Reputable Computer Tech....

Hi Gang....

Need a little advice/help please.

When my wife was there last January she bought a netbook. It came with no preloaded software so she took it to one of the local shops there and they loaded Windows 7 and a bunch of other software.....all black market and copies....nothing original. When she got back home I formatted it and loaded all ORIGINAL software, updated everything and it was working 100% fine in all aspects including the wireless internet which is what I'm getting to.

She now is back there temporarily living with Mom and Dad. She has wireless set up in there house and bought a netbook for her sister which connects fine along with my wife's iPhone and her sister's iPhone ( the netbook has all copied software once again same as ours originally). My wife can not get our netbook to connect over the wi-fi or even with the lan-line connected so I assume it's something in the set up that needs to be changed. She took it to a "computer" store and the person/tech wants to load another BS copy of windows and he says that will fix the problem. I told my wife if she does that I'll divorce her...of course just joking. I told her that THAT IS an original copy of Windows 7 and reminded her it worked before with no problems so don't even go back to that person because that tells me they don't know what they are doing. She says she doesn't know of another good store to go to and doesn't want to wait until I come next month.

She lives fairly close to the big mall there, a 5 minute motorcycle ride from The Irish Clock too, so could anyone here please tell me of a reputable person or shop that could help her get the wi-fi working that is close to that area? Any advice or help from y'all would be greatly appreciated.....

Thanks so much......Ed "Rusty"....

It's now 1:20pm your time and I'm kind of sad by the lack of help or importance of my post. When I was last there before, unfortunately 2 years ago due to my job and heavy workload, my wife and daughter have been there a few times since then and are there now. One of the guys here on Udonmap had just had a nasty accident and I was one of the first people to go out and put in 1,000 baht for an expat who needed help. I just asked anyone here for help to open up our wifi.....last time I checked it's free....and Steve from the old Clock can verify I'm for real.....did I ask for world peace???? I think not.....mai pen rai......never mind y'all....

I do my own repairs, so can't help with a recommendation.

However, the following may be of some assistance:

http://www.udonmap.com/en/udonthani-bus ... epair.html

Considering that most udonmites were sleeping for 10 or so of the 15 hours since you made your post, perhaps you're jumping the judgment gun a bit there.

I've seen many a Thai computer 'technician' be the kiss of death for more than a few computer owners. They've little concern for what's legit and what's not (as in your Windows 7 original copy), they'll fiddle with all your settings, and they'll gangload your computer with loads of useless crap.
I'd suggest giving whoever does the deed orders to not mess with the operating system, not load useless software, and not change the virus protection (unless you want them to). Unless your wife is somewhat literate in computerese, she might be overwhelmed by an overly ambitious technician who will do more damage to your computer than you bargained for.

If my computer crapped out on me today, I'd probably take it to the computer techs that used to be on the second floor of the computer, toward the the right hand corner of the up escalator. Unfortunately, with all the construction going on in the mall, all those vendors have been moved to the ??4th floor?? and I'm not sure which vendor is which.

And finally, trying my best not to group all locals-using-comuters-under-one-roof, I've met far more (far far more) Thais who have no concept about how to protect their computers (anti-virus, spyware, safe surfing, backups, etc) than those who have any respect at all for those issues. It doesn't matter if your spouse/friend/whatever appreciates those issues if they allow someone who doesn't to put their hands on their computer. That's my 2baht.

Hope she's able to get the system back in operating order.

thanks parrot......I just feel really crappy as of course I didn't want to say anything bad and felt I had helped out here on the forum before and was just asking back for help....and I thought rather cheaply too....actually I tried to delete my post as to not make anyone angry or annoyed...as that was not my intention here...so thanks again and I do apologize to anyone who I came across wrongly too.....

My g/f's notebook kept losing the ability to connect wirelessly to our router. Her PC had 7 viruses/trojans, and one of them was blocking the connection. It was difficult to know if the virus and malware software I installed were picking up actual viruses/trojans, or were finding cracks etc in the 'add ons and extras' of the Thai Windows she had installed (it had 3 pdf readers!!!). Anyway, I had a fresh install of Windows from one of the shops in Charonsei, and took off most of the crap before I let her loose on it (it looked a better copy from the start). AVG and malware bytes are reporting it as clean....
By the way, I eventually recovered reports on 7 school inspections which the antivirus had stopped me opening.
She would have lost 2 months of solid work if I couldn't retreive them (which wasn't easy). She has external hard drives, usb sticks, or even just sending yourself a copy by email would serve as a backup.

Lee

I doubt if there is anything wrong with the netbook. You have confirmed that the network itself works correctly with the other hardware. A LAN wired connection and a wireless connection use two separate interfaces. Unlikely that both would go wrong at the same time.
It is more likely that the netbook is set to look for your previous network. Have you tried the find new networks wizards?
The wired connection is usually much easier to configure than wireless.

"By the way, I eventually recovered reports on 7 school inspections which the antivirus had stopped me opening."

My limited experience with school computers in Thailand is that most are infected. And since so many teachers swap info between their home computers and school computers, they infect their home computers as well. Again my experience is limited with two different Thai schools in different neighborhoods......but the same problems existed between both of them.

Hi Parrot,
She's not a teacher any more, she's a school inspector.
She usually visits a school for 3 days, then takes about 4 days to write up a report.
She hadn't sent an electronic copy to BKK, only a hard copy.
I think most of the junk was loaded by clicking 'yes, yes, yes' when visiting websites.
The virus changed all the MS Office docs file extensions to .exe, so the antivirus picked every document up as a malicious program.
She had about 8 different toolbars on the go in Internet Explorer.
I'm glad she got rid of her internet shop a few years ago !!

Hi again Guys....

Just wanted to say again thank you for your help and sorry for being an "A" hole in my post....was just over anxious for a reply. Sorry for my stupid comments.....

Ed "Rusty"

"She had about 8 different toolbars on the go in Internet Explorer."

I've noticed that most local computers boot up with a boat-load of startup programs running (anti virus of course, music, maybe a game, chat program, maybe a photo viewer, etc, etc). If you've got the memory to run all those things at the same time, along with your operating system, then more power to you. But if you're running with 1-3g of RAM, I'd skip the fluff on boot up until I needed it.

Back to the original post.
I'd just take the PC, as well as the router to any computer shop, and see what they can come up with.
Might be a good idea to take the PC that connects OK there too, in case they need to copy any settings that work.
I'd run a virus check first though, to see if there is anything blocking her connection (see my earlier post).
If your network uses a security key, make sure it is entered correctly.
If the PC was able to connect previously, you could try a system restore to that date.
If I wasn't so busy working on the house, I'd take a look at it for you.
Without looking at the PC, it could be anything...sorry.

Again....super thank you thank you for your help everyone....an update as I talked to my wife a little while ago. She and her Sister took the netbook somewhere.... where I have no Idea. Explained to the guy that everything was original and not to touch it. He takes it into the "back room" and comes out 30 minutes later, without the permission of my wife but she didn't say anything, and it's working now. When my wife told me that I told her, until I get there, don't use that netbook for anything as you don't know WHAT the guy did to it!!!! I knew she'd do that but literally being half way around the world, in San Antonio, Texas........what can you do....mai per rai.....I'll be there next month and she has other means of connecting to the net.....but again thank you everyone for your help )