Crazy Lady breaks 3 PCs to avoid work before upper management will do anything about it Tech Support |
- Crazy Lady breaks 3 PCs to avoid work before upper management will do anything about it
- The unhappy life and sad end of the 1999 Dream Machine
- "What browser are you using?" "HP!"
- Tales from Field Support V
- Taught my user a valuable lesson I might regret
- "They" are always watching
- Please send a trace from your hosted server to ours at 10.x.x.x
- Custom backup "Program"
| Crazy Lady breaks 3 PCs to avoid work before upper management will do anything about it Posted: 26 Jan 2021 05:21 AM PST **disclaimer** this office was NOT at all cold. Nowhere near cold enough to need a space heater. There's always on lady that HAS to have one.... First ticket for insane lady: "desktop keeps overheating and shutting down. I am behind on work and missing deadlines because of this repeating issue that has resulted in lost work!" - She had a space heater under her desk pointing DIRECTLY at the desktop "because her feet get too cold in the ACed office" I removed the unapproved heater, ran tests, the desktop was fine. Checked the event logs and it had only ever shut down \ crashed once from overheating. I explain that I only show one shutdown from overheating. Explain that you can't expect a PC to not overheat when HEATED...Made notes in the ticket, delivered the space heater to facilities manager. She raised a big stink with her manager who talked with the facilities manager and had the heater returned with an facilities approval tag. They didn't involve me at all, and the unit was placed EXACTLY BACK IN SAME SPOT. 2nd ticket for insane lady very next day: "Desktop is overheating again. I cannot continue to work like this. Fix it or replace my desktop with a laptop." - I show up and see the heater right back where it was. MFW: WAT.gif. Desktop is off, and actual hardware damage was done to the motherboard this time. I replace it with a spare desktop of same make\model. I route all cabling and place desktop on desktop so it won't melt from space heater. She complains how the (small form factor) desktop takes up too much room on her double sized cubicle desk space and she should have a laptop. I explain that I didn't have a laptop available, and it actually takes up LESS space than a laptop anyhow once you factor in docking station. I explain again that the space heater killed the previous machine, and it should not be placed next to a heat source. I CC her manager on the ticket. I also let my manager know about the whole deal at this point because both cases were totally avoidable. 3rd ticket for insane lady 2 days later on a Friday: "New desktop is overheating and shutting down just like last one. I am weeks behind on project work at this point. Please give me a laptop that won't have this type of problem." I show up right after the ticket was created. She was packing up her stuff to leave and looked put out that I even showed up so soon to deal with the issue. . . the desktop WAS ON THE FLOOR NEXT TO THE SPACE HEATER. I ask her why she moved it back there after killing the previous desktop, and after clearly explaining that it caused the problem. She wasn't having it, said it took up too much room and she should have a laptop anyhow. This time the desktop wouldn't even post. I noticed the heater was on the highest possible setting and was aimed directly at the PC this time. There was something about how visibly annoyed she was that I was going to fix it, like she was ready to take an early weekend since "she couldn't work anyway." I explained I would have a replacement ready within 30 minutes (more to gauge her reaction than anything) and she looked even madder. "Is it going to be a laptop? I don't see a replacement being worth it if it's just going to melt under my desk again." I agreed, UNDER YOUR DESK IS PROBABLY A BAD IDEA. If she wanted a laptop she would have to get her boss to approve the purchase of one. I took the dead desktop and brought back a replacement desktop (we got loads of spare used stock) withing 20 minutes. She was gone. Cube-mates said she left for the day since IT wouldn't have a replacement ready anyhow. I documented everything in the ticket, called my manager. Manager didn't seem to care at all. He did stress that I was was not to give her a laptop replacement unless her dept approved & paid for it though... I was busy enough that this pissed me off. I walked over to HR and explained the situation so far to the HR rep. She said she would take to the user's manager about it. I didn't expect much. Sure enough the following Monday, I had a ticket to deploy a brand new laptop to the user. Since the space heater was under the desk, and the way the cubicle desks were built, there was a space behind the tops for cable routing. This meant the majority of hot air from the heater would vent right up that space, which would feed directly into the air intake on the docking stations. Since that was the case I