Weekly RoundUp 1/6 (Helping Dave) (1 Viewer)

[David Lambert]

Eric, that looks PRECISELY like what I'll need to get fixed up!

For the sake of anyone else who ever needs this, the correct link is here (you accidentally added a period, resulting in a strangely familiar page not found error! ).

I've got it set up to take home and run just as soon as I walk in the door. If that happens, I'll tell my ISP to hire you as a specialist!


[rant]THANKS![/rant]

 

[Eric Harrison]

I cant take any of the credit, those gurus at the tech forum definatly know their stuff. The information at that site helped me tremendously with my ailing PC.
You know I dealt with my ISP too when this happenend to me, they had no clue. You would think that in their profession, they would have an idea of what to do with all of this spyware crap and all of the hijacking of OS that goes on with the internet.
Make sure you follow the directions precisely, and I think you should be up and running in no time. If you havent already, get yourself a firewall, one that blocks popups too(I did and no more problems), and run the spyware, and adaware programs at least once a week to catch everything (which is very little now) that does slip through the firewall during browsing.
Post back and let me know how things turn out....

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Thanks for the Roundup.

 

[David Lambert]

Eric, here are the results:

The utilities that it led me to basically all said I had a damaged WinSock 2, and that I'd need to re-install that. The ISP's checkout (remotely controlling my mouse and keyboard with me as the medium) conclusively and independantly agreed with that diagnosis.

The guy who I was talking to was not certified as a WinSock guru, though. Those guys had all gone home by the time we knew we needed one. So one of those guys is calling me tonight, and we are going to reinstall WinSock.

Yay. :frowning:

 

[Eric Harrison]

Dave-
Good news then! Glad to hear you are almost up and running. Wait a pain, eh?
I would have thought that by running the LSP fix would have fixed IE for you though. I had the same problem, and running the LSP fix did the trick. Oh well, thats good that its going to be fixed by the ISP tech, maybe the ISP guys will learn a thing or two about spyware!!

 

[David Lambert]

I'M BACK!


Bellsouth Fastaccess failed me utterly. After understandably not being able to help me on a weekend with a WinSock issue, they failed 4 days straight to get a WinSock level technician on the phone with me. All week long I was hampered by the fact that my boss has me on a dire, time-sensitive project (which my job literally depends upon), and he really wanted me to stay late and work overtime each day, and I slipped out after a straight 8 hours most days to rush home and try to be there for these calls. The ones that never happened. Here's the deal: Monday I called them, waited on hold a half hour, and then found that the needed people were simply "unavailable" (whatever that means...already helping others, or just not there; noone ever said...I got the impression days later that by then they had gone home for the day).

So they were going to call me Tuesday. Great, I can deal. Left work "on time" (ignoring the request to put in overtime!) and made it home with time to spare before the phone should ring. No call at the appointed time, though. I call them, wait a half hour to get to a human, then ask for a supervisor. I'm on hold another almost-half-hour waiting for a supervisor to get on the line, and then I'm disconnected. Noone calls me back (I waited up an hour before giving up on that).

Wednesday I call them in the late morning from work, risking my boss's ire but I really need this taken care of, right? So I get ahold of a supervisor quickly and explain how they let me down the previous night, and then made matters worse by the hang-up and not having the courtesy to dial me back up, since they have my number. She's real apologetic, says someone will call me that night, and 35 minutes after the agreed-on time she'd call my cell phone and make sure I'm helped.

Wed night: no call from the tech on a land line, and 15 minutes into the wait my cell rings and hangs up just before I can answer it. 40 minutes after the appointed time the same thing happens with my cell again. I figure it's the supervisor lady trying to keep her promise, so I have my cell call back the number of the missed call. I find myself in the pool of Fastaccess customers waiting for tech support. After a half hour wait, I get a nice guy who is very apologetic for the problems I've had keeping the tech support people on the phone. He and another guy bend over backwards for a long time making sure it's nothing else besides a WinSock issue. When we're 100% sure that this is the issue, the first guy (who called me back, and is the only one who did so and actually talked to me!) apologizes deeply that he isn't certified to deal with it. He and the other guy made sure that someone would call me at 6:30 on Thursday who WOULD be certified to do the WinSock support (though the other guy tried to push me off to Microsoft tech support, and I refused).

