After 23 years in IT, it finally happened to me... Please don't take me out behind the barn and shoot me just yet. Tech Support |
- After 23 years in IT, it finally happened to me... Please don't take me out behind the barn and shoot me just yet.
- I reset my PC and now all my stuff is gone? Oh and I need to submit a file tonight
- "I'm usually the smartest guy in the room."
- I don't really need a computer, just to sign in
- The story of the incorrectly programmed keyboard
- Can you train me before the training?
- Curled Paper... Urgent
- There's nothing
- The GPU that is lucky to be alive
- It won't let me log in...
| Posted: 21 Sep 2018 07:53 PM PDT So Here I am, 23 years in IT, predominantly as a Systems Administrator and Project Leader for 2 Large companies. I've worked with pretty much every type of technology for a business environment imaginable. Alas it was not my day today. I've worked extensively with MFP's from Xerox, Canon and Ricoh etc. Someone set up a new Canon unit in our office a few weeks ago. Today I needed to scan some documents so that I could Email them. I head over with a stack of pages and insert them in the document feeder then press the directory button to find my Email address. I then set it to duplex and save as PDF. (The interface is pretty intuitive considering I'd never used this type of MFP) so I find it to be not difficult at all. I then press the big green Copy/Send button... Nothing happens. I try resetting the paper, the email address and settings, Nothing... I'm at it for like 5 minutes straight retrying everything that I can think of. Arrrgh... Someone else sent a print job to it while I was standing there so the printer wasn't frozen or anything. So the new guy who was able to escape 1st level support and join our team has worked with this new printer type before. We go through all the steps, nothing... again... He then just nonchalantly turns it off and then back on... Of course it works now... first time. Now why didn't I think of that? I thanked him and kindly suggested that he not have me taken out behind the building and have me shot. :) [link] [comments]  |
| I reset my PC and now all my stuff is gone? Oh and I need to submit a file tonight Posted: 21 Sep 2018 02:34 PM PDT I have my own computer repair business and this one was a doozy for me. The other day one of my loyal customers contacted me, he is not very tech savvy but usually enough to get by, I thought this would be a usual "my internet doesn't work" or "I can't print", instead I got "all my stuff is gone". Confused I asked what he meant and he said "my computer said I had to do a reset and now everything is gone". I told him "that's what happens when you reset it" and I asked why he did a reset. Turns out for the past week or 2 (my guess) is Windows was trying to update and he was forcing it off saying "it was taking too long to turn off", and the other day I guess it finally got to the point where Windows got corrupted and needed to be reset but I guess he didn't read the 3 screens that say "everything will be deleted". Now for the best part, he is an independent real estate agent and he was working on some images for a home that needed to be submitted within 6 hours, he didn't keep his key for Photoshop, he didn't keep his key for Office, and he doesn't know his email password, and he didn't have any backups of his computer. So I was just sitting there saying there was really nothing I can do without any passwords and keys. In the end we got trial version of Office and Adobe and we set up a temporary email so he could submit his files, also though this whole thing he just never fully understood that a reset would delete all his programs because he kept saying "oh wait I'm also missing 'this' or 'that'". [link] [comments]  |
| "I'm usually the smartest guy in the room." Posted: 21 Sep 2018 03:11 PM PDT That's a quote from a user I spoke with today. He repeated in various verbiage how smart and tech savvy he was, to drive home the fact that the problem he was having with our service was not user error. Once I got on a screenshare with him, and saw his screen, I asked him to log into our site. And this super smart, tech savvy guy... goes to "google.com" then types "ourwebsite.com" into the search bar, finds our page on the list, clicks it, then clicks the link on our front page for the user log in page, then signs in. The URL for our user log in page is 2 words, and would have taken as long to type in as it took to type google.com. Ya, you're clearly very tech savvy, sir. [link] [comments]  |
