'technical' support me ar*e

dbnavan

A friend of mine phoned me up the other day, and told me he was getting a lot of blue screens, could be doing anything and the blue screen would pop up, he rang his technical support line and they said he would have to backup what they could while they formated the machine.

So I went over to help him while there he got the blue screen, i took down the error code, dont have it here now, however i looked it up on the microsoft site, and it cited memory fault or over heating cpu. `

I phoned back the company and explained this, after backing up several GB to CD, as he is a graphic designer, majorly big files. I took the cover off the machine and sat it next to a fan! sounds crazy i know but it didnt crash and cpu temp dropped.

phoned company back after all had been backed up as best we could, explained problem as he had 3 year "on-site" warrenty. They said the first thing they do is system restore, I watched in horror as he formatted his drive lost stuff we couldnt backup only for it to crash while installing windows, cover was back on at this stage after guy laughed the idea off! Next thing yer man says, we will have to send a technician out, looks like hardware, duh ya muppet told u that!! (Didnt say that, felt like it!)

Question: Why are companys so quick to format drives? I do some side work from home for a company where I am regularly asked to format and reinstall, but 9 times out of 10 I can find the problem in the registry, yes some people say it takes longer, etc. But ultimitly the client is happier.

The microsoft knowledge base is there for a reason. Technicians should use it.

Why didnt I do this myself if I knew what was up(I people will ask) wasnt my computer and owner was adiment he paid these guys for the service.

This company are not one bit worried about all the work he has lost even though he didnt need to!

Thats my rant for the day!!!

youcancallmeal

I'm so glad I do tech support for a private company. If an employee has a problem with their PC we just get them re-imaged while all their personal files are stored on the server. I dont think I could ever do tech support for the likes of dell dealing with the public :eek: . Bottom line is tech support will always go for the fix with the least input/effort involved.

daywalker

It just seems to be a policy with any company, basically they try to rule out the software end first, i.e reinstall original factory image, therefore eliminate any software causing the problem, then go on to hardware problems, a lot of the technical support people at the other end of the phone, have no clue, they just read information off a screen.

I work in EDIT and its the same when we want to order hardware for a faulty machine, they usually ask us have we remastered the machine, even when we tell them the hard drive has failed diagnostics,for example. usually results in smart comments "How the F*** do i remaster when the hard drive doesnt work?, you muppet". If there is a real problem they have to go ask the "technical" guys first to check what might be the problem and only then will they send us the required parts.

EDIT: removed company reference in case of problems with boss

CiaranC

If you store important work related data locally with no backup policy, then you deserve to lose it.

No professional in their right mind would operate like that.

dbnavan

CiaranC wrote:

If you store important work related data locally with no backup policy, then you deserve to lose it.

No professional in their right mind would operate like that.

most stuff was backed up, thanks for the friendly attitude, I suppose you have all you outlook files, documents, graphics, media files, backed up daily.

In an ideal world all computers would be sold with a backup device, but you and I both know 95% of home users don't have backup's daily, that however is not the point. Formatting to my mind should be the last option, especially for a blue screen error! which mostly is caused by bad configuration or hardware, and can be rectified with research.

aidan_walsh

dbnavan wrote:

you and I both know 95% of home users don't have backup's daily, that however is not the point. Formatting to my mind should be the last option, especially for a blue screen error! which mostly is caused by bad configuration or hardware, and can be rectified with research.

Of course, then you have to talk the home user into fixing the problem for you, because you can forget trying to do any kind of remote connective assistance. I work doing tech support for a private company, and had to talk people through applying fixes before we got a decent remote assistance package, and I'm telling you its the nastiest thing I ever had to do. It can take a flippin' age. "Start button? Whats that?"...

youcancallmeal

dbnavan wrote:

In an ideal world all computers would be sold with a backup device, but you and I both know 95% of home users don't have backup's daily, that however is not the point. Formatting to my mind should be the last option, especially for a blue screen error! which mostly is caused by bad configuration or hardware, and can be rectified with research.

I've spent hours researching blue screen errors and other stuff but seem to always end up just re-installing windows. Sure, it might be rewarding to locate and rectify errors but more often that not a windows re-install will fix it a lot quicker.

That being said its hard to generalise, different methods are required for different issues. Normally when I come across a problem I can single out the cause pretty quickly either through research or experience of having seen it before. How its dealt with after that usually depends on what mood I'm in

youcancallmeal

aidan_walsh wrote:

"Start button? Whats that?"...