Thu, 6:30 - NO CALL! Thanks for nothing, Bellsouth Fastaccess! :frowning: So, thanks to Eric Harrison, "Weekly Roundup fan", I had earlier been able to (from work) get to a website that explained how to edit the registry and then re-install the WinSock. USING THE PRINTOUT I BROUGHT HOME, I TOOK A DEEP BREATH AND DID IT MYSELF! AND IT WORKED!!

Thu, 8:15 - Phone rings. It's Fastaccess. And not a WinSock level tech, either...someone at the next level down! By this time I was already back online and working to re-establish my firewall, anti-virus scanning, home network internet connection sharing, pop-up filters, and everything else that I had turned off because Bellsouth's tech support had earlier (on Saturday) told me to "in case it was interfering with the connection". I let this guy have it, no doubt.

Thanks again to Eric Harrison for pointing me in the right direction, which was here by-the-way. That site, and TechGuy.org as well, have a new friend and patron in me. Though I wouldn't try that, or some of their other advance routines, unless you really know what you are doing. For those that do, it's great to have a reference to look up.


Anyway, this is a long way of explaining that I'm back up at home, and what's been happening. Mike, thanks again for doing the Roundup. I have to work this Saturday (all day), and after that and all this I would love to take Sunday off from the Roundup again. Spend time with the wife and kid. Would you like to back me up one more time? I can at least offer to help a bit this time! If you want to say "no", then no problems here. It might just be pretty late (or even Monday morning) before it gets done.


Mike and Eric, what can I say? Words just don't express my gratitude for your help this week. I consider this "my reward" for doing the Roundups all this time. You guys just made every keystroke worth it. THANK YOU, so much! And to everyone else, too, who've always supported me. I feel like the richest man in town!

Belated Quote of the Week: Remember George, No man is a failure who has friends. (quote from It's A Wonderful Life)

 

[Patrick Sun]

I had a "fill-in" edition of this week's Roundup all ready to go when Mike's version showed up, so if Mike can't do it, I'll fill in.

 

[Mike Frezon]

So, Dave:

If I can read between the lines accurately...what you're saying is....

Bellsouth Fastaccess is not "enticing you to stay with them" for internet access. Is that right?

Re: next week's RoundUp. No problem. Drop me an e-mail if you get a chance...or we'll just let er rip like this week.

 

[Eric Harrison]

Mike-
Glad to hear you are back up and running!! Still, I cannot take any credit here, only pointed you in the right direction. It was the least I could do with all of the money you have saved me on my DVD purchases with all of your bargain updates that you do. Those guys at the tech forum know their stuff as well as we do about home theater, maybe even more!! Kudos to them! And maybe time to think about changing your ISP service??? Or least get some free internet time from them????

 

[David Lambert]

Mike, I'll exchange some e-mails with you, possibly tonight. If not Fri. Night, then it will be Sat. Night (since I must work on Saturday). I'll point you in some directions that will help.

Patrick, thanks for that offer. And my thanks to you for prepping a "fill-in", too. You might get taken up on that sometime, but if Mike's willing then let's just go with it. You do enough with the catalog title posting, and the moderating, and all.

Eric, you did more than you realize. It was easy for you, but it was more than Fastaccess did. I'll be calling them in a couple of hours to register the official complaint and ask for reimbursement for lost access time due to their incompetent tech support center (incompetent at communicating...I never got a chance to really find out how their tech skills were!).

Do me a favor, Eric: change four characters in your last post. Well, three actually.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I NEED to get out and do some more running actually. Dave's the one who had his leg's cut out from under him!

 

[David Lambert]

Update: The man I talked to in the Billing Dept. gave me a more-generous-than-I-expected refund for the lost time, without any discussion of dollars-and-sense on my part, which should show up on one of my next two bills as a reduced balance that I owe. He also gave me a snail mail address so that I may properly get my complaints addressed about the poor service. He also took the time to let me vent for a bit, which goes a LONG way in my book, since he had nothing to do with the problem (other than being the poor fellow who has to deal with the aftermath).

It's unbelievable how the courtesy in a 10-minute phone call can help make up for days of problems. But the company still balances on the edge of a blade for me, and will for quite some time. Let's see how it goes from here.

 

[DeborahK]

Dave,

Good to hear that you (finally) got your problem solved and that you also still have your job!

Glad this all worked out -- I don't post (or buy) as much as a lot of people here, but you have still saved me $$ and time, to say nothing of the fact that the many friendly people in this thread have alerted me to releases I did not know even about. (The Singing Detective come to mind -- one of my all-time best and favorite DVD buys!)

Thanks as always and try not to work yourself into the ground.

Deborah

 

[David Lambert]

So far.