"I needed more permissions" Tech Support |
- "I needed more permissions"
- Lying on tickets doesn't help anyone
- Idiot1
- When you're asked to work for your old job for free, for "Old time's sake, and because you didn't finish".
- Sorry, there is just nothing I can do to fix THAT!
- Dumb Tech Tricks
- It’s my email and I’ll scream if I want to
- But it WON'T shut off!
- The monitor power button is NOT how you turn off the computer!
- Who?
- Nothing on my side... must be on your side...
- An Essay on the Importance of Timing
- The Rube Goldberg method.
- How are you in college?
| Posted: 20 Apr 2018 02:07 AM PDT So this is during my first job as a network engineer for a small MSP. One day, during a slow week with lots of thumb twiddling and few calls, suddenly the phones blow up. All being calls from the same client (multiple sites) about icons and programs no longer working on their terminal server. After fielding a handful of these with much 'yesses' and 'ill connect in right away and have a look's, I get the one call that explains it all. This guy, $InternalAdmin calls up and says right off the bat "I think I've done something bad". Which comes as sort of a surprise as he's usually not this level of PEBCAK. I ask a few more questions and confirm he is calling about the same issues all the other users advised. He then elaborates why he might have done something bad. "I was trying to give myself and another user more administrative rights using the registry editor". No. Just no way would that achieve his goal of more administrative permissions. It was some third party application he was trying to modify to allow himself more control. In reality he ended up bricking the server completely as once a user logged out and back in all they had was their desktop screensaver. No icons, no taskbar, no programs. Nothing. Queue the boss and I at 2 in the morning trying to restore the server with little luck as the image wouldn't boot. (In the end the raid array had to be recreated) lots of cursing and swearing later the server was back in production and $InternalAdmin no longer had any administrative rights of the sort. Kind of miss being at that job as the stories were so much more fulfilling [link] [comments]  |
| Lying on tickets doesn't help anyone Posted: 19 Apr 2018 05:42 AM PDT I work at a Pre-K - 12 school and we constantly have to remind teachers and staff how tickets work and how to submit one. I even started a "Monthly IT Reminders" email with the direct link. This happened today. One of the Kindergarten teachers, who already complains about a lot, put in a ticket (YAY, she actually did it correctly) saying her school-issued iPads were not connecting to the internet. Other grades have testing today but I had a few minutes to go take a look before testing started, so I head over. She says, "so I know I'm not supposed to put in tickets for personal devices...." Right then I almost walked out. She has five fire tablets and five android phones sitting on her desk that someone donated to her (not to the school, but to her personally). I gave her a look akin to that of a disappointed parent. Our network has problems with Android devices, which doesn't matter because there are no school-issued Android devices on any of our campuses. We are waiting on an update from the manufacturer to fix it, but it's literally the least important item on my list and has no effect on work whatsoever. A few months ago, a lot of the staff would ask for help with personal devices so I added a question to the ticket system before they submit that asks if the device they are having an issue with is a school-owned device. If not, we are unable to assist. She marked yes and said they were her school-issued iPads just to get me in the room. To sum up: she lied about having an issue with school devices to get me in the room to help with personal devices. I didn't assist her and reiterated that we cannot help with personal devices. Both of our time has been wasted. Her future tickets are now much lower priority. Moral of the story, don't lie to the people you are asking for help. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 20 Apr 2018 02:36 AM PDT At one of the locations I work there is a Site Manager who is completely computer illiterate and he knows it. Let's call him G. Now G works with S who actually knows how to use a computer. So G has been happy with letting S do the computer stuff for the job. That was until the start of the year when we moved to digital pay slips. I do the needful, walk G through a simple guide to how to access his emails and pay slips. (Including desktop shortcuts named in all caps) G was happy until the next month when he promptly forgot his passwords. A quick reset and he was back up and running. Next month G forgot his passwords again. At this point I joking warned G that if he forgot his password I would reset it to "Idiot1". (Tip of the day: Get on friendly terms with maintenance, They have keys to everything, ladders and tools you didn't realise you would need) The next month I didn't hear from G. Today G came up to me and sheepishly told his he had forgotten his password.... TL;DR User becomes self aware. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2018 07:59 AM PDT Hello TFTS, So back in December, I got a new job away from $MSP. Between the crazy clients, an owner that made ridiculous demands, and crap pay and benefits, I went on a hunt and found a much better position. It's been several months now since I've been with the new company now, but that doesn't mean that I've heard the last of $MSP sadly. $me = Tension $OB = Old Boss So back in February, I was going through training on the company software, and getting the tour through our vCenter environment and setup. Things were going pretty well overall, I had just gotten flown out to California for training on the company dime, and I got to meet my coworkers in the west coast office. The day comes to a close, and I notice that I had received calls from $OB. Normally I would just ignore those calls and go on with my life, when I put in my two weeks with $MSP, rather than have me go through with it, he let me go that day. The day he let me go I still had to be up before the sun to perform a firewall install for a client, copy over their rules, and documents it all within the system. I got as far as install and copy, this is important. I call back $OB later that night to see what he needs.