I feel your pain :mad:

CiaranC

Of course I have all work related data backed up daily.

but you and I both know 95% of home users don't have backup's daily

Home users can afford to lose their data. If they cant, they are a business user, and should have a backup solution in place.

Formatting to my mind should be the last option, especially for a blue screen error!

Formatting/reimaging is the first option in practically all situations. Try working in an IT company/dept with thousands of users with your attitude. The whole place would grind to a halt while the IT dept spend hours hunting down Susan from sales holiday snaps off a half dead machine.

feylya

"It's an icon on your desktop"
"What, beside my coffee cup?"

I wish I was joking

I often find that a format is just the simplest and fastest way of sorting out problems, especially if you have an image on a cd and you can just copy it straight across. That's why I always get people to set up a Windows partition and a data partition. No worries about loosing data as long as they look after their stuff properly.

dbnavan

aidan_walsh wrote:

Of course, then you have to talk the home user into fixing the problem for you, because you can forget trying to do any kind of remote connective assistance. I work doing tech support for a private company, and had to talk people through applying fixes before we got a decent remote assistance package, and I'm telling you its the nastiest thing I ever had to do. It can take a flippin' age. "Start button? Whats that?"...

Thats what ur paid to do, so what if they dont know what they are doing, tell them, doesnt matter how long it takes obviously something complicated like a registry fix, send a technician out, that why people have on site warrenties.

Why should they loose months even years of files. cause ur lazy and have no patience

CiaranC

Why should they loose months even years of files. cause ur lazy and have no patience

If a machine contains valuable data, it should be backed up. Its simple.

dbnavan

CiaranC wrote:

Of course I have all work related data backed up daily.


Home users can afford to lose their data. If they cant, they are a business user, and should have a backup solution in place.


Formatting/reimaging is the first option in practically all situations. Try working in an IT company/dept with thousands of users with your attitude. The whole place would grind to a halt while the IT dept spend hours hunting down Susan from sales holiday snaps off a half dead machine.

I have worked in several IT companies, "with my attitude" it depends on the problem, sometimes formatting is best way out of things i agree, but the microsoft website clearly cited hardware, meaning he didnt take 5 mins to check the site.

5 minutes google search vs 35-50 reinstall, i see ur point about time management :rolleyes: + time it takes to swap memory or change cpu,

aidan_walsh

dbnavan wrote:

doesnt matter how long it takes

No, nope, wrong. Have you ever tried telling anyone that they will have to wait a couple of days for their computer to be repaired? Home users will hate this, because they want to write their emails and play their games now. Business users will most likely not be able to do their jobs without their computer, so they'll be even happier to hear it.

Also, like CiaranC said, you'll bring a busy department to a halt if you're spending hours trawling through the MS KB looking for a fix to an obscure problem. In house companies can afford to spend more time doing this, people dealing with home users over the phone can't.

Hobbes

Nearly all bluescreens are due to faulty hardware or drivers.

Telling someone to format a machine is absolutly stupid technical support. Only a moron or a complete lazy ****e would suggest this without exploring everything else beforehand.

dbnavan

aidan_walsh wrote:

No, nope, wrong. Have you ever tried telling anyone that they will have to wait a couple of days for their computer to be repaired? Home users will hate this, because they want to write their emails and play their games now. Business users will most likely not be able to do their jobs without their computer, so they'll be even happier to hear it.

Also, like CiaranC said, you'll bring a busy department to a halt if you're spending hours trawling through the MS KB looking for a fix to an obscure problem. In house companies can afford to spend more time doing this, people dealing with home users over the phone can't.

I fix computers all the time from home, first thing I do is check at least so I know the cause of the error, I would put money on being able find a patch, or registry edit for a blue screen quicker then it takes to reinstall.

Home user hate it? I never have any complaints. give me option of losing everything or couple of hours research i know what i'd choose, as proven with opening post, the problem was hardware, files need not have been lost. Had nothing whatsoever to do with software.

CiaranC

If its a business machine, it will be backed up. A simple reimage eliminates the need for any forms of troubleshooting. If the problem recurrs, the problem part should be warrantied.

dbnavan

Also you can reinstall windows with doing a complete format.

