Oh, there were so many things that Bruce had to do.
To start off with there was no power chord for the computer. Evidentially it was not included when the computer was packed up before given away. Bruce had to go off to buy one. Now it gets worse.
When the computer was turned on, ScanDisk ran. That usually indicates that the computer was not shut down correctly.
The system is set up for various users. In checking out the users Bruce found there were eleven accounts set up for a family of 4. On top of that there were duplicate names being used. That means that the system loading is interrupted in order to ask which user account to initialize.
The desktop was just filled with icons, some pointing to files/programs that did not exist.
Bruce was asked to find a file on the computer. He only had a general description of the file, no name, location or creation date. While searching for a file that might be the one wanted, he found hundreds of unneeded useless files still on the hard drive. All indications are there was never any file maintenance done. After the computer gets cleaned up, Defrag will need to be run. It is a collection of unbelievable messes.
Bruce could not get the modem to connect to the outside world. After performing several different tests, Bruce took the computer apart and removed the modem. [See the mess]
The old modem would not give up/release the telephone line causing the computer to hang up and the telephone line to go bad. It was bad. Bruce bought a new modem and installed it, loaded the software for it and tested it out.
Lucky, because nothing after that has worked on the CD reader. Bruce can't do much until the CD reader is fixed or replaced. The CD reader appears to have gone out of alignment.
Bruce wanted to change the wallpaper on the desktop. The one he wanted to use was found to be corrupted. Instead of being full of color, it was grayscaled. To recover, he transferred the file from his friend's older computer to the new computer.
It gets worse. He started testing some files and found out several Window supplied applets were either placed in the wrong folders, had been deleted or the pointers and shortcuts were incorrect. Bruce was able to transfer them from the older computer and load them into the new computer, and then do the necessary clean up. That turned out well. At least he got that done before football started.
Then he changed the wallpaper to something more pleasant to look at.
His friend got to talk to the person who gave away the computer. When told of some of the problems, the person admitted something like "oh ya, there were somethings that didn't work." Bruce sure would have liked to know that before chasing unknown known problems for five days.
Now the person is fed up, will not spend any more money on the new computer, told Bruce to stop working on it, swap out the keyboard, monitor and printer to the old computer. the friend will use the old computer until she buys a new one.
Bruce spent Sunday disconnecting accessories from both computers, moving equipment from room to room, reconnecting the swapped equipment to the old computer and installed the new printer and checked out the system.
Bruce is not a happy camper but is happy he does not need to mess around with the new computer.
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