"Press Alt+F4. Problem solved. You're welcome." Tech Support |
- "Press Alt+F4. Problem solved. You're welcome."
- Sweating bullets
- First Week Deployed. RIP UPS
- User mad for mixing up Chrome and Explorer, then tries to BS and pull a Karen
- Tales of an annoying employee part 2
- "It just started randomly doing this on its own".
- Super new screens - but please make the letters bigger
- Rookie mistake
| "Press Alt+F4. Problem solved. You're welcome." Posted: 15 Jul 2021 12:56 AM PDT Me: 1st level helpdesk grunt, supporting the german parliament and it's administration. A CMD-script as old as time runs to connect all network drives when a user logs in and then closes the window after a few seconds. Directly after, everything else loads (task bar, desktop icons, etc.). This usually works. Usually as in: Never not works. Until it did. "The Art of War" rests on my desk, ready to lend me age-old wisdom should the need arise. Coffee has been had, breakfast consumed, the climate is temperate. Perfect conditions for supporting Germany's byzantine beaurocracy. Ring ring. There is no exclamation mark as the phone is sophisticated and calm. Quite quite, tut tut. Me: "Helpdesk, this is Chakkoty. How can I help you?" Caller: "Hello, I logged into my PC and now there's just a black box on the screen. It says-" Me: "Click the X to close it." Caller: "Mouse ain't movin', chief." He didn't say it like that, but it sounds cooler. It's called needless embellishment. Me: "Press Alt+F4. Problem solved." Caller: "Alt and F- now it's gone and- oh, everything's here now. That was fast. Thanks!" Me: "You're welcome. Have a nice day." Caller: "Bye!" Click. Me: "NEXT!" It's just instinct at this point....I think I've been doing this for too long. And it hasn't even been a year. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 14 Jul 2021 07:01 AM PDT So this is a short story about my first days as syadmin for a SME. I got my job, many years ago, hired from the inside purely on the merit of taking some 3D Animation/modeling classes in college, so let's just say I was diving head-first into something I knew nothing of besides maybe swapping out a NIC on an old Gateway computer when I was 13, and having a vague understanding of what an IP address was. In my first week I shadowed my co-worker and tried to learn as much as I could, asking questions as I went. I wrote everything down on a pad I'd keep in my back pocket. In my second week, my coworker left for a year, and my boss went on vacation for a week. I was there, by myself, with no real I.T. experience. I get a call, from the boss of all the bosses of my organization. He tells me he needs help and to come to his office. I'm immediately freaking out internally. So I grab my notepad and my pen, take a deep breathe and proceed down the hall towards his office. At this point I'm replaying everything I've learned so far in my head, and thinking "this is it, he's going to think I'm an imbecile and today is my last day" When I get to his office, he's visibly upset and frustrated that someone has sent him some documents, but he doesn't know how to open them. Confused a bit on the matter I ask him to show me. He points to a CD/DVD disk on his desk. Reluctantly, I pick the disk up, open his disk tray on his machine, place the disk in, and close the tray. Immediately Windows prompts him with File Explorer and he sees the pdf's. Joy washes over his face. "What did you do!?" he asks. I reply by explaining that you can put CD's in the computer *here* (pointing to the disk tray) and that let's you see what's on them. I walked out of there feeling like I might just be cut out for this job. I've been working here 6 years now, and have learned a ton and even knocked out some industry certs, but have dozens and dozens of stories just like this that are perfect for this sub. So thanks for reading, and I'm grateful this sub exists. Edit: Man, this post blew up a bit. I'd like to thank everyone for the comments and the awards. You all make Reddit a great place to share. Cheers. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 15 Jul 2021 01:25 AM PDT Sort of a short story. My first Deployment (Army) started about 2 months ago. The Unit we just replaced left after the first week. That next Monday morning I was by myself in the office trying to figure out how everything is laid out. The Switches/Router/VPN box is all behind a locked Cage. The cage is centered along a wall of the room so you can walk across the front of it and on the sides. If that makes sense. The old unit stuffed a bunch of White boards in one of the corners and I decided to grab one because they are useful for tracking tickets, general information and what not. I pulled one out after fighting with it for a few seconds nothing thinking about why it was so hard and walked back into my office. Within legit seconds I had everyone storming my office saying the Phones and internet is out. Me being the only in the office started sighed and started verifying that the internet is actually out. Turns out the old unit ran the power cable from the UPS to the power outlet outside of the cage and ran it through the legs of the Smart Board (It's one of those ones that stands up and the legs are connected at the bottom. Turns out I shut everything off and we found our our UPS was dead 🙃. Sorry for the probable bad grammar and what not. I only had a few mins to write this. Check the health of your UPS! [link] [comments]  |