I get a slight chuckle of disbelief from this.
My boss had me train for free on a backup software they use, and he did squat for me while I was there. Hell, he gave us all financial responsibility books one year as our Christmas bonuses.
He hung up the phone after that, and I heard nothing back. I know they had to have had the old firewall documented somewhere before my leave, so unless someone deleted that, they should've been fine. Nothing legal has come through to me, so he was just trying to use his standard bully tactics to get what he wanted without paying OT to his current employees. As far as I know, two other people left the company shortly after me, and they have yet to staff it back up since, so at this point, he's putting himself under well enough without my help. [link] [comments]  |
| Sorry, there is just nothing I can do to fix THAT! Posted: 19 Apr 2018 12:24 PM PDT This was just a few years ago. I got a frantic call from a guy out in the shop, it seems that a power spike toasted a PC connected to a piece of equipment I had never even seen before in nearly 20 years there. Of course it was vital that I get it up and running right now! I pulled this old case out of the layers of grime and dirt from underneath this desk sized piece of equipment jammed into a dark corner and took a closer look. It was an old AT case with an MFM hard drive - not even IDE. It also booted up to DOS and then launched Windows 3.0. It even featured a 5.25" low density floppy drive. It had some weird old ISA interface board and with like a dozen ribbon cables connected to it. Sorry, not only did I have no hardware to fix it but it would cost a lot of time and money to source replacement stuff, let alone the OS to install back on it. That's even if we could find a windows 3.0 compatible version of the software that ran on it again. This thing predated my tenure by at least 10 years. There was a lot of fretting and fuming and posturing going on and it was implied that my entire future was hinged on this "vital" piece of equipment. I had never hated that word "vital" as much as I did that day. So, meetings were held and things discussed, arguments ensued and I sat quietly watching my future unfold. I wasn't even sure what the thing did until I finally spoke up and asked point blank. They gave me a fairly complex description of what it did. I boiled it down to a simpler sentence and YES, that's what it did. A few minutes of Googling later and I came back with an alternative. A small HAND HELD device that cost $400 and connected to any PC via USB. Not only did it do what they wanted but was faster, it was handier (now they could take the tester to the parts instead of the parts to the tester) and so cheap they could order a few of them. And you suppose I would be congratulated for the solution? Nope, I was "informally" reprimanded for not having the resources to fix the PC even though I "knew" it was "vital"! Some times you can never win. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2018 07:46 PM PDT Long time lurker here, finally decided to drop my first post. Be gentle, it's my first time... So since none of you know me from someone else's 3rd party driver for a depreciated COM protocol...here's some background: I have been doing varying degrees of tech support for upwards of 8 years, and been the family and friends "computer guy" for almost twice that. I now work in a deskside support role (also laughingly called Tier 3 here) for a major player in the bio-engineering field, within one of their primary manufacturing facilities. As you can probably tell from the time stamp, I work 3rd shift, so I basically end up being responsible for around 5 buildings by myself after about 11pm. Anyway, here is my tale of woe...not so much a PEBCAK or ID10T error, unless you count me as being able to generate one of those... *The Players: * $me: guess who! $oper: The CNC machine operator $sup: The work cell supervisor So in our environment, our (IT) confidence in our user base is one step above DeepFreeze level (I might end up pitching that as an idea...wonder if it works with Win10), but while these users may know almost nothing about computers, they are brilliant when it comes to running CNC machines and subtractive manufacturing methods. We use a handful of shared domain accounts for use on these CNC machines, and the controller app usually auto-launches on login. Also, any machine being unable to run parts is basically an auto-P2. So when this exchange occurred, it was a big deal: $sup, complete with $oper in tow walk into my
$sup, $oper, and $me all troop out to the machine. I look at the faded screen, notice two things: 1. the machine is running a Win2k image (Yes, we have several...), and 2. the CCN app appears stalled with a fantastically specific error: "Application failed to start". No error code, or any identifying info. Thanks $CNCVendor... I proceed to make sure the machine is on the network, verify it is in the right VLAN, all that jazz...
