Fuddland

There’s one phrase that strikes me with a feeling of terror that reaches to the very core of my being. I’m not talking about the obvious ones, like “I’m late this month” or “What’s that large wet patch on your crotch?” No, the phrase that I dread hearing above all others is:

Oh, hey, you’re a whizz with computers aren’t you?

It’s an established fact that people who say “whizz with computers” have absolutely no clue about how to use computers, let alone how to fix them when something goes wrong. Yet they have absolute faith that someone who is a “whizz with computers” will be able to sort out any problem in a matter of seconds. Which is why, the other day, when I knocked on my elderly neighbours’ door to enquire as to whether they’d seen where my green box had gone, my insides turned to stone when the wife uttered those very words in my direction.

The printer was not working. They’d just been given a new old computer by someone-I’ve-never-met’s neice, which replaced their old old computer, but the printer they had was a pretty good one [HP Deskjet 640C] so they decided to keep it. They plugged it in, tried to print something, nothing happened. That’s as far as they’d got, then given up.

I paused for a moment to access the part of my brain that had long since archived Windows 95 away in the “Please say I never have to use that unstable piece of crap again” file, and checked out the Printers control panel. Yep, no printer driver installed. Well, there was one printer install, but it was an Epson, which I guess had stayed behind at the previous owner’s place. With little hope, I enquired as to whether anyone had a CD which came with their printer. Amazingly, they did!

No problem then, I thought, just install the drivers and it’ll all work perfectly. Idiot. Fool. Amateur.

The drivers were copied over. Would I like to print a test page? You bet your bum. Ah. I thought when it said “Would you like to print a test page?” it was asking me if I wanted to print a test page, whereas, actually, it was asking me if I’d like it to hang immediately and be completely unresponsive. No problem, these things happen I assured my neighbours, who were looking increasingly incredulous that I knew what I was doing. Oh, Blue Screens of Death? They happen too. Who’d want the installation of hardware to be trouble-free?

Reboot, check printer drivers are there; they are, but that doesn’t mean a thing. Try to print a text document from Notepad — the least complicated print job in the entire universe. Nope, printer won’t take the paper up, thinks there’s no paper in the tray. Show printer the paper. Wave paper under printer’s nose. Stuff paper down printer’s gaping mouth and yelling, “Eat A4! Eat it, byatch!” Realising this might have forfeited my chance of a nice cuppa, resort to turning various devices on and off again numerous times [not just those connected to the PC either: the television, the stereo, the little digital clock on the oven…].

Nothing. I reluctantly give up, knowing that otherwise I’d be halfway through reformatting the hard disc and dismantling the printer with a hacksaw for the next seven hours. As if I didn’t feel bad enough at not being able to fix their problem, as I’m leaving I find that their ten-year-old grandson has, in the meantime, run down the street and stolen an unmarked green box from outside another house, to replace the one I’ve lost. I can’t help but feel that it’s rather cheeky to take another resident’s box simply because they’ve not written their house number on it, so I decide I have to do the right thing. I take it back to my house and write my own house number on it.

#1

Gordon | 2004 / 07 / 29 – 11:50

I get that too… have broken more computers than I can remember but still people ask me to check out this or that…

As for the boxes - shame on you!

Me? I’d have nicked two so I had one as a backup… ;-)

#2

Richard | 2004 / 07 / 29 – 21:15

I always had trouble with HP printer drivers locking up windows 95/98. The solution was usually to find some compatible basic driver that had shipped with windows, A number of drivers for HP printers come with windows and usually one of them would work.

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