"It won't turn on anymore, I need this man, I can't run my business without this machine!" Tech Support |
- "It won't turn on anymore, I need this man, I can't run my business without this machine!"
- "Maximizing windows for users is now IT's responsibility"
- And this is going where?....
- Tech Lite: I'm a computer engineer!
- Hubert,NO!
- Teaching a client how to screenshare
| "It won't turn on anymore, I need this man, I can't run my business without this machine!" Posted: 31 Dec 2019 01:05 PM PST I had a guy in 2014 come to our service center for his machining business. We were a small outfit with maybe ~12 techs on each shift serving consumers and businesses on a subscription based support model. This guy had called in to have some adware removed a few months back, but otherwise no real costs in two years signed up with us. He calls in with some trouble on his shop computer. Actually, let's go ahead and flashback here. In 1995, John Smith [not real name] opened his machine shop, starting out with freelance part replacements for local factories and equipment; then branching out to hire other gearheads to fix all sorts of local problems. for 19 years, he had been one of the most trusted shops in the area. John Smith knew cogs and wires and lathes and casting, but he wasn't really a computer guy. Over the years as his business grew, he made the transition to digital in 1998 with a brand new windows 98 computer. He then in-place upgraded to XP in 2000 with a disk he got for a bargain at a computer show. He invested his profits in new equipment - new computer-controlled lathes and grinders and milling machines. He digitized his payroll on an ancient now-defunct company's software. He got a little computer savvy and started working with some primitive CAD software from a company that would go out of business in 2003. He got used to using an ancient wordperfect CD to do his document editing. John was really becoming quite the tech-savvy machinist; but he still only had one computer in the shop. It was a marvel of modern technology - his Invoicing, Payroll, Parts design, part schematic archives, the control software for all the machines and robots in his shop, work orders for repairs and the ticket management system he had a friend install on a local server on the machine. This baby could do it all. Back to 2014 - John calls in because his XP machine has entirely stopped booting beyond post. He said it had been freezing for a couple of weeks but he'd just power it down manually and turn it on. Chills run down my spine, I hadn't had a chance to walk him through any diagnostics or examine the machine myself, but as many of you may be aware, sometimes a ticket hits your queue and you just know this little thing is going to spiral entirely out of control. And having done this for many years, I had a pretty good idea of what was going on, and it wasn't pretty. I ask John if he can operate the shop manually. He says his team can probably handle it for a few days but without the software and records on the computer things will fall into chaos pretty quickly. John is at the other side of the country - sending someone out isn't really viable on his budget. We instruct him to shut down the machine and we overnight him a CD with a windows PE installation we prepared in-house for emergencies like this. I walk John through booting from this CD and connecting it to us on a remote session. Half an hour of testing and prodding later, my worst fears are confirmed. this drive is rapidly failing. I ask John if he maintain's backups - Hard no. I ask him if he has the installation discs for the machines in his shop - he is able to produce discs for two of the six machines. Not good. I ask him if he has his licenses for his payroll software and accounting software - he does, but both of the companies are defunct and as I discovered online, their activation servers have long since been deactivated, rendering the software unusable if the current installation fails. John, as loved by his customers as he was, was a dumbass. He wasn't just any dumbass, but a stupendous dumbass, who had pegged his entire business and the fates of his nearly 20 employees to an ancient dell workstation that was now in its death throes. We had maybe a few days before his business fell apart. John is 2500 miles away. i am one of two techs at my company who can be trusted with this ticket. We explain the situation to John; he is mortally embarassed but surprisingly humble about his role in creating the problem. John goes out and borrows a friend's laptop. We instruct him to buy a ream of CDs and remote in to his friend's computer. We have him read us the serial numbers for his parts; we put together a disc with XP installation/repair media and a directory with all of his drivers labelled in order of installation. John goes out and buys two new hard