We do a power cycle, usual 5 minute power off time, let it load up. 20 minutes just in watching it boot later...
$oper logs in using one of the shared accounts, the one used most. The app gives the same message when it loads.
I go back to my closet and grab the ticket from the queue and update with what I saw, attaching a photo of the error message. I barely had time to save my notes, before another supervisor comes in for an unrelated issue. (Welcome to my world...) Time goes by, and I eventually have a chance to run the issue by my counterpart on a nearby campus for the company, who also works 3rds but comes in a bit later tham me. He has no idea. Finally, I find some time to make it back out to that machine to "play around with it". These CNC machines are all kinds of jerry rigged and basically held together with thoughts and prayers.
I walk to $sup's desk shaking my head and chuckling...
I walk back to my closet shaking my head. I was relatively new to the company at that point, but missing the label was kinda dumb. I note the resolution and close the ticket. I also let my counterpart know what I found, since it hadn't occurred to him either. tl;dr: Production machine goes down thanks to power outage, wrong login ID makes app fail. Tech misses label printed visibly with correct login. [EDIT]: Formatting fixes... [link] [comments]  |
| It’s my email and I’ll scream if I want to Posted: 19 Apr 2018 02:07 PM PDT I work technical escalations for an ISP. This is a tale from my department
Reale is now screaming at Jay with some choice cuss words and threats about how it will be our fault if she looses the sale.
Reale throws out more threats about how Jay isn't fixing our server's problem and not really calming down. She is still going on about our company being liable for her lost sale.
Jay grimances while the real estate agent continues to scream at him for another 5 minutes wtih a few more threats about how much she pays us for her residential services. TL:DR- Person using a service against terms of services won't listen to what the issue is and wants special treatment to continue to use it against the ToS all while having a complete meltdown to the person explaining the issue to her. Note: as agents we don't nessisarily care if the emails are used for business, but if people try to use business needs or losses as a reason for compinsation or special treatment we will point out the ToS. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2018 12:49 PM PDT I got yet ANOTHER frantic call from a guy in the shop. The PC in the such and such department froze up and will NOT shut off. He tried "everything" and nothing worked. I was about ready to suggest he pull the power cord and thought I'd better have a look. Sure enough, the Windows 10 screen was in the 'shutting down' screen. I asked if he had pressed and held the power button like I had asked. "I held that button till my finger turned blue!' was his response. So I reached out my trusty index finger and pressed and held the button again. "SEE! SEE! I told you it wouldn't work!" I continued to hold all the while he was muttering under his breath. And SHAZAM! The PC shuts down. He was wide eyed and slack jawed. I reminded him that it took about 10 seconds for it to force a shutoff. And then suggested that he could have just pulled the power cable. Granted, not the wisest thing to do in most instances, but when it just won't shut off . . . [link] [comments]  |
| The monitor power button is NOT how you turn off the computer! Posted: 19 Apr 2018 03:29 PM PDT This will be a a little more encompassing of both ends, and why the 2 don't work well with each other. First off, I work for a major US company who is lacking in training new employees and also technical advancements. For Support Center employees, the turnaround percentage is crazy because of the training. A lot of shit is outsourced and while it's not the people that make it bad, it's the 2yr contract they're given (although quite a few I've met are quite happy to be able to travel around the world and work for different companies) which doesn't give them or us time to make a good repertoire, let alone for them to learn how the company does things. Now, when you start the SC job, your max training time is 2 weeks. Then you're on the phones to deal with 8+ applications on a linux box at best, mainframe at worst, on your own...not including networking. Most of the end users were only taught to "click this icon/picture" and it will take you where you need to be. Fair