deployed the docking station, laptop, etc to the right of her monitor instead of the left where it would get hit with the heat. Once again she complained about it "taking up to much room there, can't we put it on the other side?" I once again explained that heat will kill a laptop twice as fast as the 2 desktops she already killed. After closing out the ticket, I sent an email to her and CCed her manager, my manger, and the HR lady. I explained the problems the space heater had caused, and that it was her refusal to listen that had caused damage to multiple pieces of company property. I let her know that moving the laptop to the other side of her desk would very likely damage the brand new laptop and it should not be done, and would result in further delays in her ability to finish her projects. 4th ticket from insane lady 2 days later: Laptop will not turn on. Leaving for the day, please fix or replace. It was 10am on Wednesday. She wasn't there. Laptop was moved to left side of desk, space heater still on full blast... pointing backwards. Without touching anything I called the facilities guy. He agreed that the heater shouldn't have ever been returned. Agreed that this woman could have burned down the whole goddamned building. Brand new laptop was toast. Took photos of everything. Emailed her boss, CCed HR and my manager. Apparently her manager didn't even know she left for the day. She was 2 weeks behind on a big project, kept blaming IT for messing up her schedule with PCs that didn't work. I pulled the drive dumped all the data was able to easily show she hadn't done ANY work for said project at all in the last MONTH. Never saw inane lady again after that. Much stricter rules were put in place for space heaters after that, so at least I dealt with less overheating issues. It's just frustrating that I could tell pretty quickly she was full of shit, but couldn't really do anything about it. [link] [comments]  |
| The unhappy life and sad end of the 1999 Dream Machine Posted: 26 Jan 2021 10:23 PM PST Gather round my friends and listen to the very long and very sad tale of my technical nemesis the Maximum PC 1999 Dream Machine. Back in the late 90s I did tech support in rural Alaska. What's not rural in Alaska you ask? Well urban Alaska is a place you can drive to on a paved road. Suburban Alaska is a place you drive to on a road. Rural Alaska is where downtown is on the road, but the houses not so much. Remote Alaska takes a boat, plane, train, ATV, snow machine, dog sled, or other non standard mode of transportation. Anyway on with the story. I worked in town at a small tech shop. We had a frequent customer who lived remote. He was a friend of the shop and spent easily $10,000 a year on hardware for his off-grid "cabin." Every time he came to town he bought some new toy or component and talked shop with us techies. He was super excited about the new millennium so when Maximum PC released their 1999 Dream Machine he came to us to put one together for him. Top of the line: Pentium 3 - Coppermine 800mhz water cooled and overclocked, 1Gb of CL2 SDRAM, GeForce 256 with dual SLI Voodoo 2s, SCSI 8GB boot drive, Striped 20GB IDE storage array. It was hell on rails and the absolute sexiest machine a gamer could ask for. For those who aren't reaching retirement age, the Pentium 3 Coppermine CPU was basically unobtainable in 1999 it took us the better part of a month just to find someone willing to sell it to us. We paid 3x retail and considered ourselves fortunate to have gotten it at all. Then we had it overnighted to Alaska from somewhere in Indiana for an additional ton of money. CPU alone ended up costing $3000. The CPU was the last part to arrive and the shop basically closed down when FedEx arrived. We thoroughly inspected the package for signs of damage, triple checked our grounding straps, and everyone watched in awe and trepidation as the lead tech ever so gingerly placed it into the socket. A dab of Silver Fox and the stock heat sink later we're ready for first boot... Hurray it POSTs! So we do the usual, slap Windows 98SE install disk in let it get to work on install. Install finishes up and we start up 3DMark, gonna get us a high score! Nope... Halfway through the test BSOD! Crap, okay wire check, temp check everything is good. 2nd try, fingers crossed... Boom BSOD. 2 hours of frantic forums searching later. 