Computer Woes

Aaargh. I’m never building a computer for anyone else ever again. Almost a year ago, I helped my friend KT build a computer from components. She was set to buy a prebuilt machine, and I convinced her she could save money building it herself. We went to Fry’s got all the parts and I put it together for her. Everything worked great except for one thing: The sound card didn’t work with a modem in the machine. Doesn’t matter what slot anything was in, if the two were in at the same time, the sound stopped working. The problem was not solved by multiple tech support phone calls, and my conclusion was that the problem was either with the sound card or the motherboard. KT solved the problem by living without sound.

Now she sends me an email asking what kind of sound card to get to solve her problem. I write back recommending one that a friend recommended to me and mentioning that a new sound card might not fix the problem.

She writes back and informs me that she’s angry that I never mentioned that it might be a problem with the motherboard before.

Shit. I swear I mentioned it before, but if she doesn’t remember, I might not have. So now KT is stuck with a machine that has a problem that I can’t solve, but she wants me to solve it since I’m the one who hooked her up, and quite naturally, she blames me for the problems.

How do you explain to someone who’s never worked tek support before that shit like this happens all the time? How do you explain that it’s more common to buy a part that doesn’t work than one that does, without making it sound like an excuse?

Of course I never would have got her these parts if I knew they didn’t work! I have the same parts in my computer (no modem, I’m on a LAN, so I never found that problem). But regardless, one of my best friends is mad at me for something that’s out of my control.

Fuck. I’m never building a computer for anyone again.