enough. Two months into working nights (thankfully), I get this call from a person that complains about everything being locked up. Mind you, most callers are on SCO shell Unix and have just as minimal training. I can only navigate so far at this point and we were definitely unable to screen share. I do all the normal pings to router, tower and whatnot after not being able to dial into the computer and determine she needs to hard boot it. That's when my life went to hell. I patiently waited as I described the power button and told her to hold it in for several seconds until the light went off. She did so. I waited a minute, tried to dial in again and nothing. Waited longer, tried again. Pinged things and was getting inadequate queries so I asked her if she had done exactly what I said, and went down a list of things of what to look for, how to hold it in and when to let go. She enthusiastically said yes....the FIRST time. Fast forward half an hour later of the same thing, my patience is gone (even though the only reason I had any was to keep my job as it's an on-the-job type of self training I've done over the years) and she's obviously done with it all too, I finally thought about it and had her describe the hardware that she was pushing the power button on. I had no idea that there are people using ANY kind of hardware for their job in which they couldn't tell the difference in. Yep...she was pushing the monitor power off and on. Thank gawd for mute b/c at that time, I was livid. I did not express my relief nor gratitude when she finally hard booted the machine, and thankfully, everything was fine after it came up. Biggest lesson in customer support - never underestimate the lack of basic knowledge by those that have been in their positions far longer than you. And who ever your gawd may be help you if you get stuck with one who needs the router rebooted. (NOC's job? Pfff puuhhleease) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2018 07:32 AM PDT This one's hot off the press. Just got off the phone from the meeting this interrupted. Characters: $me: your's truly. $rec: front desk lead in one of our departments. $trainee: FD trainee in that department. Story: Instead of putting in a ticket like she KNOWS she's supposed to, $rec decides to call me up while I'm having a phone conference with $crappyEHR's developers, telling them how crappy their software is. I apologize, put them on hold, because $rec mans the front desk for the department that's most busy this time of day and that means this could be urgent. Phone call transcript:
Our system allows patients to electronically sign consent forms. For the staff and doctors to countersign, their signatures have been imported, and to sign, they just type in their password. This is implemented when their hiring is finalized or when they're switched to this department.
this goes on for about 3 minutes until this:
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| Nothing on my side... must be on your side... Posted: 19 Apr 2018 10:57 AM PDT Extremely long time reader, first time poster. Too many of the same thing to post but I just got off this call and had to share. I know there a bunch like it but the error message that caused it is just too good to not share. Lets set the stage $me - the wearer of too many hats $client - the client's office manager $employee - one of her employees $ISPtech - the ISP technician I work for an MSP. One of my clients call me up during my lunch. one of my junior techs tried to help but when he saw the error he passed it on to me. Keep in mind that this client has about 40 employees at this location. They are a professional company, with partners, assistants, receptionists, etc... so e-mails are going out all the time. Even in the middle of the night.
Meanwhile i'm grabbing the SMTP error code (421 4.7.0 smtp.$isp.$domain Error:Too Many Errors)... Wait what? too many errors. What the Firetruck is going on?
So I connect to a different machine myself and verify that the SMTP can indeed be reached, so it's not an IP based thing. Telnet works but gets the same "too many errors" message. Well, at least the server is responding. A quick google shows that it's normally a server side thing. I call their ISP (This is where things get interesting) So i go through their IVR, get to a $peon who forwards me to their hosting department where i get in touch with $ISPtech
I go back and forth and agree to wait for the answer from the manager and get off the phone. 2 minutes later $ISPtech calls me back.
