She told her boss.  The laptop is only about 1 year old, still under warranty. They ran a virus scan and didn’t see anything, the laptop has McAfee*. She got a quote from the manufacturer who would take care of it remotely. The issue was not equipment, the quote was $129.

They determined that the laptop needed to be reloaded and devices re-installed. The boss wanted to take it on. During the course of the day the boss gave it a shot, but then got busy. Linda asked if she could get in touch with a local computer technician for a quote. Linda called Big Dog IT and we gave her an estimate of $125 and asked her to drop off the machine so we can look it over. Linda said we would be her backup in case of emergency.

When I saw Linda the next day she told me the rest of the story.

By 4:00pm her boss gave up and said call the manufacturer repair guy. Linda got in touch with someone in the Philippines. He was very nice and easy to work with on the phone. Linda spent the day without her laptop…By 7:00pm Linda wanted to go home. Her guy in the Philippines said that was fine, he could still work on it remotely, just don’t turn it off.

So Linda drove home from the Eastside office to her home in Seattle. Right as she was nearing her house, the guy in the Philippines called and said he lost the connection. So Linda had to turn around and go back to the office.  Instead of staying all night at the office, Linda took the laptop home and he worked on it (remotely) until 2 in the morning.

Linda said she can get online now and she has her email. But on Friday when she started working again her email still has an issue, something weird with her attachments.  It sounds like her tech didn’t fix the real problem. From the other details it sounds like a virus.

Lesson for the day – find a computer support tech who understands your business.  It saves time and money.

*McAfee is not one of the better choices when it comes to antivirus software