| User mad for mixing up Chrome and Explorer, then tries to BS and pull a Karen Posted: 14 Jul 2021 06:39 PM PDT Just in a venting mood after a recent conversation with a third party (TP). Also being purposely vague TL:DR below Background: I work in finance/risk management, and we operate on a queue system for when third parties would need approvals and reviews on certain risks. TP would enter all the data needed for us to review into our company website. There is also a separate phone queue for TPs who need assistance with using our website, as well as plenty of guides and videos, as well as our risk appetite. I also used to be on the assistance side, and am able to troubleshoot and fix most issues, as some TPs end up calling the risk phone queue. So instead of just transferring the caller around, I would just get the call done there whenever possible. Plus, we are currently short staffed due to the summer vacations. TP: Hi, I'm trying to see what (the effects) would be to (make some changes) to an account ME: Ok, what's stopping you from doing (this change) in the site? TP: I tried, but it's not working. ME: Alright, try doing it again, and I'll stay on the line to guide you TP proceeds to try TP: It keeps giving me an error, complete company name ME: Please ensure you are using internet explorer TP: I am, but it seems to be not working ME: You're on the client screen? TP: Yes ME: What happens when you press next? TP: Nothing happens ME: Are you using internet explorer? TP: Yes (now getting annoyed) ME: ... are you sure? TP: Yes, we're using the latest version of Chrome ME: ... the question was if you're using internet explorer. Chrome is Google Chrome. Completely different from Internet explorer. Our site only works with internet explorer. The buttons and scripts will not work on other browsers. TP: Ok, let me try this again Then within 2 or 3 seconds TP: Ok, I'm trying it but it's not working ME (senses BS) ME: Are you sure you're using internet explorer? TP: What's your name? ME: My name is (Me), my manager is (Direct Manager), and our call started at (time). Now. Are you able to confirm you're using internet explorer, because as I've stated, our site only works with internet explorer TP: Never mind, I'll try this myself. (TP hangs up) The sensing BS part is me doubting someone is able to do the following within seconds
I've also dealt with this TP in the past, and this TP like to use years of experience in the industry as a reason for knowing everything and is always right and will ask to speak to the manager if they don't get their way. I get that you can open the wrong browser by mistake, that's fine. What annoyed me was the the bs attempt and then the Karen move when I'm trying to help. TL:DR Karen gets mad for not using the correct browser, pretends to switch to the correct browser then attempts to get a manager involved but fails. [link] [comments]  |
| Tales of an annoying employee part 2 Posted: 14 Jul 2021 06:34 AM PDT This is another story from this user as people requested more and I have more so we will call this part two but this is the first issue with him. I dealt with him for two years and he put in A LOT of tickets. I linked my original post below. Context: This user started working for us around the end of 2018. He lived in the midwest in a major city. He would be connecting via vpn tunnel to our office on the east coast, then using remote desktop to get to a physical machine in our back room set up for him and only him. All our remote employees were using a similar setup. He was one of the first people we issued a work from home computer set up with windows 10. We still were trying to figure out the bugs, quirks, lockdown commands, group policy, etc. We really dragged our feet on the move from windows 7. When we issued work from home computers, they were locked down to where you couldnt even open calculator. This being windows 10 however, we hadn't figured out the proper ways of locking it down so the early win10 WFH pcs were almost out of the box. Our vpn was an OpenVPN setup running off two servers on two different internet runs from two different companies. This meant if one ISP went down for any reason, we still had internet and a VPN server that everyone could fall onto and keep working. When the user started, we expected some complaints or issues and we would work through them together. Windows 10 was new for us too. This user however was going to be the bane of my existence for the next two years. This is the story of the first of many issues, unrelated to windows 10. The ticket arrived from user: Hello, I'm experiencing some lag issues, can you guys help? Me: sure, what kind of lag do you mean, input lag (typing and then the characters showing up a second or two later) or general slowness (clicking on a link and just getting a loading circle)? User: Both. Me: okay... let me connect in to see what's going on. I proceed to connect in via TeamViewer and see that the issues hes describing are so minor, it's like half a second input delay and the wait after clicking a link is maybe a second or two. Standard for a general office computer and the slight input lag is to be expected when using a VPN tunnel