Troubleshooting

Laptop Slingplayer not working. I...

• checked the firewall - ok
• shut down the firewall anyway
• connected with tech service
• ts has me reinstall the Slingbox firmware

now I should at this moment tell you what I told them, that the players on my desktop and Mrs. TANBI's laptop work fine. Drama school troubleshooting training suggests to me that the problem is with my laptop, but I go with it anyway...

• ts has me cold boot the slingbox
• ts has me cold boot the router (which terminates the tech service session)
• complete the cold boots and restart the laptop for good measure
• reconnect with tech service since it still wasn't working
• ts resets all the settings to their originals
• ts fails
• ts tells me Verizon sometimes squeezes bandwidth - I tell them it shouldn't matter because its all in the home network
• ts tells me to check the system requirements for Slingplayer
• say goodbye to tech service
• check the system requirements, the laptop is fine
• delete and re-install the player software, this was an upgrade but didn't fix the problem
• check the functionality while wired - WORKS FINE, hmm
• check the wireless network connection

and here we find what seems to be the problem. I mean the connection "linksys2" is slow, but connected - but our network isn't "linksys2." Seems that when my laptop boots it defaults to connect to some crappy neighbor network. Who knew?

• disconnect and block crappy neighbor network
• connect to our wireless network - PRESTO!

Can I tell you how happy I am that I am not a tech service operator? How far down their question menu do you think they have to go before they ask "Are you sure you are connected to your network?" I mean "are you connected to the internet?" is obvious, and also impossible in this scenario as the TS is chat based, but "are you connected to your network or some crappy neighbor network?" That would be some seriously phat technical support.

So, the new and improved list of completely ridiculous and yet totally necessary tech support questions are:

1. Can we please first verify the power light is on?

and

2. Are you sure you are connected to your own wireless network?

You know, when they say life has become unnecessarily complicated, they might actually have something.