Dell owes me a beer or 12... Tech Support |
- Dell owes me a beer or 12...
- HDMI - the killer of Internet
- Carbon Copy
- A dirty screen
- That’s not the monitor I requested for!
- Logging into a portal
- Client network problem with an suprising Cause
| Posted: 28 Aug 2019 11:39 AM PDT So this is actually happening right now. Characters - $me and $dct (dell certified techician) I get a call at 10am from a gentleman who is not the tech that was at my office yesterday to confirm my address. i explain where i am at and he says he's very familiar with the area. Also he wants to troubleshoot the PC over the phone as he has no idea what the initial issue was or what actions were performed the day before (red flag #4) At 1pm I get a call, he's 2 towns over and lost (red flag #5). At 1:45 the gentleman is not only knocking on my office door but also appears to be knocking on heaven's gate if you catch my drift... So i lead him to the computer in question $dct - what model is this, i've never seen a dell like this before (red flag #6) The extremely elderly mans hands are shaking so bad he can barely hold a screw driver. But i play dumb and kindly get out of his way so he can do the super difficult "dell certified" stuff.... So he finishes replacing the motherboard, turns the computer on, runs the dell diagnostics n gets the green check marks on all components. Feeling quite satisfied with himself, boots the PC. $dct - hmmm... says PXE boot failed, press any button to reboot and try again. I don't know what that means. For about an hour, I sat and listened to this very nice older gentleman yelling to his boss on speaker phone, who was trying his absolutely best to get this guy to change the boot order. At one point, they collectively thought maybe the F12 and F2 buttons on the keyboard are both broken, lets swap that out. Surprisingly, this did nothing. People at work have begun to email and im me asking "what the hell is going on over in your office?!" to which i replied "i actually have no fking idea..." I've actually been typing this as he's been working... Also googling how to become a dell certified technician, so that i too can someday be better at computer repair. so sorry for the crappy formatting, i'll probably have to go back and fix this. Finally (after i had blacked out and regained consciousness) we get to booting from the harddrive and windows jumps into automatic repair mode. $dct's boss, who sounds as frustrated as i am at this point, says well it got to windows so now it's my problem which i happily agree too (even tho i know that's crap since the last time i had to have dell come out to service a PC in my office), thus concluding the saga of why dell owes me a case of beer. TL;DR - Dell Certified Technicians are better at computer repair than SysAdmins... Even tho they don't seem to know very VERY basic computery things.... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Aug 2019 08:55 PM PDT A temporary (read as permanent) solution placed months ago, was finally fixed today. (I apologize for formatting, on mobile) A few months ago a wireless access point was moved to a different location in the office and a computer with a wireless NIC started having intermittent connection issues. It was assumed that the connection was too terrible for the fancy (expensive) software this computer was running. There is only one network drop in the room so hardline was not an option. The temporary fix was a small 8 port switch and everything continued clicking along. Fast forward a few months, some anomaly caused the switch to deadline. Today was the day for a permanent solution. While troubleshooting the internet a constant ping to google showed underwhelming results, but while checking all the connections and picking up the mini form factor computer the ping showed a solid connection. Once the computer was placed back on the desk the destination became unresponsive. Touch the computer, connection is good....stop touching it, no connection. What could it have been? As many of you can already guess, every external device was then unplugged, remote into the computer, and solid connection. Start plugging everything back in and still solid. Plug in the display, connection lost. Next step, unplug the cable and throw it on the the user's desk, they are baffled. None of the specialty cables are available, but a mini display port was also available. One adapter and a new HDMI cable and they are back in business with an actual solution. TL;DR A bad HDMI cable that still showed a display cause the wireless NIC to have intermittent network issues. Replaced cable, problem solved. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Aug 2019 09:22 PM PDT This is more of a quirky solution story than anything else - brought to you by this same guy. Enjoy: $ttt- me $MD- managing director $MD- approaches my desk: "ttt my email isn't working - they're not coming from the one I want them to. I can't check if they're sending correctly or not. Can you have a look at it?"
$ttt- "Yeah no worries. Run me through how you'd usually create and send an email."