drives after we ask him to buy one. At least we have a spare if one is a lemon. We burn a gparted disc and walk him through cloning the image of the current drive as faithfully as we can to an intact hard drive. At least we've put a stop to hardware based degradation - but the damage is already done. The system boots to a bluescreen. We clone the backup to the second drive for safe measure and upload a copy of his user directory and program files to our FTP server for safekeeping [Never trust a user, no matter how helpful]. We attempt an XP repair installation. The system boots, but much of his software is no longer properly installed or configured. We copy the registry hives from the original cloned image to the now-bootable XP installation. Most of this software scarcely had a few tens of thousands of users at its heyday. Documentation online ranges from scarce to none. I pop out process monitor and start watching registry keys accessed by the software one application at a time, mounting the registry hives, extracting the relevant keys and importing them into the new registry on this new XP installation. After five painstaking 9-hour days of gluing together and rebuilding installations of business-class vaporware from backup, internet forums, manuals, and some reverse engineering, We have managed to recover his entire shop with the exception of a lathe whose software was too badly corrupted to save. In some cases we had the original CDs to recover clean copies of the files from, in others we had to dig around online for copies of the software to retrieve libraries or configuration files from, but we managed to pull it off and recover most of the software and data from the ancient magnetic codex. John is eternally grateful for the help and assistance and accepts that the lathe will have to be rewired by a contractor to connect to a more modern control solution. John buys me and the other tech who were working on it 300 dollar visa gift cards and orders pizza for the office, eagerly renewing his contract with us for another two years [albeit at a renegotiated rate to reflect the liability his arcane setup poses]. We advise him on modern replacements for most of the non-industrial software that he had and help him over the coming weeks to port over all his payroll and accounting records to quickbooks and some excel sheets. We heavily advise him to start the process of migrating the shop over to modern controllers and software, sell him online and offline backup service/software, and he buys two new computers - one for his accountant/receptionist/HR lady, and one running blazing-fast Windows 8 to replace the decrepit slave he's had shackled up crunching numbers in agony for a decade and a half. I really do hope he followed through on those upgrades. [link] [comments]  |
| "Maximizing windows for users is now IT's responsibility" Posted: 31 Dec 2019 05:14 AM PST Jumping straight into the story. There are less users on site than usual due to the eve of a major holiday, so I was able to escape to a dark corner and type this up. Multiple help desk emails over 3 or so weeks about a $user unable to "format" their document. Keep asking for screen shots or more detail. Of course, none are ever supplied. Finally, $user's manager gets in the loop, stating it was "unacceptable" that we as IT professionals didn't show this user how to format documents, etc. Notwithstanding that teaching users basic computer skills should not be in IT's scope, I finally suss out $user's office location. I had never visited this user before, and strangely, their location is one I had scarce been to. I walk in, introduce myself, and the conversation goes: $me: "Hi, can you show me the issue so we can work on a solution?" $user: "Sure" double clicks icon for word processor Something strikes me as off with the clicking. Sure enough, $user is clicking with the bottom of their pinky. See, at this point, I notice the user is using the mouse UPSIDE DOWN. I stare in disbelief for a few moments, then snap out of it. Amazingly, $user is as fast using this method as anyone doing it.. normally. (The fix was literally "click the square in the middle of the 'minus' and 'X') Careful about the next utterances leaving my mouth, I ask: "... Is.. this how you use your computer at home?" $user: laughs "Oh no, I don't have a computer at home. I'd never really touched one until I was hired here." I didn't dare ask the question of whether $user had heard of things like "appliances" or "furniture". I figured I had a 50% chance of being right. (See earlier comments re: users living like cavemen.) $user thanks me for my assistance, and I walk away, backwards, and slowly close the door, trying to process what I've witnessed. I then open the door again, ever so slightly, making sure I didn't leave behind some doorway to another dimension. