Every now and then someone comes in to one of the stores with a fascinating story. It’s not so often that story intrigues me to learn more about the person. After all, I like a good story almost as much as an interesting person. In this case I’ve made extra effort to learn what I can and potentially make a new friend in the process.
Moving forward with life means forgetting about the past and building a new future. Rephrasing that a bit, moving forward with life means remembering past mistakes so you don’t duplicate them. That sounds like a better way to phrase this article’s subject.
In any event, sometimes deleted history stinks and other times it’s for the better. For a year my new customer’s laptop sat unused. She brought it to me not knowing the issue and not understanding why it wasn’t turning on. Unlike many customers, she had a basic knowledge of computer lingo but didn’t understand their functions.
I diagnosed the laptop as having a failed hard drive, signed her in, and made the necessary repairs. Later that day I tried to pull data from her old drive and came up empty: no pictures, music, documents, nothing. Her drive catastrophically failed so there was zilch I could do.
The next day I took a deep breath before dialing the phone to make the dreaded “I couldn’t get any data” call. These calls always stink and I was prepared for a potentially emotional conversation. Instead I was immediately put at ease and told it’s really not a huge problem. She was sorry we couldn’t retrieve files but could live without.
Most customers who leave without data for reasons out of our control blame us though we have zero control. To my surprise she brought a second to be repaired. Her request for the second included removing viruses which automatically includes cleaning the history.
As with all machines, I listened to her tell me the computer was her mother’s and she had been using it since her own laptop stopped working. She wanted to return it to Mom running properly with her history cleared. Because the computer came in the night before the holiday weekend, I decided to handle the repairs myself.
Aside from the normal viruses, I cleared almost twenty gigabytes of temporary internet files. Temporary files accumulate when one surfs the net and the browser (in her case Chrome) stores those files for later viewing. I sat for almost twenty minutes watching lists of website data vanish into thin air.
Keeping a hard drive from failing is very difficult and can prove to be impossible. The New York geek admitted to using the laptop on her bed and couch which causes computers to overheat and parts to fail prematurely. During the follow-up conversation she also admitted to being klutzy and possibly dropping or bumping her laptop.
Viruses and internet history come with using any computer. The last statistic I read stated that 1/200 websites is infected with something. Avoiding websites with viruses is almost impossible and truly is a crapshoot. All browsers now have a privacy or incognito feature which prevents internet tracks from being stored as well as junk from being installed which may have prevented some issues.
Crazy at it sounds this woman moved to our area from Upstate New York and told me a story which leads me to think she’s destined for great things. It takes a warrior to stomach losing a lifetime of history but a much stronger person to move forward. Though losing a bunch of computer data can be a heartbreak; it’s much better to remember who you are and where you’ve been.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can text him directly at (978) 413-2840 or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)