Never Provide Tech Support for Hardware You Don't Own

We are a small non-profit planning organization in our very first year on a LAN. I'm the fiscal manager that became the IS manager by default — because I was smart enough to know what a LAN was and dumb enough to think I could have a life while trying to manage the business AND the technology. I know that I'm a newbie in spite of my five years in computer operations at the tech department of the largest credit union data processor in the state.

But that was more than ten years ago! As a qualifier, I must say that I am completely unqualified to maintain the LAN of today's world. I try not to annoy the real techies from the network support company we hired to help us design, install and maintain our LAN. I told them it's like this: I know where we parked the car, I can even open the door and drive it around a bit, but only they can tell me how the car actually works, or fix it if something goes wrong.

I'm pretty proud of our efforts. We have a LAN with a high level of redundancy, essential for our organization (we have people on staff who think a backup of their computer means to copy their files into a folder on the desktop of the same old computer). Our network design and Cat5e cabling impressed the competition so much, their assessment team said THEY wanted to come work for our company! So what did I do wrong?

I approved tech support for a computer we don't own. One of our contract consultants, I'll call her Mary, wanted to be able to use her laptop computer to work in our office, use our LAN for the convenience of its company-wide email and high-speed internet connection, and still be able to take it home and use her dial-up, her ISP, and her ISP's email. She pushed to be networked despite having three or four perfectly usable Pentium III desktop computers available for her use on a shared basis (we have a few staffers who are rarely all in the office at the same time). My boss rubber-stamped her request, because he's a nice guy and wants everyone to be happy. I resisted at first, but eventually approved it, because it all seemed so simple.

We called in our tech support team. The tech team reconfigured Mary's laptop to have one profile, set it up, and tested it to run on our network. We returned the laptop to Mary. Mary reported that ALL of her recent files were missing, including all the files for the project she was working on for US.

Apparently, something happened in the reconfig that shouldn't have happened — instead of changing two profiles into one profile with all files and software intact, there was only one profile, and only the old files and software were there. What remained intact was anything that had been there two years ago when she first had her laptop set up with two profiles. Mary then informed us that she hadn't backed up her computer in six months. Our tech support team and I went into overdrive trying to make this right!

Weeks have now gone by. Our techies have done recoveries, searched the hard drive , searched the Internet for answers. Signs pointed toward hardware or software failure rather than tech errors.

I broke the news to Mary. She took it well, considering. We reformatted her hard drive and reloaded all of her software and helped reconstruct what files we could from her more recent emails sent to our staff. We could get her email/Internet to work on our LAN, and on our analog line on her dialup ISP. Mary took her laptop home and reported her email program did not work. She could preview but not open mail, couldn't print, then could print. She brought the laptop to our office where we tested it and her email program and printing worked fine, the first time we booted it. The second time we booted it to test it on her dialup ISP, the mail program wouldn't even open. Again, all signs were pointing toward impending hardware or software failure. We tried again and again to get the laptop working properly. It seemed unlikely that three different versions of licensed software were corrupted, or that a reformatted hard drive and reloaded software were all corrupted.

I'll say it. We were rats trying to abandon the sinking ship. I wanted the techs to get that laptop working convincingly and get it back to Mary so it could crash on her, not on us. Mary was not taking news as well, after nearly a month of us passing her laptop back and forth (it was the holidays), she left the office, mentioning something about "it having worked fine before she gave it to us, this being our last chance, and wishing she never asked for a network connection." I can't say I blame her, really.

One day, finally, 30 minutes to the final deadline set by Mary, the tech brought the computer back, reconfigured for the second time, with a clean copy of the email program running well. All of Mary's software was loaded and working. I let the tech leave. No sense we both suffer.

Mary came to my office. I showed her that her email program booted fine, her contacts were restored, and her MS office software opened normally. She agreed it was running fine and was satisfied.

I was in the process of helping her get her desktop looking the way she liked, when it happened. Right before our eyes, her display wrapped and shrank — her Start button was on the right of the screen, and everything else had moved a few inches to the left. The Task bar had risen a few inches too, and beneath it was snow, colorful snow. And as we watched, it crept up again. Mary murmured weakly, "Shut down...?" I nodded, and used the keyboard to shut down her laptop. She left my office quietly, saying she'd check with someone she knew at the university and get some diagnostics run.

Our tech support team and I know that a display problem didn't cause all the other problems, and that it may have been a loose connection. There may be other loose connections, or impending catastrophic failure, or many other possible problems that can happen to a well-used, well-traveled laptop computer in its third year of life.

I see a laptop computer purchase in the very near future, because I know Mary is not going to get that laptop working well. I suspect that my good-guy boss may approve buying it for her, because I doubt if we can convince her that we did everything right, and that it wasn't our fault that her laptop failed. I also recognize that the good will of this particular contractor is probably worth more than the funds we will spend on a computer for her, if that's what she wants. As a fiscal manager, I can find a way to pay for it with some hard-earned reserve funds if we have to buy it for her. And I REALLY feel sorry for her, and I want this to all go away!

Meanwhile, I have learned my lesson. I will NEVER provide tech support for a computer we don't own. I will NEVER trust that a backup was done unless I did it myself. And I hope our horrible story saves a few others from the same fate! Spread the word!