End call #2 2 minutes later $ISPtech calls me back
End call #3 2 minutes later $ISPtech calls me back
OK... time to get back to my lunch. My sandwich is getting cold... mmm.... italian chicken crustini.... TL/DR client can't send e-mails. ISP says it's on the client side even though the error message points to a server issue on their end. They call me back over and over with small updated finally agreeing that the issue was indeed on their end and not caused by my client. All I was trying to do was eat my lunch. [link] [comments]  |
| An Essay on the Importance of Timing Posted: 19 Apr 2018 01:48 PM PDT Hi everybody! LTL, possibly FTP, anything I've posted here before will be mostly inconsequential. I'm not in IT, but I'm considering going into the tech field right now, and am the resident tech nerd in my apartment for my roommates. I occasionally make $luser mistakes, but I do my best not to. This story is of a time I felt like one even after doing my best to not end up on the list. So, the apartment I mentioned is actually a new development in this friend group, and we had a struggle to get our internet set up. The only Cable Company ($CC) currently providing any kind of service, including internet, to the complex requires you to call the office during business hours to transfer service. One of my roommates, $Artist, has an account with them, and finally got us set up. A few days later, the internet went down at around 1 AM, during stupid college kid shenanigans. I did the needful and unplugged and replugged everything, tested my own PC by hooking up the ethernet cord I use intermittently, disconnected and reconnected wifi on my phone, etc. Nothing worked, so I called the 24/7 support number, and the line indicated to me that they had a high call volume. Deciding it was probably a network outage, I went to bed, resolved to work on it in the morning with $Artist. Bright and early, I got up with $Artist because she likes it when I'm there to help out with tech calls. She called $CC while I got busy
(I'll admit I made the language he used a bit more snarky, but $Artist did say he was snippy)
Apparently after this they went through basically everything I did, unscrewing the wall jack from both the wall and the box, disconnecting the link between modem and router, turning it off and back on again, and after all that it turned on just fine again. I was left feeling a little cheated and silly. Admittedly I know it's possible there was just a glitch or maintenance and no outage, and that $Tech was probably presuming Rule 1 was in effect, but I swear I did all of that. Goes to show, sometimes it's a matter of timing. Anyway, thanks for reading, and sorry if this seems silly or out of place, just a funny anecdote I thought I'd share. Sorry if my formatting is garbage, I don't post much, and I'll correct any errors as I see them/they're pointed out!. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2018 06:11 AM PDT "Show me what the problem is," I said to 'Bob', my customer. I am a vendor sitting with my customer in his conference room with his manager, his IT guy, and my manager. He pulled the phone out of his shirt pocket to look something up. <finger-swipe tap tap finger-swipe tap> While looking at this phone he grabbed the mouse for the conference room PC and on the big screen I see him click on Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Remote Desktop Connection. Looking back and forth between the phone and the keyboard, he types in "Bobs-PC" one key at a time, and connects to his desktop down the hall. He opens a text file on the desktop that contains a list of filenames. He swipes the "Vendor Name.xls" line and uses the mouse to click on Edit -> Copy. Then X's out of the text file. He clicks on Start, and in the "Search Program and Files" he right clicks, moves up slowly, and left clicks on "Paste". I noticed that the filename he pasted is right there on the desktop. He does not hit enter. He moves the mouse ever-so deliberately to the magnifying glass and clicks with tactile determination. The Excel file opens and it has all of our vendor information in it. He clicks on the link for the server which is http://vendor-server. It opens a browser on his desktop. "Bob," I say with controlled tones. "The audio won't play back here, why don't you just open a browser on this PC and type 'vendor-server'"? Their IT guy groans. A glance at his manager shows fire in his eyes. My manager is stifling himself. He X's out of the browser, the spreadsheet, and then shuts down his PC. He opens a browser and slowly types, 'h...t...t...p..." The login screen pops up and picks up his phone again. The username and password are 'vendor' / 'vendor1'. v....e....n.... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2018 06:00 AM PDT I work for college tech support and there are many tales I could post. Here are 2 short things that happeend last week. - Student came in to lab and walked up to computer station. Seeing that it was not on they held the monitor button down.They proceeded to do this to not one but three monitors. Before coming to the desk to tell me the computer was broken. - I have been asked by young students how to save a Microsoft word document, I understand the older folks but fresh out of high school student asked if it was the square button. To which my reply was "have you never written a paper before?" Turns out they somehow got through high school with NotePad. [link] [comments]  |
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