I am so grateful that I have just one sibling.

When the phone rang, I ignored it a first, thinking that anyone calling that late probably wasn’t someone I wanted to talk to anyway, but then I looked at the clock and realised that it was even later than I’d thought–2225h. Curious, I checked the caller ID and recognised the NS area code, and didn’t have to look past the next three digits before I knew who was calling. There are exactly two reasons that my brother would call me after midnight, his time, when I happen to know that he has to get up early in the morning, and he happens to know that I don’t stay up late at night. One reason involves the hospital, and the other involves his computer. He’d left a message, but I didn’t bother listening, I just called him right back.

He answered the phone sounding very, very tired and decidedly unamused. He said, “I’ve got trouble. Biiiiiig trouble. The computer is fucked beyond fucked, and B. needs it because she’s got to take some important test online tomorrow. She’s been studying and took the whole day off work to do this test, but the computer won’t start.” Earlier this evening, he’d asked about updating some DVD burning software, and I’d sent him explicit instructions on how to do it. For some reason–even though I’ve known him since he was born–I didn’t call and walk him through it every step of the way. He saw the instructions, but for reasons known only to him, the word “readme” didn’t carry any weight and…he didn’t “read me”.

I asked him to describe exactly what it was doing, and tell me what, if anything, he had tried up to that point. He said it was crapping out and doing an automatic restart (default behaviour for XP when something goes very wrong) just before he’d expect the desktop to start to load, and that he had already tried a system restore. Fabulous. Crapping out at that time after having updated DVD burning software was most likely a driver or a copy protection system error, and without even being able to see the computer, given information by someone who’s not computer illiterate, but a long, long way from a geek…oh, boy. He couldn’t get it to start in Safe Mode before he’d called, but maybe knowing that I was on the phone scared it or something because we finally did get it into safe, though without networking. Tried another restore point, but no joy. By this time, he’s so tired that he’s barely coherent, I’m yawning, too, but trying to bolster his spirits even though I don’t have a fucking clue how I can help when I’m something like 1500 miles away and he’s got no Internet access, and the goddamned computer still won’t start. B. will castrate him with a grapefruit knife if she doesn’t have a computer to take that test, and they don’t have a backup or a laptop.

I’m as non-religious as they get, so I asked V. to pretend he was, and start praying while we tried an even earlier restore point. It took a fucking dog’s age to restore, and he kept asking whether he should reset it (yikes), but a slow system restore is a good thing because system restore is always slow when it’s working the way it should. At 2325h my time, 2h later his time, the restore seemed successful, so we crossed everything (V. said, “If it sticks out, I’ve got it crossed!” 😆 ) and restarted. He was giving me a play-by-play as it was booting, and when he said, “This doesn’t look good,” I thought, “Christ. I don’t even know what else to try because I have no fucking idea what he did to fuck it up in the first place.” This time, though, there was joy, and there was Internet. B. will be able to take her test tomorrow, and V. will be damned tired at work tomorrow, but at least won’t be singing soprano in the boys’ choir to make money for his alimony payments!

I don’t know why it didn’t work the first time, and I don’t care. It works now, he didn’t lose anything important, and I’m very glad that I have just the one brother. Tech support over the phone is a bitch at the very best of times, and this was not the best of times.