| I don't really need a computer, just to sign in Posted: 21 Sep 2018 11:41 AM PDT I work in a school computer lab, providing tech support to students, that has one other employee at any given time. Unfortunately, some of the other employees don't actually get computers and are hired based on their availability. In our support office we have two computers (Mac pros [trash can model] with two monitors each) and another set of monitors for laptop use. Today I was already signed in and the other computer had an error screen from a failed update. In walks a newer coworker. My coworkers sees the error screen computer and proceeds to sit down at the monitors. I inform her those are just monitors. She looks confused. I point to the Mac pros and say the computers are separate from the monitors here. She let's me know that 'she doesn't really need a computer, just to sign in' and then she starts moving the mouse that sits next to the monitors. I would forgive her, but this is the second time she has tried to use the monitors as a computer and she is an EMPLOYEE who is supposed to be able to help others with some level of competency. I don't know in what world you don't need a computer to sign in, but apparently that is a thing in her mind. TL;DR: coworker at IT support desk didn't know the difference between a computer and a monitor. Edit: formatting, thanks u/JTeam_ for pointing out mobile didn't retain my formatting. [link] [comments]  |
| The story of the incorrectly programmed keyboard Posted: 21 Sep 2018 05:22 AM PDT LTL, SecondTP. I'm an intern in a government building, working on the support side. Let's just say the rules here are: no rules. Previous tale from this same place is here. This tale actually happened to a fellow intern many months ago, also my classmate at university. Since he recently ended his internship, I feel like I can tell this short tale without much problem. He will be phone rings
$ft connects and types a few letters, without any issue. This means that yes, this is probably a keyboard issue, although probably not related to "programming".
What shows up is random letters, definitely not "a".
$ft then grabs a spare keyboard and heads over to where $caller is located. Upon arrival, $ft heads towards the computer and, without paying much attention to the keyboard, presses a few keys, noting that when he pressed CTRL, the letter "O" showed up, when he pressed space, it appeared the arrow keys were pressed.
$ft swaps the keyboard, noticing that it probably wasn't "some tea" and probably a jarful, warns the user about being more careful with their drinks, and heads back to IT. $ft then tells this tale to me and our many coworkers. Many laughs were had. We got back to work, this was low level for our users anyway. [link] [comments]  |
| Can you train me before the training? Posted: 21 Sep 2018 08:13 AM PDT This literally just happened and made me face palm. There's training today for a new software being rolled out. It's a new excel plugin to make their jobs easier. We previously installed in on their computers overnight. Then I get this IM: User: "Theres a training today with some new software. I was told to bring my laptop. Anything else I new to do? - Thanks" Me: "Nope! It was already installed on your machine. You're all set" User: "What's the program called? Is there an Icon?" Me: "No it's just a plug-in. You don't need to do anything" User: "I don't know what that is. Where is the program?" Me: "....Its not a program. You will be shown everything in the training" User: "Can you show me now, so I know what to look for when the training starts" Me: "..... that's what the training is for" User: "Ok I'll ask [my boss]" [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Sep 2018 01:34 PM PDT Never would I have thought I would get 2 hilarious stories in a day. Anyway, story time: I get a helpdesk ticket marked URGENT PAPER IS CURLING IN [office printer]. My immediate thought was that there was a major paper jam. So I take a walk over to the printer. A little back story in this user, he tends to exaggerate issues like his printer is totally out of ink and printing super light. I go check and it's 50% full and 1% lighter than usual. So I take his words with a grain of salt. Back to the story, so I print out some test pages, see nothing out of the ordinary. Then I see our good pal Smart Ticket User. STU: "Are you here to fix the printer?" Me: "yea I'm gonna check..." He cuts me off "wait there!" And goes to his office and grabs some papers. Barely any curl and could be fixed by letting it sit on his desk for 10 minutes. STU: "SEE! This is a major problem. This didn't happen a month ago!" Me: "have you tried keeping on your desk for a minutes until the curl goes away?" STU: "I shouldn't have to! This is important! Fix it!" Then tosses the paper into the shredder