Taking Your Peripherals for a Ride or Computer Repair in 3 Easy Steps

Perhaps you've seen evidence of this phenomenon. An important piece of computer equipment stops working – your printer, your mouse, your monitor – so you disconnect the faulty equipment, put it in your car, and take it to your computer guy. He plugs it in, connects it to his computer, keys in some secret DOS command, and your equipment performs perfectly. He looks at you like you're an idiot for bringing him a perfectly good piece of equipment to fix, and you swear that just yesterday it wouldn't work at all. He unplugs the hardware, hands it to you, and you put it back in your car and take it home. You are mad at the equipment for making you look stupid, and you suspect that when you try to plug it in, it won't work. You plug it back in the exact same configuration it was in before, and amazingly, it still works. Maybe you just imagined it didn't work before.

I have determined the cause of this phenomenon. You really aren't stupid or delusional. The computer guy is not a genius. Your hardware was simply bored and wanted to go for a ride. It's not the computer guy that fixes it. It's the ride over.

Don't believe me? Having observed this phenomenon before, I conducted a little experiment this weekend. You see, Thursday night, when I powered up my laptop at home, I couldn't get on the Internet, even though on Wednesday, I got on just fine. My network icon said that I was connected to my home network with a good signal, so off I go to the desktop unit to check it out. I click on Internet Explorer, and no Internet. I unplug and disconnect the modem and the wireless router and shut down the computer. I reboot, plug everything back in, and still no Internet. Hmmm, sounds like a cable problem (I have high-speed cable access). I turn on the TV and verify that the cable channels, including the premium channels, are coming in just fine. So I call the cable company. They connect me to a computer agent, and when I say computer agent I mean an agent that is a computer, like Mr. Smith, except nicer and female. She walks me through identifying the problem, my operating system release number, and so on. She steps me through shutting down and disconnecting and reconnecting everything just like I did before, but still no Internet. I note however, that now the wireless router looks funny. It only has one light lit instead of the usual four or five. Then the agent steps me through bypassing the router and plugging the cable straight into the computer. I do this, and what do you know? Internet. The cable company's computer agent tells me with a note of smug satisfaction, that the problem is not their cable, but appears to be a problem with the wireless router.

So I call up the wireless router people. I am on hold for a long time while they reroute my call to a remote village in India. The nice Indian lady tries to walk me through identifying my computer operating system, but my desktop looks different from what she is describing. She is a little harder to understand than the computer agent. I finally suggested we skip this part since I already did it for the cable company. We go through disconnecting and reconnecting everything except with an extra step. Apparently there is a hidden reset button on the wireless router that one can only access with an unbent paper clip or some other small pointy object. In tiny raised letters barely visible to the naked eye, I can now make out the word "reset." We go through this a couple of times, and I still only have one light lit, instead of the usual four or five, and interestingly enough, one of the unlit lights is the power light, yet it obviously has power because it's got one light lit. (Try to say that fast.) Her final word of advice is "Your router is broken. You should get a new one."

I put the now disconnected router in the car, with the intent of picking up a new one some time during the weekend. For the next two days I ponder the situation. The router appeared to be working when the problem initially started, but somehow malfunctioned during the attempted repair. I buy a new wireless router Sunday afternoon, but decide to test out the old one again. I carefully open the new router, since if my theory holds, I'll be returning it. I try out several configurations: new router, old router, old Ethernet cable, new Ethernet cable. I reboot and review the connection chart in the router instructions. Try it all again, and finally I get Internet on the desktop using the old router. My experiment is almost complete. I bring in the laptop and power it up. It has some trouble connecting to the network. Eventually the laptop finds a network called "default," which is strange because my home network is called "home." Maybe it renamed itself in all the reconnecting and disconnecting. A few moments later and I have Internet on the laptop. My theory is proven. All I had to do to fix the old router was drive it around all weekend.

The computer guy is not really a genius! It is the drive over that fixes the equipment and yet he claims all the glory. No more! I have discovered your secret ways and I will never be without Internet again!