough. But what tipped me off was the return e-mail address. Check this out:

message@bankofarmerrica.com

Something struck me about that address as odd. Is that the word “farmer” in there? As I read and re-read the e-mail address carefully, I noted that it didn’t say America but rather ARMERRICA. At first glance, it does look like America, though.

Another hint: my e-mail program reported that the address for the web site (where I should go to take the survey) was located in Russia. I could tell that by the .RU part of the web page address.

No thanks! I hope you’re as smart when it comes to reading your e-mail — and avoiding the perilous phishing scam.