bin and under his breath says"I can't use this shit" and storms off. I noticed one of the paper trays was empty so I refilled it. As soon as I'm done STU comes back. STU: "is it fixed?" Me: "Oh yeah 🙄 I reset the rollers." STU: "was that so hard??" I just walked away and showed my boss the "curled paper" Me: Sarcastically "look how terrible this is?" Boss: rolls his eyes and also sarcastically "was this STU? Did you tell him to leave it on his desk until it uncurls?" Me: "Yup" [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Sep 2018 04:30 PM PDT So I worked at a helpdesk of a fairly large sized company for about a year and during that time the company was implementing a huge change in their IT system. On an average day we would receive about a hundred calls (company has around 15,000 employees) spread out among our 20 techs who show up throughout the day, and our average wait times during busy hours is an hour if it's really bad. Due to the change occurring we started receiving nearly a thousand calls in the span of a couple days with our wait times reaching upwards of 3 hours (thanks corporate). Well I received one call, that was at 2 hours and 50 minutes waiting and it was with an employee that is notorious for having odd or dumb calls, that really sticks with me. me: Hi you've reached the helpdesk, this is me, how can I help you today. client: I tried to do the change you guys are doing and it isn't working. me: what is the error that you are receiving? client: there is no error, there's nothing. me: That's odd, do you mind if we share screens? client: sure. We start sharing screens and I immediately notice that there is a window that is highlighted orange on the taskbar with the exact name of the thing that is supposed to pop up. So I clicked it and hit "continue" and the change started to occur. She goes off saying thanks and that's all she wrote. The thing that really strikes me is that she didn't do any work in that near 3 hours of waiting, and I was truly dumbfounded by it. [link] [comments]  |
| The GPU that is lucky to be alive Posted: 21 Sep 2018 06:49 PM PDT LTL, FTP MYSELF: Started programming basic code in BASIC on a commodore 64 when I was six, My own first personal computer was given to me by my grandma when I was 17 (e machines 333 Celeron, 32 MB of smoking hot 66Mhz SDRAM, 4.3 GB HDD) which I immediately started saving and bought a ATI Radeon 7000. If you haven't guess by now I'm a hardware enthusiast, currently 36, working in IT WORKPLACE: I work for what could best be explained as a school division, that only has a 3 person team to support 7 schools and a main office. The other two gentlemen that I work with are good people at heart, but are woefully lacking in hardware knowledge. The first has been there 9 years, it feels like he is coasting a bit, and is best suited to be a PR guy. In this case this is a good thing as there is some public speaking needed when our group has to address 300+ people when we have certain events. The second is really gifted with software, amazing musician, and knows Office 365 much better than I hope I ever have too. The main issue that allowed this story to happens is in the beginning of the year our IT manager was let go (not a bad thing, he was pretty clueless) and we three took over in a group management position while still being just the IT guys. And there are other stories I can share, but here is one example of being outvoted (ignored). Also of mention is I'm self taught, they have university degrees So... for some reason gentleman number 2 is trying to setup a 4k video editing rig and decided to use an old server, dual processor board with a single XEON E7540 (2.0 GHz 6/12, based on first gen "core" architecture) for some reason. It only had 8 GB of ram, and he asked me if we could upgrade the ram, I told him not a problem there is plenty of slots open and we have a a handful of old servers, same model he could steal ram from. Fast forward a couple of days and he tells me it doesn't work, at the time I was busy and could not see what the problem was. When I did get around to it I saw that he installed the ram in slots that ran off the second CPU, which if you have been reading, know is empty. Shaking my head a little I sent him a picture message showing on boot 48GB of ram about 10 minutes later after I moved the ram he installed over and some more to populate all 12 slots available to CPU 1. When he arrived to see that it was working I said to him jokingly "yeah it has 48 gigabytes of ram now but the CPU is still a dog, you should throw a *$1000 GPU\* into this, it will help you encode a bit faster with the right software and I can game on it at lunch" and carry on with