The guy had gotten DSL from Eircom, and initially, it seemed to work ok, but then it died. And came back, died again. Up, down, up, down, up, down, down, down, down. Dead.
He called Eircom support, got through to India, pulled cables, moved the computer to near a different phone point etc. The usual stuff. Eventually, the support guy said he'd send out a technician.
The technician got their yesterday, but unfortunately, the guy visiting his brother in the hospital at the time. His wife let the tech in who checked signal levels at various points and ended up re-cabling the section from the outside connection to the internal phone point. Signal level came back to a decent level, all good.
The chap arrives home from the hospital, notes that the DSL light on the modem is now on. Good stuff. Unfortunately, the LAN lights are all out. So he tries each LAN port on the modem, but to no avail. Next, he goes wiggling the cable at the NIC connector. It blinks. Windows tells him he's connected. Not connected. Connected, etc.
It's at this point that the guy calls me. He says he's not that up on computers and whilst he's pretty sure it's the computer's network card that's dead, he doesn't know if that's the sort of thing that can be replaced, hence his call to me.
The thing that was strange about the call in my mind, is the fact that the guy didn't simply call me at the first hurdle. It's unusual in and of itself to deal with someone who isn't a complete idiot, but when the guy who went through all of this debug and found the exact root cause is my 83 year old grandfather, then I think that deserves a shout out.
He called Eircom support, got through to India, pulled cables, moved the computer to near a different phone point etc. The usual stuff. Eventually, the support guy said he'd send out a technician.
The technician got their yesterday, but unfortunately, the guy visiting his brother in the hospital at the time. His wife let the tech in who checked signal levels at various points and ended up re-cabling the section from the outside connection to the internal phone point. Signal level came back to a decent level, all good.
The chap arrives home from the hospital, notes that the DSL light on the modem is now on. Good stuff. Unfortunately, the LAN lights are all out. So he tries each LAN port on the modem, but to no avail. Next, he goes wiggling the cable at the NIC connector. It blinks. Windows tells him he's connected. Not connected. Connected, etc.
It's at this point that the guy calls me. He says he's not that up on computers and whilst he's pretty sure it's the computer's network card that's dead, he doesn't know if that's the sort of thing that can be replaced, hence his call to me.
The thing that was strange about the call in my mind, is the fact that the guy didn't simply call me at the first hurdle. It's unusual in and of itself to deal with someone who isn't a complete idiot, but when the guy who went through all of this debug and found the exact root cause is my 83 year old grandfather, then I think that deserves a shout out.
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