Wiping a PS3
I got a phone call last night from The Artist, mobile to mobile with both of us in bad reception areas and OTD screaming in the background; damn she's got some lungs on her.
Anyway with the new arrival making her presence known to all and sundry The Artist has decided to sell his PS3 and that means cleaning off all his personal data. He'd gone to his Login section and couldn't see a way to do it, nor from Account Management; so he called me.
I don't know the answer, but I could look it up for him when I get the chance how desperate is he?
"I'm ready to pack and ship it now because it needs to go out tomorrow"
Seriously is it only my particular clump of the family tree that can plan ahead?
Fortunately I could lay my hands on the manual and a quick browse produced a nice clear heading of 'Disposing of your Playstation 3 system' including wiping it down.
System Settings>Restore PS3 OS or some such.
"Okay... um Quick Format or Full Format?"
"Better make it a full format to be sure"
"Okay... 4 hours!"
At which point the phones cut off.
[Update - he's just called again to say thank you; took 5 hours apparently, but it's totally clean now. "A shame really as I looked forward to trying 'Uncharted 2', but every time I try to play either the screaming starts or I get murderous looks from [my wife]." I tried to cheer him up with the thought that he and Devil Child can join me on my nice new HD screen playing "Little Big Planet" next time they're over, seemed to work.]
4 comments:
Why is it that so many people seem to want do everything two hours before they decide that they want to do it?
I blame television for shortening everyone's attention sp... oo shiny thing.
But no I don't know. It may be part of the 'now' culture the same mindset that has someone stop to cross a road 10 yards from a crossing because the shop they want to visit is right there opposite them and it would take time and energy to walk up to it, wait, and walk back that's crazy talk.
Ah yes, gotta love it when relatives randomly phone you up and ask you how to do something with a computer or other technical device immediately.
For example, my mum calls me at work to ask me how to turn on the address list sidebar in Outlook Express. Right now. Because, obviously, I just happen to know how to do that off the top of my head, right? It's not like I'm supposed to be working or anything. It's not like I don't have a copy of Outlook Express with me to test with. *sigh*
(As it happens, it's quite easy to fix. You just have to work out where M$ has hidden the option. Takes ages to find it, but easy once you know.)
Seriously, I don't get why all these minor technical problems require fixing right now. Can't it wait five minutes?
Still, not quite as fun as the fact that people automatically assume that because I'm “the computer guy”, I therefore automatically know how every piece of computer software ever written works, in intimate detail. Sheesh, guys!
Could have been worse you might have had to explain that there's no such thing in Vista's Windows Mail.
As to your last point it's a case of computer logic. Having dealt with lots of different programmes you've got an idea of where it would fall and under what technobabbly name they'd have called it.
Case in point DaBoss was getting spam from Skype and was fed-up of it. I guided him through Tools|Options|Privacy and turned off the "Allow IMS from... Everyone".
"What are IMs?" he asked.
Post a Comment