98SE hates more RAM than 512 unless you tweak a bunch of system settings. So we pull out half the RAM start it back up, run 3DMark so we know it was just the RAM amount. Benchmark score is nice, like double any of our personal rig scores nice. So we tweak some system settings, shut it down, add the RAM back in, spin it up, Mark it. Success! Burn in time. Now sure we could have set 3DMark on a loop, but this rig was worth better than half a year's salary and the hottest setup we had ever seen. So we hooked it up to the shop network, big screen, and speakers and payed Unreal Tournament till 2am. Satisfied with the hardware we made our way home. Bright and early the next morning we show up and get to the hard work of switching from air cooled to water cooled. We ran the tubes, measured twice, cut once, plumbed the blocks, checked for leaks... No leaks! Drained 'em set aside to let dry, took off the fans from ALL THE THINGS!!!, installed the water blocks, filled the system, prayed to all the gods we could think of, and checked for leaks... No leaks!! Second burn in time! It's business hours now though so it's 3DMark on a loop. Rig runs all day CPU levels off at 45c and stays. Awesome! Full load 45c we're good for phase 3. Let's see what this baby can do! Hit the BIOS set the FSB from 100mhz to 133mhz hell yeah! We've got GHZ! Score it again, this time it's mind blowing. I can't for the life of me remember the score but it was insane. So we start the true burn in, watching like hawks crowded around the bench, staring blinkless at the CPU temp. 45, 50, 55, 60... no sign of slowing, 65, 70, 75... fingers poised to abort because none of us can afford to replace this CPU, 76, 77, 77, 77! Stable!!! So we let it run and call the customer. Congratulations Mr. Customer sir it's a thing of beauty, come pick it up. Per shop policy we put it in a place of prominence next to the counter and hooked up to the biggest CRT we had for the ceremonial presentation. Customer finally arrives, as giddy as a rough and tumble Alaskan fisherman can be. It's late December so we shout Merry Christmas and usher him to his newest acquisition. He's delighted of course, and since we're in town and have DSL he's got a request. He pulls a copy of Quake off the shelf, writes out a check and takes his rig to our "cyber cafe" to pwn some folks. (Yes I know this was like 5 years before pwn was coined, cut me a little slack.) He spent the rest of the day and a bunch of that evening in there happy as a clam. On the sickest rig I'd ever seen. Now if that was the end of it this would be the long, pleasant, and anticlimactic story of building a rich guy a computer. This is the long, sad, and sordid affair of the Dream PC 1999. We're only halfway through. Our happy customer takes his prize home, the owner cashes the $8,000 check, everyone is happy, we close up shop and take Christmas with our families. New Year comes around and we get a call from our favorite customer. He finally got new telephone out to his place and got DSL but he can't run Quake for more than 5 minutes without the system freezing up. With great trepidation the phone tech asks if it smells funny or there's any water leaking from the bottom... Nope dry and smell free! "Ok then bring it in for your 12 months of free warranty service, we'll see what's up with it." A few days later in he comes with the rig under his arm, evidently chagrined but in good spirits. He gets the favorite customer treatment and we set the rig up on the test bench immediately. It works, flawlessly. Boot up Quake crank the settings to max run a round still fine. Slap 3dMark on it it chews it up and spits out a mind blowing score. We show the customer and he asks us to keep stress testing it while he goes shopping and he'll stop by after. So we spend 2 hours poking at it trying to make it fail but no dice, it's the most stable overclocked machine we've ever seen. When the customer comes back we pronounce it provisionally fixed and he takes it home. Two days later phone call, "Quakey no worky." Alright bring it back in... This time we're serious we keep it overnight. Which means over a week since the customer only comes in to town once a week. So for a week we poke, prod, and abuse this computer. Constantly running benchmarks and games, use it as the technical teams super gaming rig in-store after hours. We can't make it fail. We call the customer back "Look this thing works like a champ we can't break it" he comes in we show him. He takes it to the cafe it works, so he takes it home. The next week... "Rigs not working again, maybe it wants a car ride?" In he comes with it. Per usual it works, he shops, he takes it home. The next day, "Car ride didn't work, can I schedule a house call?" Generally house calls weren't a problem, but remember I said this guy lived remote. He was 40 miles out of town, only 20 of those were paved or plowed and the last 10 weren't even road. No one in the shop wanted to burn a full day going out there for warranty work in February in Alaska, but since Windows Server 2000 was fresh on the market we offered him a copy on the house if he brought the rig back in and let us reinstall it. We figured that maybe the issue had to do with the system tweaks we had done to make 98 accept the RAM. It was a long shot but we were desperate. The next week in comes our customer and his dream rig. He leaves it in our care and we spend the next week backing up, wiping, installing the new OS, and burning the rig in again. It still handles like a champ the whole time. Never as much as a jitter. When he comes back in we have the rig set