I worked at my college's computer help desk while earning my undergrad. Since the college distributed laptops to every student over half time (or by request if half or less) and every professor, lots of people needed help.
Not to pick on the gender, but girls who came in almost always started the explanation of their problem with some variation "I have no idea what I'm doing with this thing" or "You must think I'm a total idiot, but..."
A lot of the time, problems were simple and I could show them how to fix it in a matter of minutes. All I could ever tell them was that if they played with computers for a living, they'd get the hang of it too.