Laptop Repair – A Personal Experience

At the age of fifty five when I retired  as a teacher from a rurally located high school, I hadn’t had even heard of computers. And in the last few years when I saw my son actually carrying a laptop around I always looked at it with wonder and called it the little black box of magic. But as they say you can never predict destiny's plan for us. It  was ultimately God’s plan that at the age of 66, I would move to live with my son and his family in Manchester. My first few days in Manchester were horrible, I felt cut off from my whole world, a familiar world to which I belonged and which was a part of me. Anyways, to cut a long story short, to bring me out of my despair my son taught me how to use computers and the Internet so that I could keep in touch with people back home. Step by step, with same the diligence of a small child, I started learning about the computer. In the beginning, I made notes on how to start the laptop, connect to the internet and write and send e-mails. And, when I started getting replies from my friends and relatives, my happiness knew no boundaries and my motivation to know more and explore also grew.Things were pretty easy from then on, until the day of my 67th birthday. With great enthusiasm I tried to open an e-card sent by my younger sister, but I was unable to open the card! I could just see the picture of a bird on the screen and when I tried to click to open the card, I realized that the I could to. The laptop had stopped responding. My mind told me that I should wait, but my heart was crying out with impatience. I started pressing all  the keys on the keyboard to try to make the computer work, but nothing happened! It was then that I realized that this problem was beyond me and called my son at work. As usual he was busy and told me to wait. However, I was very impatient, and could not wait for the evening. I decided to take help from our neighbor, he might know someone who could come home to repair my computer. However, to my complete amazement, I was given a toll free number for a tech support company. I was taken aback, I  thought  that someone would come home and repair my  laptop, just like they did back home. However, my neighbor assured me that it was better to wait for help over the phone than to wait for someone to reach my home. To my surprise, my call to the technical support company was answered at the second ring and the warmth of the voice at the other end, assured me that I was talking to a person who could really help me out. The young boy explained to me patiently that he could fix this problem remotely and all that I had to do was follow some instructions. I immediately took out my pencil and notepad, but this boy told me not to write anything, he said that would guide me through the whole process and would stay on the call till my laptop was working again. Following his instructions, I first pressed the F5 key. I was told that it was the refresh button. When nothing happened after this, I was asked to press the 'Esc' and then press 'Alt+F4' keys together. I must admit was a little skeptical about the entire process. And of course, I was a little clumsy, I could not press 'Ctrl', 'Alt' and 'Del' keys together. I was about to give up, but the young boy, was not ready to give up. He asked me to press the power button for a few seconds, so the system could restart. When the system was starting, he asked me to keep pressing 'F8' and when a black screen came up, he asked me to choose 'Safe Mode with Networking'. The screen, which came up next looked funny, everything appeared a little huge. I was asked to follow some more instructions and suddenly the cursor on my laptop screen started moving on its own! I was a little scared, and thought I lost control of my laptop. After I had calmed down a little, I realized that, the technician had taken control of my computer and this is what he meant by remotely fixing my laptop. It was really fascinating to watch him clear unnecessary files and programs from the laptop. He explained that my laptop was not working because there were many unused programs on it.  He was so nice, each time before deleting a file he would ask my permission before proceeding. He even gave me tips to how to keep my laptop fast. In no time, my issue was taken care of and my laptop was as good as new. I was overwhelmed with gratitude, when I was told that all updates for the laptop were also installed. I could now access all my mails and open all the wonderful cards sent to me.I couldn't have thanked my neighbor enough for giving me the reference of such a wonderful and professional technical support company like from iYogi. I wish that many people get to benefit from iYogi’s experienced and helpful technicians, who are always ready with a warm voice and patience to solve all technical issues.