$ttt- "MD, everything looks fine. You just need to take a second to check when autofilling these recipients. But can I ask one thing... why do you want to CC yourself into all your outgoing emails?" $MD- "Well I want to make sure the emails send ok? That way I get the email myself and file it away after I've checked it sent." $ttt- "You do know you can review all your sent emails in the 'Sent Items' folder, right?" $MD- "But I can never find it so I just need to send myself a copy."
$ttt- "Uhhh wait MD - instead of stuffing up the history of your 'Sent Items', how about I set up a rule instead? That way you can automatically have a copy sent to your inbox, then either file or delete that copy." $MD- "...But how will that work?"
$MD- half an hour later: "ttt those carbon copies are working great. They're yellow and everything!" Gotta love an easy but ultimately pointless solution that makes your boss happy. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Aug 2019 02:40 AM PDT Serving as a humble tier 2 helpdesk monkey is my fate, The query of this tale is, of that list, the latter "Worry not, good Joanna", I start into my spiel We confirm all of her details just as normal standard and stock, I mean, really lady, it's not been an hour yet, I straighten up upon my chair and gently adjust my arse "Alright I've sent an email now" I say and I do see "Done" she says ""so my password I type in?" "Done" says she, "and now I hit the register button there?" "If you could type in, now, your pass and username" "Hmm, that's odd, could you try again" to Johanna, say, I do, Right-ho thunk I has this darned lady somehow got it wrong "Invalid ID and pass combo" oh bother, not once more, To keep it brief, I ask you, reader, reread verses 6 to 10 The same. So miss fat fingers cannot type? "Dear Lady" did I say "can you once more click that logon?" So on my own computer to initech.com I go, And then I spot something I before had not seen, How she did that on her phone, I do not rightly know, TLDR a woman called and she could not log in [link] [comments]  |
| That’s not the monitor I requested for! Posted: 28 Aug 2019 09:00 AM PDT Cast: Me: obviously me CS: customer FG: facilities guy CW: co-worker Background: I work at a major social media company as a hardware support technician. We usually handle any hardware tickets that come our way, and don't always interact with users. Some of the tickets we get are monitor tickets, and we have a selection of monitors that we deploy to users. Sometimes, they request for 2 monitors and the most they can have is 1 30" monitor or 2 27" monitors. One day at work, I received a monitor ticket. The tickets was to swap a 30 inch monitor for 2 27 inch monitors. The 27 inch monitors are newer and less of a hassle to setup, so I get to work on the ticket. Once I complete the setup, I return to my desk and close the ticket. Afterwards, I had to use the restroom, and when I got back, this is what happened. I saw CS who submitted the ticket speak to one of FG. CS was trying to explain that the ticket he submitted was done incorrectly. FG was trying to explain how the tickets work. FG then saw me and asked me to help him out. I asked what was going on and here's how the conversation went: CS: About my ticket, I wanted to keep my 30 inch monitor that I had before and had some other reconfigurations. I never asked to have my monitors swapped. Me: Are you [CS name]? CS: Yes. I was wondering why my monitors were swapped? Me: The ticket stated that you wanted to swap your old monitor to the 27 inch models. CS: Yes, but I actually wanted to keep my previous setup the way I had it, especially since I'll be moving desks next week. Me: I just saw that on the ticket, you wanted the monitors swapped. CS: Well do you have any other 30 inch monitor that are the same brand as the 27" monitors? I want 2 30 inch monitors. Me: I'm sorry. Company policy states that a person can either have 1 30 inch monitor or 2 27 inch monitors at most. Also, the 27 inch and 30 inch monitors are both different models. CS: well, what am I supposed to do? I wanted 2 30 inch monitors swapped for my previous monitor. At this point, I'm just trying to understand what this guy wants. He kept changing the request from 2 27 inch monitors to 2 30 inch monitors to 1 of each and each time I had to explain the company policy to him. Then, CW arrives and notices what's going on. He decided to listen on the conversation. At this point, CS gives up and just tells us. CS: OK fine. I'll keep the 2 27 inch monitors that were setup and see how I like them. If I don't, then I'm submitting another ticket. Me: Alright, sounds good. CS leaves and we were all relieved. CW explains that it's not the first time he's reached out to IT for requests like that one, and that I should be aware for people like that. Apparently, before I joined, CS has been known in our company to submit requests and make the requests really confusing. IT was getting tired of dealing with CS a lot, so I was told if this happens again, then I should report it to CS's manager. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Aug 2019 03:12 PM PDT I work in healthcare IT supporting electronic medical record software. We have a portal for our customers (mostly doctor offices) to log cases with us for the software. We also sell/support a patient portal for patients to be able to get their medical info online. You might see where this is going already... Backstory: we just switched over our customer portal to a new system, so we've been getting a bunch of calls from customers saying they can't log on, see their cases, get our documentation, etc. Me: *standard intro*Caller: This is Jane Doe and I can't log into the portal. They gave me this number to call in. I was just at the office yesterday but when I try today to log in, I can't.Me: Okay. Can I get the name of your clinic?Caller: Acme Health in Anytown, USAMe: Okay. Yep. I found your clinic. So, when you went to our portal, did you register for an account?Caller: Well, that's the thing. They told me to just call this number and you'd set me up on the portal to see my health records.Me: Wait. Are you a patient of this clinic?Caller: Yes.Me: Oh! I don't know why they gave you this number. We are the support for their medical records software. We don't ever speak with patients. You'll have to ask them how you're supposed to sign into their patient portal. I'm sorry but I don't know why they said you should call us. [link] [comments]  |
| Client network problem with an suprising Cause Posted: 28 Aug 2019 06:21 AM PDT Disclaimer - Sorry for any bad spelling or mistakes. English isn't my native language and I really didn't write anything in english for a long time. So I work for the IT in a local authority. Together with 2 dozen other IT-admins we manage about 2500 clients in 2nd-Level-Support (desktops, notebooks, convertibles and so on). Yesterday I had an until then unknown Cause of network problem with one of our PCs I wanted to share with you (tl;dr at the end). We rolled out this new type of machines in late 2017 and one of this PCs isn't probably working since the very beginning. We set it up just like every other client with our client-management software. It boots up with PXE, installs the windows image and looks to be working fine. We deliver it to our client and the story would be done. About 1-2 months later we got the information that the network is recurring failing. Since we've got a 5-year-warranty with on-site service we made a ticket, the service replaced the mainboard, tested it and closed the ticket. Since the mainboard is switched, we have to reinstall the client for a couple of reasons. PXE boots up, installing the image, everything works like a charm, we deliver it to the client again. A few days later the problem is occurring again. So same procedure, a colleague made a 2nd ticket, but this time the client is working fine when checked by on-site service. The PC is sent back to us, we check it and its failing again. So a 3rd ticket is made, the mainboard is switched again and we get the pc back. Because of internal delays this lasts for months. This time someone stored the PC in our stock, so everyone forgot about it (the affected user got a replacement PC, so everyone is happy). Now 1 year later i need a PC for an another demand, so I take one from our stock and guess which PC i accidentally took... Again, a reinstall works just perfect, everything is fine until i want to do some final configuration by RDP, which isn't working probably because of the again failing NIC. I begin to write the ticket, look up the history of this client and see that the mb was switched two times because of this error. I looked up the events entries in Windows, which stated that the NIC isn't reacting to any commands and is about to restart. This occurs 1-9 times everytime the client is booted up and someone logs in. This explains the long times the client doesnt participate in the network. After that it works until the next restart. So I begin to investigate the real cause, the (3rd) mainboard isn't obviosly the reason for this. It doesn't seem to be the software, since its the only client that ever showed with this behavior. So I begin to use spare parts to look up which failing hardware causes the NIC to fail. After checking the "easy-swaps" without the error going disappearing - like PSU, hard drive and RAM theres only one piece thats about to get tested - the CPU. After swapping the CPU everything works fine, by installing back the old one the error occurs immediatly again. So we've got a CPU, which causes unknown NIC failures but works perfectly fine until finishing the windows install. I've never heard of this and didn't find anything in the internet. I bet if I wrote another ticket without investigation I would now get the 4th mainboard replacement. tl;dr - Got a client with a failing NIC, the on-site service replaced the mainboard two times and everything worked fine until the complete reinstall. After investigation I note that the CPU is causing the NIC to crash, but operates flawless apart from the NIC. [link] [comments]  |
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