up in the cafe all ready for him to test, which he does but you can see the glee has gone out of him. He's waiting for the other shoe to drop when he gets home. And drop it does. We don't hear from him for two weeks but that's because he was afraid to call the night he got it home. He still can't game on it. This time when he asks for a service call we schedule it. The lead tech was the only one of us that owned a Skidoo to make the last 10 miles so he got the pleasure of making the trip. He set it for Friday morning so he could make a whole weekend trip out of it and go skidooing after the call out. Does the boss get his happy weekend? NO! The curse of the intermittent problem rises up to defeat him. He's there on site for 6 hours. The customer isn't lying, the rig will idle fine, but 5 minutes of Quake and it reboots. Not BSOD, just reboots like the reset button got pushed. He used every tool he had with him but couldn't find anything wrong with it. He even took 3dMark and a copy of Unreal Tournament out in case it was somehow something about Quake in specific. It wasn't, he couldn't run anything graphics or CPU intensive without it shutting down. So he restored the FSB to 100mhz thinking it must be an OC thing...Nope still won't run, just now it fails while not performing as well. So instead of a long weekend of Skidoo he has to bring the rig back to our bench to be tested component by component. After a week of bench testing each component we still haven't gotten anything to fail either individually or together, but we're on the hook with this guy for the most expensive rig anyone has ever built so we RMA every piece we can one at a time, with a trip back to the customer after every RMA. Over the next 2 months we made that rig onto a Ship of Theseus, that means everything from the case on in has been replaced except for the CPU. We kept the CPU for last since we got that technically aftermarket we were on the hook for it and couldn't RMA it. By that point though it was May and we just bought another one retail. It was still $1000... I remind you that at no point has this rig been anything other than amazing for us to use in the shop and between the time and the extra expense we'd killed any profit we had on the deal but this customer was still our best customer so we kept at it. Memorial Day rolls around and I get the delivery job for the now entirely new PC. The "road" is dry now so I can take it in my off road truck along with every tester I own, my personal bench PC, and a take no prisoners attitude. This will be a solved issue! I rolled out with a multimeter, network tester, lineman's handset, broad spectrum RF analyzer, oscilloscope, surge protector, UPS, you name it I had it, and I checked everything. Power? He was on a generator after all. He took me and showed me his setup, 20kw pure sine wave inverter cleaner power than we had in town. Telephone? It was a new copper run... Tested dead on for voltage, coms were clear. Turns out he's paid $3000 a mile for 8 miles of run to his property line. Then hired out for another mile to the cabin privately specifically to have good enough signal to get maxed out DSL internet. I setup both his computer and my bench rig. Bench rig first in case I was wrong about the power and network. Bench rig goes up gets online plays Quake. Not at the same settings his could but it runs gaming and then 30 min of benchmark without a hitch. So moment of truth, I took down my rig put up his. Hooked it up to all the same peripherals, then booted it up. First ran 3DMark and it went...Fine!! I stepped aside and he took over double clicked Quake III and... Quakey Worky! I shouted, he shouted, he spun up some Rage Against the Machine and we rocked out to our hard fought victory. Then I packed up all my stuff and left feeling secure in my technical superiority. But was that the end? It was certainly long, but that's not sad enough. Summer Solstice (June 20th) is a big day in Alaska the longest day of the year. People host BBQs and stay out late under the midnight sun. So it wasn't a huge surprise when our customer invited the whole tech support team out to his place for a solstice party. He knew how much work we'd put into making his computer the dream he had envisioned. We closed the shop a little early and headed out. When we got there there were a bunch of people, BBQ, beer, I think there was even a 3 legged race at one point. It was midweek so nobody was planning on staying too late but the host asked us to stay after everyone started to disperse. When it was just us techies and our host he went in and brought a bottle of scotch and 5 glasses out to the deck we were all on. He poured, served, and toasted to hard work and perseverance paying off. We drank and then our host pointed out a beige box at the bottom of his field maybe 150 yards from the house. "I invited you guys out here today because you deserve to see this." he said as he went inside grabbed a .308 deer rifle off his mantle, walked down off the deck into the pasture and unloaded 5 rounds into what I then realized was a computer case. He slung the rifle over his shoulder, went down the field and retrieved his target. Brought it back up for us to inspect. All this while we stared aghast after him wondering why he would literally shoot a dream computer to bits. We asked as much when he returned and he ushered us inside to his living room and attached a camcorder to his TV. There in full living color with a date in the corner of June 10th was a 5 minute video of a computer refusing to run Quake III... [link] [comments]  |
