My next door neighbour, more elderly than me and I'm a pensioner, has a problem with his computer and knows nothing about them other than it is not working. So he's asked me to help.
Now that means going into his house. I've not been out of my property for 8 days.
But he's alone. His wife is in a care home suffering with dementia.
I could wear gloves, face mask and have a shower before and after.
I might not even be able to fix the problem. Last time it was force a shutdown and it rebooted ok.
Tell him to switch it off at the wall, wait a minute, then switch it on again.
Is he strong enough to leave it on his doorstep?
Can you guide him to restart it over the phone? It's probably best for both of you to avoid breaking isolation if possible, so exhaust all other possibilities first.
Makes sense - do the easiest thing first.
The problem with that is if it's a desktop, he'll have to unplug the mouse, keyboard, video cable, and possibly network cable (if it's not connected to the modem by wifi). Could he put them all back again even if the OP could get it working?
I think that after the switch off/on test, the OP needs to clarify exactly what the neighbour means by "not working".
Could your neighbour sit in the garden while you are working?
Is it possible to use some remote assistance software ?
Even if you can collect it from his doorstep or whatever, you'd need to 'sanitise' it before you do anything else.
Just leave it 24 hours ?
Well, ultimately its your call. If neither of you have had any contact with others, then its probably safe. Bear in mind of course the keyboard is often dirtier than the toilet, but if he uses the computer to keep in touch, then I'd be round there. Not knowing is the problem with computers, but if it is salvageable and he can tell you what he was doing when it went wrong, then you stand a good chance it might be just software related. Brian
I'd have said that was the obvious route. Presumably a desktop rather than laptop? If a laptop I'd say get him to pass it over, wipe with wet wipes or if not available then that bactericidal surface spray sprayed on to a cloth, etc. Guide through a reboot over the phone first.
I'm guessing it's some sort of Windows box, so there's a built in remote assistance tool.
I remain mildly surprised by the lack of any really widely used Live linux distro that enables SSH access as default. Although there's only so much you can do when running Linux on a Windows machine.
Obviously if it's not working that won't be possible.
Mums phone stopped working but we could talk to her over Whatsapp. Daughter was around so asked her to go upstairs, put on a mask and gloves and wen it and sorted it for her (ironically her emergency call button unit had locked up).
Daughter than left and rang her to tell her she had sorted it but, Mum, thinking she was just making test calls, ignored it. Daughter had to Whatsapp her again to come back down. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
Ask him to stay out of the room. You can wear disposable gloves if you wish or simply thoroughly was your hands when you return home. Disposable gloves are better as you can take them off as soon as you re-enter your own house and it means no chance of you contaminating his computer. Your face mask does not protect you from him, it protects him from you.
72 hours on hard plastic and metal (except copper)
Methylated spirits is cheap and effective to wipe it over with.
You can obviously tell him how to do that.
It often works with that level of user if its been setup to hibernate instead of a full boot when turned on again.
And that's not trivial with the keyboard.
It would need to be longer than that, but sure, a week before and after would be fine.
But easy enough to leave his keyboard at home and plug your own in.
It is easier to work on the basis that everything *is* contaminated and wash thoroughly afterwards rather than expose your own keyboard to his environment. If you have spare keyboard/mouse then use them instead.
Even so the first thing to try is talking him through the various ways to reboot the PC over the phone in case there is something that is easily fixable by tweaking the BIOS settings or listening to the number of panic beeps the thing emits as it fails to boot.
It is your judgement call whether or not you go around to sort it out. Official government policy is that you should not. You might want to look at the regional map to see what the odds are like where you live. I probably wouldn't want to do it anywhere worse than 1:1000 odds.
If you do decide to do it then make sure you never touch your face. So many people do without even thinking and are unaware that they do it.
I'd probably be prepared to do it for a neighbour provided that neither of us were showing any kind of symptoms but I would want strict social distancing and would not want my usual cup of coffee and biscuits/home made cake for such courtesy visits as I would in normal times. Odds in North Yorkshire are presently about 1:6000. (maybe x5 for asymptomics).
My last such was a couple of days before hard lockdown when a 90 year old neighbour had trouble retuning her Polaroid! TV in the kitchen after TDTV altered the mux settings. She tried following my script from last time and it didn't work. She's tack sharp and she was right this time. Not sure why but the only way I could get it to work again was a full hard factory reset to as new followed by automatic digital retune.
I hope they don't mess up the mux's again during lockdown. I'd be very reluctant to visit her now since although she is fit and well enough to still maintain a vegetable allotment her husband is now very fragile.
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