Edit: The troubleshooting link no longer works. Changed the tshirt link from thinkgeek to amazon.
Originally posted March 10, 2009 on AIXchange
As I noted in a recent AIXchange blog post, IT pros are natural targets for family members and friends looking for free assistance with their home computers.
When cornered, some of us will say that we can’t help because we don’t actually work with Windows. It’s a good excuse, and one I’ve used on occasion. In reality though, if you have experience with any operating system, you can probably help with a home PC (even if you don’t want to).
Certainly, I’m no Windows expert. However, the concept of maintenance and rescue isn’t foreign to me, and it probably isn’t to you, either.
I can boot from AIX media or a NIM server and get a machine into maintenance mode. I can resolve problems and get machines running again. Admittedly, it’s nice to know that IBM support is available if there’s an issue. They can usually help resolve whatever problem customers are seeing. If not, as a last resort, I can always reload from a backup.
The same can be said for a Linux rescue. You boot from media, chroot and fix whatever problem you are seeing. And–assuming you have a support contract for an enterprise distribution of Linux–many times you can call for support. Again, if there’s a problem, you can restore from a backup.
With Windows, it can be a little trickier. People ask us for help because they don’t want to pay for repairs unless absolutely necessary. So I go into it knowing that the machine is old and that its warranty and/or support has expired. I’m on my own.
Often I can Google for the symptoms they’re seeing. Microsoft has plenty of information to help people fix computers that won’t start. And numerous other sites give basic troubleshooting information.
In several instances, I’ve been able to boot from XP media, get into a recovery console, run chkdsk and solve the problem. For me, it’s relatable to running fsck on file systems to fix UNIX machines. Other times I’ve had to run fixmbr. And other times, such as when BIOS and Windows administrator passwords were lost, I moved the hard disk into another machine (since I could not change the boot list in the BIOS) and booted from a Linux Live CD (like Ubuntu or Knoppix). Then I used Linux to mount the Windows partition and Samba to share the data with another machine on the network so that the data could be recovered before the machine was rebuilt.
In one sad case, nothing that I tried worked; the hard drive had a mechanical problem. In that instance, having a vendor recover the data was more costly than it was worth.
Just like in the IT world, in the home PC world, peace of mind can be obtained through regular backups. It’s never a good feeling when your machine won’t start, but if your data is stored (on external USB disk, CDs, etc.), a bad situation will be much less bad.
Ultimately, if I have the time, I’ll try to help folks who come to me. I don’t consider myself a Windows guy, but I am a computer guy. Really, for an IT pro, booting from media and running chkdsk isn’t a major imposition. But to the average home PC user who doesn’t really understand computers, it’s a big help.
So when your friends come calling, you could point to the t-shirt. But in my case, I agree with Earl J. Hickey: I want karma on my side. At the very least, I like knowing that I helped someone out. It never hurts to do a good deed.