The time we crashed a VAX by Osmosis Tech Support |
- The time we crashed a VAX by Osmosis
- My PC is freezing up all the time.
- Never give up
- TFTS Finally something to post
| The time we crashed a VAX by Osmosis Posted: 01 Sep 2020 08:20 PM PDT I'll start by saying anyone has been around as long as I have will recognize this is an old story because the VAX was one of the big mainframe computers, not one that took an entire room, but a good portion of one. Relevant to the story is the fact that the software for these computers was put on reel to reel tapes that were shipped to the customers. I worked for a company that manufactured software for these computers and it was quite easy for a bug in the software to cause the computers to crash, Which leads to the phone call. "Your software crashed our system!" Is how the caller announced himself, so immediately I do the apologetic that's so awful and I'm so sorry etc. etc. etc. Then "Could you tell me where you loaded the software?" These computers, they were fussy critters, and you had to put the software in the right location internally or that alone could cause the system to crash and we all know how customers like to ignore instructions that they think are unimportant. Like the ones that say, "please follow the installation instructions exactly as written or else your system may crash." The customer answers, "I walked into the computer room and set it on top of the computer and the whole system went down." " I beg your pardon?" "I sent the tape reel on top of the computer and it crashed! You crashed my VAX!" "Could I have you hold just a moment please, sir?" Then I muted my headset and started laughing. Guy next to me asked me what the heck, so I looked up and said, "apparently we crashed this guy's computer by osmosis." "How????" "We apparently are that powerful. Merely touching our software to the outside of the system caused the entire system to die." Once I had stopped laughing, I returned to the customer and gave him instructions on how to send us his crash dump (I don't know if it's still called that, it's just a log of what was happening when the system went down). Spoiler alert: Our software was not the cause of the problem. It remains my favorite tech-support call ever though. DEATH Says no cats were harmed during this tech-support incident [link] [comments]  |
| My PC is freezing up all the time. Posted: 01 Sep 2020 07:09 AM PDT Another one of my 'special' users, Let's call him 'Bob'. He wrangled a laptop out of his boss so he has a laptop and a desktop. He leaves the laptop at home so it's tough to diagnose and issues as he refuses to bring it in and I can't reach it other wise. So, he doesn't bring it in and complains to his boss that he can't do his work from home. He says the laptop is freezing all the time and locking up. He doesn't call us, he calls and complains to his boss who come into my office and lays me out. Not only had I not heard of 'Bob's' issues this time around but once I do and contact 'Bob' I can't work on it because 'Bob' refuses to answer my Teams chat, Teams call, cell phone calls and emails. At least his boss caught on, he contacted him and demanded that he call me to work on it. I'm in by o'dark 30 so I have a few hours in the morning before 'Bob' officially starts and has to come in to work so we agree to do it then to not hinder 'Bob's' precious work schedule. I get on it and the performance is sluggish as hell. I see the Windows update symbol in the tray and ask how long it's been since he rebooted the laptop. He says he does it every day. I checked with a utility I have and the uptime on that laptop was about 100 days. So much for 'every day'. So I force a reboot, which 'Bob' screams about. And sure enough it takes about 20 minutes to come back up. I hop back on and run a few company update patches he missed as they won't run when a reboot for other updates is pending. Then I rerun Windows update and it finds a boatload of other updates. I run them them reboot. After that the performance was back to normal. Amazing what a simple reboot will do. I close my ticket with the note that the user had not rebooted in over 3 months and several updates were pending and other's needed and were applied. He writes a bad review on the service and I have to 'meet' with my boss about it. Thankfully he had had his own experience with 'Bob' and once we talked it over he reversed 'Bob's bad review and let his boss know about what went on. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2020 01:18 AM PDT First time poster, on a mobile, etc. TLDR at the bottom. So, I'm not a traditional tech support person, just the slightly tech savvy husband of a (tech savvy in her own way) primary school teacher at a small village school somewhere in the UK. The school has recently come out of special measures but is still a work in progress. As with all schools, funding is tight. Do they fix a leaky roof or upgrade IT? You guessed right, IT is a distant second. When Lockdown can back in March, there were some intense brainstorming sessions by the school staff on how to engage with pupils, particularly those from a socially disadvantaged demographic who were at most risk of being left behind if left to their own devices. One of the staff had found an online platform (ClassDojo) which was really well received by pupils and parents alike. Unfortunately you need to be able to get online to use it. My wife mentioned that it was annoying they couldn't lend out some school iPads as one of the SEN kids has managed to activation lock them and nobody knew the login details due to changes in IT suppliers when converting from a local authority run school to an Academy school. The head teacher was resigned to the fact that these were bricked and beyond saving, as their current IT support had already tried to unlock them. Seeing as I was furloughed at the time I took it as a challenge to get them back online. First port of call was the former IT support company where luck would have it, the guy who set them up in the first place (we're talking original iPad mini, so 5-6 years ago) answered the phone. He tried to setup the recovery email address again, but unfortunately nothing came through. We spoke to Apple Education (in the US) who were really helpful saying that if we could get an invoice then they could be reset. It was such a long time ago though, who would have the record? Luck would have it, the Local Authority has a digitised invoicing system, so were able to pull up the scans and email them over. Result! The stars are aligning... Except there were no serial numbers on the invoices. I mean seriously, why would a supplier write X iPads and not list the serial numbers too?! A call to the supplier resulted in a cry of anguish and frustration as they'd migrated systems a few years back and lost some data including the invoices in question...! Another call to Apple - explained where we were, was there anything that could be done? It turns out that as long as the invoice has the serial numbers written on - even by hand (!!!!!) then they could reset the iPads. Great! I wrote on the serials and submitted to Apple to then be rejected as they don't "match". I then do some more research and find that you can ID the date of manufacture from the serial, so needed to make sure the dates matched (there were two invoices a year or so apart). Did this, resubmitted and got them unlocked! 15 iPads back from the dead! First thing I did after fist pumping in satisfaction was to ring the current IT supplier to get the MDM profile sent over so the iPads could be locked down to prevent this happening in the future. After setting up, they were able to be issued out to the children in need, to then not be used for the entire summer judging by their reported lack of interaction with ClassDoJo 🤦♂️ TL;DR: School has disabled iPads, I do some detective work and get them unlocked. [link] [comments]  |
| TFTS Finally something to post Posted: 01 Sep 2020 12:29 PM PDT over the years ive commented a bit but never posted my own story. mostly because i'd rather not relive my horror stories and sometimes because I am not sure if i can or should share a story. Today is different...because today i got to be someone's hero, and we all deserve to be told that our dedication saved the day once in a while. I spent my entire morning on a call with a customer half way around the world. But this was one of those issues that had already drug on too long and been touched by too many people for it to be a simple matter. And looking at the message thread that came before where i joined i see its got LOTS of visibility....people with Titles (with big letters and junk) on both sides active in the thread and none of them seem especially happy... Time to jump on a grenade! Fast forward uh....6 HOURS? good lord....and the issue still wasn't really entirely fixed BUT we got most of it up and running and learned some odd stuff along the way. And as far as a software vendor support dude is concerned i went way beyond what i probably needed to - but this is MY CUSTOMER and he was desperate (Titles on both sides remember) i cannot just leave him twisting in the wind. By the end he was telling me steadily how much he appreciated my effort, and i appreciate the appreciation right back! All that to say, yall in TFTS work hard and when you are working your hardest and pulling off honest digital miracles, nobody even knew you were doing anything. Not all the caped heroes have to wear masks but we still do our part to save the day....even if we are doing it from the couch now. [link] [comments]  |
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