over 1500 miles. It's not going to be instant but close enough to work effectively. I explain this to the user, he understands, ticket closed. Simple. Two days later... User: I'm experiencing lag issues, I spoke with HangmanMatt a couple days ago and he failed to fix them. Can someone else please help me? My Boss then looks over her desk: HangmanMatt, why is the user saying you didnt help him? Me: Read the ticket from yesterday, #1234. My Boss: Call him and see what you can do. Me: Nothing I can do but if you want me to remind him of what I told him before, then sure. Calls user Hello, this is HangmanMatt, I see you put in another ticket for the same issue. Has it gotten worse? User: Oh, i asked to speak to someone else but yes, it's gotten worse. I cant work, this is so bad. Me: ok... connects via TV please show me what you're talking about. User: starts working and demonstrates the same lag as before, minimal and perfectly adequate to do his job See, it's so bad I cant work. Me: I'm sorry but what you're showing me is nothing out of the ordinary. The input lag is minimal but to be expected, you're on a VPN tunnel, 1500 miles away, using remote desktop to connect to a computer here. It's not instant. The signal has to be transmitted from you, out here, the computer does what you are asking it to do, then the picture is transmitted back to you, 1500 miles away. The fact that you're experiencing this is normal and theres nothing we can do to fix it. Is there anything else I can help you with? User: No... click Me: ok, hang up on me, whatever. closes ticket Maybe now it's the end of this. I mean seriously, it's not that hard to understand, is it? The rest of the week, nothing. Monday morning... User: Hello, I'm still experiencing lag issue, I have spoken with HangmanMatt twice and would like to speak with someone else as he is refusing to fix my problem. Bare in mind our IT department consists of three people total, me, our senior tech, and our boss. All three of us sit right next to each other and the two of them heard my second conversation with the user and are aware at this point that hes being a pain. My Boss: ok senior tech, do you want to call the user or should I? HangmanMatt has dealt with him twice and theres no issue. Senior tech: You do it, if hes as bad as HangmanMatt says, maybe the IT manager will shut him up. My boss: Hello user, what seems to be the problem? Ok... let me connect to see the issue... ok, show me... I dont see an issue, you're on a VPN tunnel 1500 miles away... I am the IT manager for the company, how can I help you?... I'm sorry but theres no issue and therefore nothing we can do to fix it. At this point you have submitted three tickets about the same issue that cant be fixed... The only way to fix it would be for me to fly out there and run a 1500 mile cable directly from you to us so if you're willing to pay for that to happen then sure, I can fix it. Ok, have a nice day... Goodbye. click ok, that should be the last of that issue. It wasnt... [link] [comments]  |
| "It just started randomly doing this on its own". Posted: 14 Jul 2021 12:35 PM PDT Long time lurker, first time poster. I have worked in tech for over half a decade and finally feel like I have a story with enough substance to post. One of the first tech debacles I ran into this week: I get a computer to wipe clean of any company information from a user in one of my offices. Before I got it in my hands, he sent me a picture of the display that had a black screen with a lock on it. The laptop would not load to the OS past this. He said he didn't do anything and that randomly started several times throughout our interactions. Fast forward and we find out it is a BIOS/Hard Drive lock. He manages to guess the password after several attempts and reboots. As the laptop loaded in, his earlier message popped into my head: "It just started randomly doing this on its own". I get off the phone with him and continue on. I reboot and get past the lock to go into the BIOS and disable the feature, another lock shows up, this time with a computer icon instead of the hard drive icon. I approach it with confidence and enter the first password and it fails. I give the user a call back and after another grueling game of "Guess, Guess, Guess, Reboot", we get in.
This time though, I wrote down all of his guess... "just in case", I thought to myself. . I am, finally, in the BIOS and tell him, "Ok I will look into turning this off and let you know if I have any other issues." I find the steps to turn off the Hard drive/BIOS lock and am greeted with a screen informing me that I will need the "Supervisor Password" to disable the lock. I plug in the first password. Failed. I plug in the second password. Failed. There was a THIRD PASSWORD set on this computer.
Before calling the user back, I go through the list of passwords that I jotted down from our previous and, low and behold, it was one of those. After plugging in this THIRD PASSWORD, that he definitely didn't put on his computer, I reboot and the computer loads to the BIOS and OS fine. I am finally in the home stretch but not before noticing something that most definitely was not done by the user. The laptop had also been removed from our company domain. I am not sure what end he was trying to reach but he probably didn't get there.