my day not thinking a second though about it. So... a couple of days later I get a group call from gentleman number 1 & 2 letting me know me know \$1000 GPU** is on it's way, enter panic mode. I try to explain it was a joke, the server, while having two 460W PSUs, the second is redundant, not adding up to provide 820W, the card they ordered recommends a 600W PSU based of having a i7, not a XEON with 12 sticks of ram and a raid consisting of 8 HDD. On top of that this is a server board that used a slot based PSU, there are connectors on the motherboard for powering additional parts, but I could not confirm for them at this time they were standard layouts. I arrived onsite and looked at the machine and did some research, from what I could tell there were some connectors that should be usable but I did not have my multi-meter on me to confirm pin outs but two of the connectors matched the 8 pin GPU power connector and the original cables should have came with the machine, which are now long gone. I tried to explain to them that I did not feel comfortable with that they were trying to do without being able to confirm the pin out of the connector and even if it matched the only thing I could think of off hand to order was a spare modular PSU cable for a 8 pin GPU cable, and even then I would need to confirm the cable didn't switch over cables between the ends. So... a few days later as I'm on my way to a meeting that is 4 hours away I get a picture of a 2 8 pin GPU cables from a modular PSU and \$1000 GPU** and let me know 2 760W PSUs (that thankfully are the right ones for this server) are on it's way. Defeated, I just reiterate that I would prefer to confirm the pin out is correct before they go forward, on the way back from the meeting I get a text that the machine wouldn't even start. I couldn't even bring myself to message anything back and ignored the message to the next day. So... the next day I arrived on site a little early to arrive before the gentlemen so I could inspect what they had done. The card was still in the sever, installed on a PCI-e lane that belonged to CPU 2 and no GPU power cables attached to it, though they had been installed on the server board. I removed the GPU, gave it a quick sniff and thank goodness it didn't smell like the magic blue smoke escaped. Powered up the server and threw my multi-meter on the ends of the GPU power cables. A normal 8 pin GPU power cable has 12v on pins 1, 2 & 3 the rest are grounds, on this connector I was getting 12v on pins 4, 5, 6 & 7. I haven't found out for sure if they plugged the 8 pin cables in or if the card still works as this was today. I'll update as I know more if anyone is interested, but for now I'm trying to find the bottom of a bottle. TL;DR: If you don"t know the first thing about computer hardware, don't order it and for goodness sake don't attempt to install it. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Sep 2018 08:38 AM PDT This is a familiar phrase that I'm sure we are all familiar with. It is interesting to me how many variations of this problem there can be. For most things, the user either forgot their password or mistyped the password enough times that the account is now locked. For some things, the answer may be a networking issue like "There are no logon servers available to service this request." Sometimes it might be a different hardware problem... the keyboard is not plugged in, or capslock is turned on. Maybe it's a software/OS problem... like some jerk switched the machine to a DVORAK keyboard ( we had a user that would do that on any machine he touched ). Maybe the user is just trying to log into a system that he/she doesn't actually have an account for. And then there are things like the following conversation I just had... I will try to explain the conversation after... User will be the user Me will be me (phone rings) Me: IT, this is Me User: Do you know anything about CAD? Me: Yeah, a little, what do you need? User: It won't let me log in. It gives me a bunch of numbers... Me: Did you go 10-8 with dispatch? User: I did this morning. Do you think that's the problem? Me: Probably. Check with dispatch, if that's not the problem, call me back. User: Okay, will do. So... in this case, CAD is not Computer Aided Design, like it was most of my life... It's Computer Aided Dispatching. Each officer logs into CAD so that they can be assigned calls. The system is interesting in that an officer CAN NOT sign into CAD unless the dispatcher activates the officer. The officer contacts dispatch when he goes on shift to tell them that he is 10-8, meaning that he is "in service". [link] [comments]  |
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