Playing Tech Support Santa

I spent my customary Christmas to New Year vacation in London reluctantly playing the role of tech support guy. Friends and family just assume that just because I work in the IT industry I am good enough to be their tech support guy. After all, I don't cost them a penny.

So, as soon as I landed in London I was asked by our host(my wife's uncle)- "When do you leave?." He then continued, "Don't get me wrong. I want you to fix my two computers." So, one of those days when I was feeling tired of all the relatives and human interaction I decided to take a look at the computers.

The computers had been purchased through a friendly local chap called Bobby ( a Punjabi dude. That is second punjabi Bobby I have come across). Bobby got these computers from businesses that were going out of business, loaded them with XP. And, as it turns out the XP licenses were from a compromised Volume License Key (VLK). So, Microsoft was not letting my host get updates like IE 7, Windows Defender etc...

I found that the computers had an OEM Certificate of Authenticity (COA) on them. So, I tried changing the license key to the OEM key but that failed. So, I called Microsoft product activiation line who immediately bounced me to the tech support side. The tech support asked quite a few questions - stuff that could put a typical consumer wary. And, then asked me for the product id on the CD that came with the computer. I told them that Bobby had just burnt it on a CD. They asked me to call Dell and get the CD.

Then, I called Dell. But, before I called them I ran the Dell support tools which told me that the computer had a "next day business support" contract valid until mid 2007. The Dell support dude refused to help me unless I told him the name of the business that originally owned the computer. Well, Bobby never told us. And, I doubt if Bobby even knows. But, how does it matter to Dell. I have the computer right in front of me. It was pruchased legally (as far as I know). Anyway, no luck with that.

So, I went to work on Microsoft tech support again. This time I told them that I had updated the BIOS (which I had done) and now it was asking me to reactivate the product (totally untrue). The guy asked me for the license key, I gave him the one on the COA. He generated a new activation key and it worked.

Here I was trying to help someone leaglize their software. And, both Microsoft and Dell were making it difficult. No wonder why piracy is rampant. When it is "easier" to buy illegal and remain illegal people will do just that.