CiaranC

Of course. Plus the data should have been on a separate partition, if not a separate physical drive, to the OS. Simple measures could have been taken to avoid losing data, but none were.

hobie

Have you ever tried telling anyone that they will have to wait a couple of days for their computer to be repaired?

When you loose your home pc it really is a highly emotional event .... and the longer the downtime, the worse it gets .... :cool:

I'd never thrown out an old pc for that very reason .... right now my 6 year old Dell is sitting quitely on a shelf above me, waiting to be fired up if it's ever needed ..... I power it up every now and then, to give it a run around the block .... :rolleyes:

Hobbes

CiaranC wrote:

Of course. Plus the data should have been on a separate partition, if not a separate physical drive, to the OS. Simple measures could have been taken to avoid losing data, but none were.

Blame the user. :v:

TBH some companies/support places are just as bad. Most home users have no details on backing up, nor would they know what exactly to back up. They are told crap like have to buy a new/extra harddrive or some expensive backup system when most faults can be fixed easily.

dbnavan

CiaranC wrote:

Of course. Plus the data should have been on a separate partition, if not a separate physical drive, to the OS. Simple measures could have been taken to avoid losing data, but none were.

Read my second post most stuff was backed up, but you and I know people save alot it little stuff of not major importantance email attachments bookmarks etc,

Work files where backed up. NEVER at any stage did i say this was about lost files, its about formatting as first option for a blue screen which has been pointed out usually is drivers or hardware,

DonkeyStyle \o/

daywalker wrote:

It just seems to be a policy with any company, basically they try to rule out the software end first, i.e reinstall original factory image, therefore eliminate any software causing the problem, then go on to hardware problems, a lot of the technical support people at the other end of the phone, have no clue, they just read information off a screen.

It doesn't matter whether the 1st level support guy knows his stuff or not... a lot of the time you're bound by procedure to try x then reformat.
Although yeah, the problem is that they often hire people with very little knowledge of PCs for tech support roles, so every other agent is treated like they have no personal knowledge to bring to the party... and so you don't get to test a lot of the things you might want to.
It's all just sticking to the handed-down procedures and getting them off the phone in 15 minutes... it's the fast-food approach to tech support
I did tech support a few years ago... I was disgusted at how little we were allowed to help people... you act as more of a customer-service robot... and sadly only a few occasions where you can come up with a brilliant solution to a tricky problem.
I'm pretty sure I've formatted peoples PCs over the phone when I knew it'd do f*ck all good... but when you're told to do it, there's nothing else you can do.
Needless to say I didn't stay in that soul-destroying robot job for very long.

I've no faith in tech support lines, even if you know better than the customer-service monkey on the other end of the phone, you still have to jump through hoops to get anything replaced... I pitty anyone who has to put up with them.

youcancallmeal

A very defeatist attitude^^^

I'm working tech support at the moment and we are encouraged to use all means possible to fix problems, in whatever order we like . We have access to remote connectivity with user's pc's and even after we've exhausted all avenues of approach we can ask other teams with expertise to advise the user. If a user was to provide me with suggestions for possible fixes I would be delighted, you learn something new everyday . On the other hand though some people can barely turn their pc on.

Tech Support like most other things cant be painted with the same brush but I would definitely agree there are some companies tech support leave a lot to be desired.

Fenster

It makes sense to ask someone to reformat first, if you're just a Joe Blogs tech support guy. A lot of people make changes to their machine, install a different Windows, add/remove hardware or change drivers, or even have some sort of nasty spyware/virus that will crash their PC. A badly written rootkit comes to mind.

As companies aimed at home users generally don't have an abundance of geeks to hand that can identify and remedy the problem, they won't help you out unless the machine is in the factory state.

DonkeyStyle \o/

youcancallme>al wrote:

A very defeatist attitude^^

Well it's based on my personal experiences... some places are actually like that.
Keeping good stats (call duration, hold time, etc) are more important than actually solving the persons problem... bureaucracy at its very worst.
The only positive tech support experiences I've had (as an end-user) were with smaller companies who take the time to hire the right people who know their stuff inside-out... as opposed to the larger companies who seem to prefer the million-monkeys-on-a-million-typewriters approach... no doubt a cost-cutting measure to please the board members :rolleyes:
I wouldn't say I'm a defeatist... more a cynic who's been to the dark side

CiaranC

Look, tech support on an enterprise level scale is a logistical nightmare. You get the user up and running with the stuff you sold them, thats it. People who expect to be hand-held through retrieving their data off a crippled machine are delusional.

