Rant: People Who Change Personal Settings in Windows

I am a CSR, and I also just like helping people with their computer problems. Category A,: simple fixes, things go screwy sometimes so they need fixing. These are about 90% of all problems. Category B: real errors, like viruses or something really broken. They take a minute to fix and are around 5% of all problems. Category C: User Preferences: not any kind of real problem, but rather that people tried to personalize something too much, that it ended up breaking other things. Sadly his last 5% takes more time to fix than all of Category A because you have no idea what they did, and thing are just weird. Yesterday I had a friend ask for help in converting files from Apple's stupid unsupported everywhere format AAC, which is another Rant altogether into something her old MP3 play could read. Switching to MP3 is an A problem, something annoying that Apple did, but has a simple fix, it just take a minute for apple to change it for you. That would have been all simple to solve except she is a C kind of person. Instead of files just opening like they should, she decided to throw in a little Windows 3.1 action, and have each folder open in a new window. Completely useless and very confusing. In a matter of seconds, while trying to locate the folder I was looking for I now had 15 windows open and no idea where I was. That would have been annoying enough, except she decided to throw another fun unexpected change. If you are guessing left handed mouse, that is a common C problem but not this one. She decided to switch windows to the single click system. For those who don't know about it, usually when you use a computer you click once to select something, and again to open it. Very intuitive, easy for selecting files to move and such. Hers instead would on that first click just open things. New folders, iTunes, random other applications. It was a mess. I eventually learned that to select you just have to hang your mouse over and it would select on it's own. Scary for those of us who ctrl click to select only the files we want. All and all it made something that should have been super easy become super complicated. This isn't the first time I have run into something like this, like the man at work, who needs everything flashing colors and bigger, or the lady who decided she needs to personally backup the servers, but sometimes you just need to fix what you can. Take a deep breath and move on and try to forgive and forget.