To recap: - There was a hard drive lock setup - There was a different BIOS password setup - There was a different Supervisor password setup - And the computer was removed from the domain
At the end of the day, I got the computer wiped and sent back to him but it was one hell of a journey. TLDR: User needs his company computer wiped but it magically developed several hurtles that prevented me from doing so. All on its own. [link] [comments]  |
| Super new screens - but please make the letters bigger Posted: 14 Jul 2021 01:39 PM PDT Scrolling through r/Monitors or just looking for 32" 4k displays I realize that today many people think that 27" is *the* up-to-date display size. That kind of amuses me a bit since I bought my first 27" in 2008 and really consider it standard by many years. But it also reminds me of this story. 2005-2010 I was freelancing next to my study for a newly founded (I was kinda involved in founding, actually) IT service company. Our main first customer was this student administration responsible for 8 or so university campuses with their canteens and the dormitories. For the German speaking people here: a "Studentenwerk". If you have ever worked with customers from public administration, you know they are a special kind of user. Example: "We, the united public administration workforce, resist upgrading from Office 2003 to Office 2010 because we require a proper training first." Yeah.... or you'll just figure it out. Anyway. We managed to sell them a whole lot of new flat screen displays, 100 or so plus installation service. Nice business for us. Back in the days, must be like 2008, those meant 24" WQHD Dell for them. Nice. But they were coming from 14", 15" or maybe even 17" displays. Most of them definitely from max 15". What resolution did they use then? 1024x768 probably. After installing all those displays in a weekend session the week was starting with quite a number of complaints about the new displays. Were they not working? Oh yes, they were. But all the text is just too small. Admittedly, there were many older people working there. We tried to explain the zooming feature of browsers, Office etc, and many users adapted with it. But three users of one particular office were resisting acceptance. Regardless what we did, they could not be satisfied. So what did we end up doing? We paid them a visit, set their resolution to something like 1280 x 800, hit "apply", hit accept, closed our eyes and started backing out of their office, not daring to look at what we have just done. Feedback: Perfect, thank you. Ticket closed. Ufff.... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 14 Jul 2021 08:33 AM PDT I currently work in the IT field and am on my 7th year, but have a career background in tech of 11 years total. The 4 years of tech experience was Pro AV installation (speakers, amps, audio/video racks, etc.) At my current IT job, it's just the 2 of us: me and my boss. My boss is incredible at his job, but with my experience, he primarily works in the box now. I handle most of the hardware troubleshooting, maintenance, weekend admin work, and all things involving AV. Everyone here has incredibly entertaining stories about trying to help the end user, but this time I want to do it different and share a rookie mistake I made personally. A couple years ago at my current IT job, my boss and I showed up early to tidy up the network racks in the server room. We were unplugging power cables and re-routing them, dressing the network cables, moving and re-mounting servers and switches, you already know. We worked at it for about an hour and were about 15 minutes until we open our doors and already had employees showing up. Our firewall needed mounted and it was a heavy boy. We worked quickly, scrambling to hold it in place and screw in the rack screws; he was in the front of the server, I was behind it, we both had screwdrivers. We were quickly locking this down just to get the pressure off our arms and one of my screws decides to cross thread. I forget it, and move to the next. Boom, boom, boom 1, 2, and 3 are screwed in but I want the 4th one in. I focus all my effort on that one. I unscrew it and proceed to thread it back. It felt it thread straight and solid, but I was getting a lot of resistance. I feel around but touch nothing that seems out of place. Time was ticking and we were down to about 5 minutes. I decided to give it 100% "full cowling" and torque this rack screw in place. I hit the breakover point in the rack and then "the oh no" happened... POP POP POP! Sparks and smoke quickly fill the air and I'm just going "shit shit shit shit shit shit!" My boss on the other side is going "what what what? We're losing everything what happened!" He runs around back, and says "focus and fix this, I'll go fix the power. We have 5 minutes!" So I quickly cut power despite there being none, and unscrew the rack screw. I fish around for a bit and find the fucker that I missed before...a power cable had gotten pinched between the firewall rack ears and the rack rails. I quickly fish it out and run a new one, get the firewall screwed back in and fire it up. Meanwhile, my boss is getting tons of calls from everyone about our network...we found the breaker and flipped it on. I flipped the power on our servers and our network started coming to life... It felt like forever, but with network and power restored, everything still worked perfectly. After all was fixed and we could breathe for a second, we examined the power cable. I hit it dead center and couldn't aim any better if I tried. My boss had a hell of a laugh from the ordeal at my expense and reminds me TO THIS DAY that he has seen some shit...but never anything like that lol! This was probably 3 years ago now and I still hear "don't go putting screws in power cables," or "don't take down the network this time." Just a friendly reminder to check twice, and if it doesn't go in easy, don't force it! I always tell people, "no fuck-upsies" but I never take my own advice... [link] [comments]  |
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