The OP here had to put a custom cooling solution in place to keep the machine from overheating - ie a household fan blowing into the open case!

When you have thousands of users, stuff like this simply is not possible. You rebuild the machines software, then if needed you replace any faulty hardware. You give the user back his machine as he was given it.

dbnavan

CiaranC wrote:

Look, tech support on an enterprise level scale is a logistical nightmare. You get the user up and running with the stuff you sold them, thats it. People who expect to be hand-held through retrieving their data off a crippled machine are delusional.

The OP here had to put a custom cooling solution in place to keep the machine from overheating - ie a household fan blowing into the open case!

When you have thousands of users, stuff like this simply is not possible. You rebuild the machines software, then if needed you replace any faulty hardware. You give the user back his machine as he was given it.

It is a home user we are talking about not thousands of users, enterprize level scale will have backups in place, if the cooling solution works no matter how crazy it sounds, it proves its not software.

aidan_walsh

dbnavan wrote:

It is a home user we are talking about not thousands of users

I presume he meant call centres like Dell, which would recieve calls from thousands of home and business users on a daily basis.

dbnavan

aidan_walsh wrote:

I presume he meant call centres like Dell, which would recieve calls from thousands of home and business users on a daily basis.

`
They have different sections for home and business users,

aidan_walsh

dbnavan wrote:

`
They have different sections for home and business users,

Each of which will recieve thousands of calls.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Yeah, some of the things people expect you to help them with really takes the piss sometimes... which is why it's good to have your hands tied sometimes.
Although I think the real point of this thread is the lack of common sense... for example a large purple line going through the screen from POST all the way to the desktop isn't likely to be a software problem, yet still procedure in some places dictates a reformat/reinstall must be performed before the machine can be sent off for a service... fair enough, they have to cut down on the cost idiots bringing PCs in for service or sending replacement parts unnessesarily... it's an unfortunate side-effect of running a large scale operation I'm sure... but it's also a side effect of hiring customer service staff to provide your tech support... but hey, I'm sure it works out cheaper in the end.

dbnavan

as already stated
"Nearly all bluescreens are due to faulty hardware or drivers."

Anyone of a decent technical knowledge knows this, problem is these places dont hire people who know about PC's skill number 1 is reading from a screen, I know someone who is 'Technical Support' who needed me to help her type a CV cause she didnt know how to use word!

uberpixie

dbnavan wrote:

as already stated
"Nearly all bluescreens are due to faulty hardware or drivers."

Anyone of a decent technical knowledge knows this, problem is these places dont hire people who know about PC's skill number 1 is reading from a screen, I know someone who is 'Technical Support' who needed me to help her type a CV cause she didnt know how to use word!

The problem is these places only want customer care type agents.

The object of the company is to get rid of the customer in under 10 mins.

Chances are ther tech support is handled by a third party company who are bound by contract to take a certain number of calls a year within a sepecific average call time.

They only hire people with limited ability so they can pay em less and chances are they get sod all training to do their job properly in the first place.

Call centres are all about cutting corners to save money and getting rid of the customerin the fastest time possible.

(with the customer happy thinking their problem is going to be fixed).

They are not about helping the customer.

Anyone of any sort of technical ability are out of call centres like a shot for a real job that pays real money.

If you want to blame someone blame the company and the company policy.

Such is life.

_Kaiser_

Home User tech support is something most of the larger players look on as a "necessary expense" - I should know, I used to work for 2 of the multinationals. It's generally under-resourced and always understaffed with often unreasonable demands and targets placed on the agents.

The objectives change on a monthly basis as managers decide what the flavor of the month is.. maybe this month it's the "first time fix rate", or the "number of parts dispatched per call", or the ever popular "customer satisfaction" rate... note that the tech has no input or discretition over these objectives, or how often they change. They are simply measured and rated based on how well they adhere to them

However, above all this is stats. Average call duration, hold times, numbers of calls taken, abandonment rate. It's only AFTER these figures are satisfied that the other items I listed above are considered.

I worked in both home and Enterprise support, at various levels and yea, there were times that I knew a reload wouldn't fix the issue, however in order to get approval for x part to be sent, that hoop still has to be jumped through... in addition, you certainly can't agree with a customer that it's a pointless exercise in some cases as a random number of calls are monitored every day.