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Dec 2019 10:34 AM PST Ok, this is almost a who's on first situation... just to warn you. I get an email from someone that is high up the food chain when it comes to getting things done. Big Boss 1: "Is laptop X going to be ready for user Y when they start on the 6th."Me: "What Laptop, what user?" BB1: Gives me a ticket number. Me: Looks up number, not in the proper queue says User Y starts on the 6th. Ask's BB, do we have and order#? BB1: Not that I'm aware of, that's your job. (First I heard of this since I'm not allowed to purchase) Me: "OK... let me look into it." Reaches out to My Manager (MM) and asks about this order. MM: "Give me a min". (After 4 min gives me a ticket number, not one I've had yet.) Me: "Thanks." Looks it over, and I have the logistics form for the user. Go back to MM "This is for the Logistics form without saying where the laptop is going or where the user is." MM: "Hold on" (Gives me a new number) Me: *groans internally*. "Thanks." Looks up the number in a different system, this one says it's been ordered and will be here in three weeks. Takes a deep sigh. and gets ready to have my head handed to me. Tells BB that the laptop won't be here for three weeks. BB1: "..., Do we have a loaner?" Me: (Looks at two loaners.) "Yes" BB1: "Use that till you get the laptop." Me: "Ok, do we know where it's going once I'm done?" BB1: "User is remote, ask Big Little Boss for that info." Me: "Thanks!" (Feeling a headache coming on because no one is going to give me an answer a day before New Years) Me: Reaches out to BLB "Do you know about this user, and where they are?" BLB: "They are remote." Me: "Ok, they are getting a new laptop, BB told me to contact you to get the info." BLB: *Sighs as if I am bothering them from whatever they are doing* (Probably posting of Facebook or Linkedin looking for a new job) Gives me a new ticket that belongs in the first system. Me: "Thanks." gets the info... reached out to MB, explains the situation, and MB said "Create a ticket for shipping, and we will get it out with a return label for when they get the new laptop." MB: "Don't forget to enter the info into the registration form, and don't forget to create a ticket so that they give you the licenses into the setup form." (which I don't have yet). ----- I sit back and realize I have 6 tickets for two laptops, one user, and three systems... WTF?! I ask MB: "Can we sit down and streamline this, there are too many moving parts and not enough issues that can't be resolved if even one piece of the puzzle is missing". MB: "This is better than the last version... Me: "Ok, thanks." Can 2020 come soon, please with a new job? I can't take this level of stupid anymore... [link] [comments]  |
| Tech Lite: I'm a computer engineer! Posted: 31 Dec 2019 11:17 AM PST Mobile/first/disgraphic: blah blah blah Background: I worked for 8 years as a Broadband Tech for a major cable company. Install, repair, educate, ect... for TV, Modem/ISP, phone. In 8 years I would guess I have been in over 5000 homes, companys, apartments... The work I did was tech lite. Go in get a modem on line get out, repeat. If the problem was the customers equipment technically we were done. We weren't trained to fix computers so dont let the untrained schmucks work on something a custom can come back on the company for. I have seen EVERYTHING at least once, 5000 plus locations... One job of many on one day of many. Me: (Standard greeting, get in the door and start asking more questions beyond what is on my work order, a trouble call.) So what's going on? Customer: We aren't getting wireless. (No internet) Me: ok, let me check the modem and see what's going on. (Check signal on the line, good. Use tablet to look for wifi, none.) Well it looks like the modem wireless router we put in isn't working, I'll swap it out and get everything back up and running in a minute. Customer: What about my settings? Me: Settings? Customer: My settings for my wifi, I'm a computer engineer, I configured the settings in the router to optimize everything. Me: Well, normally we don't want people to change settings on the equipment. Let me restore things back to factory settings and see what happens. Customer: Let me back up my settings first. Customer does the back up and I do the restore, wow, we have wifi. Me: ok, looks like.... Customer: let me reload my settings. Does so,(sigh) wifi goes out. Customer: See! It went out again! We repeated this 2 more times, but he was a computer engineer, that couldn't recognize the cause and effect of his "optimized settings" This was years ago so I dont remember the exact words I used to get out of the house, I never had to go back so I'm guessing the customer blamed it on me, my company, and our "faulty" equipment. As I said, I have seen everything at least once, if this one is enjoyed, I'll tell the one with the body in the attic. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Dec 2019 06:17 AM PST Hey everyone, back again. After posting the incompetence story, I decided to post about our last internal IT guy, Hubert. (Not his real name of course). Oh Hubert, you sweet summer child. I have been in my position for about a year now, and when I arrived Hubert was already working there. We had a general internal IT/help desk person, and Hubert was hired on as his assistant. Hubert is a bit of a know it all, who doesn't really know too much. Let me point out that as I say this, I don't know too much outside of my job role, but I have some form of common Sense. Common sense is a big thing in the IT world, especially when it comes to troubleshooting. When I first started, I had been told that although my team handles technical support for our job sites, we would still be on call throughout the week for any internal IT problems that happen after hours. If we got a call, we were to call Hubert's lead and let him know of the situation. Why we didn't just give him the phone already, I don't know and honestly, it doesn't really matter at this point in time. So, a couple of months after I started, my lead decided I was "ready" for the on call phone, and gives it to me on a Monday. I'm the kind of person who tends to take stuff like this fairly seriously, even in this scenario where I would just be playing middleman between our main HQ and our internal IT guy in case of an emergency. Kept the phone on me at all times, volume up so there would be no chance of missing anything. The week goes by quickly with the only phone calls coming in being spam calls. Friday finally arrived, and I tell ya, I was not ready for what came next. Around 4, long after my boss and our Internal IT guy were gone for the day the internet just cuts out at my desk. Then slowly, I can hear other people in my area talking about it. Then I see people from other departments coming towards us asking about it. oh god please, no. Not now. I'm not ready for this! But it was too late. The first cries of "where is IT!?" Had already been made. And much like the moan of a zombie, once it started from one source, it spread quickly across the building. I called our internal IT guy, and of course there is no response. I had at least 5 different people stop by my desk asking me to fix the internet, nevermind the fact that I wasn't supposed to work on our internal equipment, and I was still a complete newb at this time (I will always be a newb). Reluctantly, I got up and made my way to the server room. The server room that I had never been in because of course, why would I need to be in there? As I made my way there, the on call phone I had clenched in my hands started to ring. Hallelujah, it's our IT guy! He tells me to check the server room for him since he's not there. Crap, okay I was already on my way there, might as well commit. I'm surprised when my badge grants me access to the server room, as I'm opening the door I can hear voices. Puzzled, I opened the door all the way, hoping this wasn't a terrorist incident and that I wasn't about to be turned into red paste. What I saw was just as bad. Not really. But it left me flabbergasted. See, it turns out our IT director and Hubert were in the server room the whole time. We have no topology for our internal Network, the only thing anyone is sure of is where our internet connection from our ISP comes in, and where the backup is from a separate ISP. They decided they were going to choose today as the day to start figuring stuff out, so they were going to start unplugging things one by one. The first thing Hubert unplugs? A power cable (why!?) for our main server. His response once I told him and our director that we had lost internet for the last 30min to the entire building? "Oops, I must have tripped over it" It was the first of many times I would utter the words "God damn it Hubert" [link] [comments]  |
| Teaching a client how to screenshare Posted: 31 Dec 2019 12:37 PM PST It's around 2:00 PM on a Friday and I'm almost done with my shift, I only had one more case I needed to handle before leaving for the weekend. After waiting around for almost 15 minutes for the client to join my WebEx call, he finally joined. After about 30 minutes I had gather as much info from him as I could, So I asked for a screenshare so I could do my own digging and see if I could find the issue. After about a minute the client says, "I'm not sure if I can screenshare since I can't find a webcam." I then spend about 20 minutes explaining that he doesn't need a webcam and try to explain where he must click in order to start the screenshare. At the end of the day it turns out the client just need a software update for a few of the nodes in the cluster. [link] [comments]  |
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