| "What browser are you using?" "HP!" Posted: 26 Jan 2021 03:44 PM PST So I got this call a little while ago. Me:Thank you for calling University's IT Help desk. This is Me how can I help you?" Caller: "I can't get into my classroom meeting?" Me: "Ok what kind of error are you getting?" Caller: "Yes." Me: maybe they misheard me "What error message are you getting?" Caller: "Yes." Me: "Ok why don't you try to login and tell me what it says." Caller: "It says to open up the app or connect with browser." Me: "Do you have the app?" Caller: "No." Me: "Okay try to connect to the meeting using your browser so select the browser option." Caller: "It says authorization failure." Me: "What browser are you using?" Caller: "ummmmm HP!" Me: "No what web browser are you using like Chrome Firefox Edge..." Caller: "HP!" Me: " Ok so HP is not a browser so which one are you using?" Caller after keyboard strokes: "Chrome!" Me: "OK, I'm gonna walk you through clearing your cachr and cookies." After clearing cache and cookies they logged in and were instantly connected. Never thought someone would say HP for a browser but here we are! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2021 05:42 PM PST Previously on "Field Technician watches multi-billion dollar companies lose thousands trying to save hundreds while shrugging his shoulders and cashing the check" No moral here, just laughs. So I roll up in the morning, find the telecom closet at the front of the store- and it's locked. Crud. Finding who has the key where can be an ordeal. I walk up to the customer service counter nearby, the people there tend to have a pretty good idea of who to call for what. Me: "Good Morning! My name is _____ and I'm here to fix a phone issue in the pharmacy, I'm trying to get into the telecom closet around the corner there but it seems to be locked. Do either of you know who would have the key, or could you otherwise please page me a manager?" Deborah: "Sherryl this gentleman needs the key to the closet, who has the key?" Sherryl: "Jeeeeesus." Deborah: "No Sherryl who has the key?" Sherryl: "JEEEEEEEEESuuuus." Deborah: "Sherryl I'm not playin', now who has the key to the closet?" Sherryl: "JEEEEEEEESUS!" Deborah: "SHERRYL JESUS DOESN'T HAVE THE KEY HE IS THE KEY OPEN ANY DOOR DON'T BE TELLIN' ME NO-" Sherryl: "NO Deborah, JESUS- He's in the back with the construction crew." I lean across the counter, look to Sherryl, and say- Me: "Well Ma'am, then I think I need Jesus." Sherryl and I burst out laughing, Deborah throws her hands up in the air and walks to the other end of the counter in 'I don't approve of your heathen shenanigans'. I was riding that high all week. [link] [comments]  |
| Taught my user a valuable lesson I might regret Posted: 27 Jan 2021 01:48 AM PST Really short one; had a busy day a couple of days ago when I received an emergency call from one of the better users. I know the user keeps her Laptop closed in the dock underneath. swing one: pen or something stuck between display and keyboard" - strike one; nothing there swing two: wireless keyboard bad - strike two, disconnected dongle, still same issue last try: issue is on laptop keyboard - laptop way out of maintenance, SSD is installed, spare laptop (a deserved upgrade) would be available in my office and ready to go within minutes so I give it a last try - that crappy laptop is getting the hardest instance of percussive maintenance I've ever done on anything but our 80s TV set. HIT and I watch her fly. Now everything seems to be just fine since then and I ponder from time to time: was it really THAT smart to show multiple users that kind of "repair job" if something doesn't work properly? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2021 05:47 PM PST Big Client added MFA via Microsoft APP. So teaching people how to set it up is a regular thing at the moment (reading text and follow instructions is to much to asks), regardless that iam not support, request by the CEO to make this a personal thing... sigh... Then this happend. Caller is a young guy under 30 and a bit more tech savvy than the usual crowd. lets call him techsavvy (savvy) me:ok have you downloaded the app and opend itTS: yes, its openme: ok good, now click next on your screen, you will see a QR codeTS: yea i see the codeme: ok click on scan QR code, the phone will ask for permission to use the camera, you need to allow thatTS: no i already denied that, i dont want that.me: uhm what? why? whats the problem? without the camera the APP cannot see the codeTS: well i dont want microsoft to watch me me: facepalm, speechless, need a minutethinking: alright i could either explain to him or torture him. only problem in the version we had at the time you needed to manually allow the permissions in the apps, which takes ages for users to find it. so id rather let him reinstall the app which is faster or me: alright, if thats a concern its fine with me, click on add account then add work account.ts: ok done, it says enter code and enter urlme: yes it does *grinning* you see the code and url beneath the code, you need to enter thosets: really, but....me: yes really and your account is on enforced so you need todo this before you can start to workts: sighs,.... starts typing..... just took him a good minute or 2 but it was a painful one :) the urls is usually like https:// ghfjdbfpad09 . phonefactory . net/pad/234235234 (@moderaters suplied url is not real and lead nowhere) [link] [comments]  |
| Please send a trace from your hosted server to ours at 10.x.x.x Posted: 26 Jan 2021 08:58 AM PST This is a customer I've mentioned before. They are still trying to go live immediately and still can't get their stuff together 18 months later. We are on the second "upper tier" IT guy and have gone through several others before getting to these guys. The software is hosted on one of our servers but because of the nature of the credit card system they want to use, it requires that our server send a request to an application hosted on their network, which then will handle transactions via PIN Pads. So anyway, we provide them with lots of documentation that even the average 16 year old gamer can understand, and here we are still trying to make them understand that any IP address beginning with a 10 is a private IP address. We've sent wiki links, a copy of RFC 1918, ARIN links, etc. We're speaking with people who this organization tells us is their senior IT specialists for network security. This is a large organization and the nature of their business puts them under an insane amount of red tale and regulation. And yet only a single low level tech has seemed to understand the difference between public and private IP addresses. Our last communication from them this morning is a little bit of an arrogant request that we perform a trace from our server to their IP of 10.x.x.x. They ask that we send them a screenshot and in their words, "will help you determine where your error is and what adjustments are necessary for you to successfully connect." Every time we reply that we can't connect to a private IP address they ignore us and provide us with a different private IP address. Good news is, if there is any, they're at least paying us. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Jan 2021 08:44 PM PST I was just reminded of an ancient time when 100 Mb Zip disks were new and I worked tech support. A customer called in because he was having trouble with the backup program that someone wrote for him. He was running the program that had worked fine for months and now it was giving him an error that the drive was invalid and then prompted with the always helpful, (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? I had him choose Abort and then he ran it again and this time he chose Fail (because Retry didn't do anything either) So at this point I have him slow down and tell me what he is running and come to find out that the "Program" that he was running is just a batch file that copies his QuickBooks database onto the zip disk so he can take it home and then he runs another "Program" at home that copies it to his home computer so he can work on it there. Well, he had added something new to his computer so the external Zip drive got assigned a new drive letter and therefore the copy command was trying to send the files to the wrong drive. So I talked him through editing the batch file to reflect the new drive letter and this time he runs the batch file and it says "File not found" So I have him go through the entire batch file and it turns out that after copying the files to the zip drive, it goes back and deletes the files "so that he always has the most current version" and since he chose Fail... dun dun dun... it deleted his files. At this point he becomes understandably upset and starts complaining that "this zip drive just deleted his whole business!" I tried to tell him that it was the batch file that not the drive that deleted his files but before I could suggest using Undelete or something to try and recover them he says that he needs to go and hangs up. I asked around to see if there was some way we could find his number to call him back but no dice. I guess the moral of the story is make sure that your "programmer" is smart enough to actually BACK-UP a file and not move and delete. [link] [comments]  |
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