I'm a firm believer that most people should spend some time working in a callcentre before they give out about the service - or lack thereof - they've received. Also bear in mind that the person who answers the phone doesn't own the company in most cases, so screaming at and abusing them will get you nowhere except ensuring your complaint gets pushed to the bottom of the queue.

Finally, I would advise that people read their warranty information or SLA's. In most cases you'll find them airtight and that EVERYTHING is on a "best effort" basis and may or may not solve the issue on the first attempt.

gline

1st off consumer and corporate support are an entirely different thing.

because the volume of consumer cals in a call centre is usaully 4 times or more as many and pay less, they get a lower level of support, that is the bottom line. You cant usually blame the tech support guy on the other end of the phone. I worked doing consumer support for a year and a half and you are bound by rules, you get penalized for not hitting targets etc. You start off really caring and wanting to help customers, but over time due to management and angry customers. You are not given anytime to research and because the customer on the other end is generally a dumbass you cant step him through anything.

In corporate enviorment (which i have been working for 6 months) it is a different story as customers pay more and have more knowledge they get a better service. It is a fact of life.

As to the OPS's experience, it may have been the companies policy to do a format first to prove it is a hardware issue, bot the techies fault, its hard to know if it is companies policy or a stupid support agent.

dbnavan

1 point just occured to me, people say that Home Users are treated like get them on and off the phone as quickly as possible, this is not true, I remember once spend an hour and a half on the phone to eircom to fix a modem problem, also if time was an issue, he wouldnt have offered to stay on the phone the whole time(45 mins approx) while I reinstalled windows before which I told him 'your wasting ur time'

uberpixie

dbnavan wrote:

1 point just occured to me, people say that Home Users are treated like get them on and off the phone as quickly as possible, this is not true, I remember once spend an hour and a half on the phone to eircom to fix a modem problem, also if time was an issue, he wouldnt have offered to stay on the phone the whole time(45 mins approx) while I reinstalled windows before which I told him 'your wasting ur time'

When I worked for residential tech support the average call time was 10 mins. And we had to stick to it.

We had managers on our asses all the time to keep the average call time down.

If any call was approaching 10-15 mins they came over to find out what was wrong.

Whats true for eircom is not true for everywhere else.

It all depends on how strict the company are on call times.

The only time i got away with hour long calls was when i was on probation.

From my own experiance call centres dealing with residential customers are an exercise in buck passing to other departments and getting rid of the customer in the shortest time possible.

Helping them is coincidence.

gline

uberpixie wrote:

From my own experiance call centres dealing with residential customers are an exercise in buck passing to other departments and getting rid of the customer in the shortest time possible.

Helping them is coincidence.

this seemed to be true with the company i WAS working for

dbnavan

Well what is quiet apperent to me is companys care sh*g all about their customers and even with the multinationals there is still a market for a local technician who cares about his clients and before anyone says they dont exsist, I am one and make well from it, people dont mind paying for the personal touch, if it means not losing there data.

Often the first question I get when diagnosing a problem, is am I going to lose anything?

The person posted about in the original post had On-Site Warrenty which meant they could have come out to back-up his files on an external drive for him, if not what is point in paying Extra for on-site, Backup devices take minutes to use. What exactly does onsite mean for 200/300 euro, clean dust from ur mouse?

event

if you thought it was wrong to format the HD, why'd you do it?

dbnavan

event wrote:

if you thought it was wrong to format the HD, why'd you do it?

Cause the hardware was covered by warrenty but they only way the company would honour that is if they went through their troubleshooting checklist which format the hard drive is option 1 under 'blue screen' seemingly.

Saruman

I used to work for Gateway.. the policy is rule out software.. the reason is because most problems with PC's are in fact software.

That said i always tried to tell them how to repair without having to format. Think of it this way.... Which is easier.. tell them how to format? Or to guide them step by step through registry keys etc... and they CANT send technicians out for stuff like that.. its in the warranty.. On site support is for hardware replacement only... not to diagnose and certainly not to fix windows problems.
Of course this is only the way Gateway did things their 1 year onsite was standard, not extra... thing is there is so little profit in PC's.. If you have to send just 1 engineer, once.. thats the profit lost from that PC!!!

Of course telling someone to format just because they have a blue screen is a cop out and that person is lazy.

CiaranC

Well what is quiet apperent to me is companys care sh*g all about their customers and even with the multinationals there is still a market for a local technician who cares about his clients and before anyone says they dont exsist, I am one and make well from it, people dont mind paying for the personal touch, if it means not losing there data.

Were still going with this are we?

If you think you can have a personal service for every single call implemented accross multiple continents, countries, languages, legal systems & markets applied by tens of thousands of staff to hundreds of thousands of users, then you understand nothing about enterprise level support.

If you earn a living from clients who pay you to save their data in this situation, and appreciate the personal touch, then thats great. But that is not a service which the likes of Dell or HP consumer support provide, its a totally different market. And it sure as hell doesnt come for a one off payment of 300 euro over the life of the machine.

gline

Saruman wrote:

thing is there is so little profit in PC's.. If you have to send just 1 engineer, once.. thats the profit lost from that PC!!!

.

i have to agree with this, massive companies care less about technical support because they care more about sales, some companies only offer "support" because they have to and that is why it is below standard, mostly in the consumer market. However corporate support should be of a higher quality because they pay a lot more and it is more critical, the company i now work for actually have a yearly charge for their technical support after you 1st year (this is corporate support), but the problems are dealt with until they are solved which can take a long time for some cases and format is never an option.

dbnavan

CiaranC wrote:

Were still going with this are we?

If you think you can have a personal service for every single call implemented accross multiple continents, countries, languages, legal systems & markets applied by tens of thousands of staff to hundreds of thousands of users, then you understand nothing about enterprise level support.

If you earn a living from clients who pay you to save their data in this situation, and appreciate the personal touch, then thats great. But that is not a service which the likes of Dell or HP consumer support provide, its a totally different market. And it sure as hell doesnt come for a one off payment of 300 euro over the life of the machine.

The company actually is a 100% irish company, and 300 euro is 3 year cover so none of this is relevent.

CiaranC

How is it not relevant?

300 euro would barely cover a single call with my company to have an engineer drive to site, spend hours retrieving data off this PC in its condition, warranty the faulty hardware and return to site to replace and possibly rebuild the machine. And you expect the user to be able to place an unlimited number of these calls for 3 years!

dbnavan

CiaranC wrote:

How is it not relevant?

300 euro would barely cover a single call with my company to have an engineer drive to site, spend hours retrieving data off this PC in its condition, warranty the faulty hardware and return to site to replace and possibly rebuild the machine. And you expect the user to be able to place an unlimited number of these calls for 3 years!

Dont take a attitude with me, I havent with you, backup devices take minutes, partition the drive

If you cant afford to give 3 year on-site warranty dont offer it! What exactly does it cover? If your so
expierence why would u not suggest system restore before format?

CiaranC

backup devices take minutes, partition the drive

Wanna tell me how I partition a drive and attach a DAT drive to a machine which wont start up without a household fan blowing into the case in someones kitchen, thus breaking health and safety regulations and endangering the health and job of my engineer and the profitablility of the company. Not something that a small freelance has to consider of course.

If you cant afford to give 3 year on-site warranty dont offer it!

Onsite usually consists of hw/sw replacement to return a machine to the state it was sold in. The company I work for provides a more specialised service, including data backup/recovery, but charge several thousands or several tens of thousands of euro a year.

dbnavan

CiaranC wrote:

Wanna tell me how I partition a drive and attach a DAT drive to a machine which wont start up without a household fan blowing into the case in someones kitchen, thus breaking health and safety regulations and endangering the health and job of my engineer and the profitablility of the company. Not something that a small freelance has to consider of course.


Onsite usually consists of hw/sw replacement to return a machine to the state it was sold in. The company I work for provides a more specialised service, including data backup/recovery, but charge several thousands or several tens of thousands of euro a year.

I never said it was in a kitchen, it was in an office! never said it wouldnt start, I also stated that i spent the afternoon backing up between crashes,

I also see what u mean, household fans and computers cause explosions! :rolleyes:

dbnavan

CiaranC wrote:

Wanna tell me how I partition a drive and attach a DAT drive to a machine which wont start up without a household fan blowing into the case in someones kitchen, thus breaking health and safety regulations and endangering the health and job of my engineer and the profitablility of the company. Not something that a small freelance has to consider of course.


Onsite usually consists of hw/sw replacement to return a machine to the state it was sold in. The company I work for provides a more specialised service, including data backup/recovery, but charge several thousands or several tens of thousands of euro a year.

Last time I checked Blue Screens dont occur in command prompt bootup