You woke me up for.... this? Tech Support |
- You woke me up for.... this?
- "We moved the print server, why don't our printers work?"
- Snow Crash
- Backup Groundhog Day
- "But I dont want it there!"
- Miscommunications abound....
| Posted: 19 Jul 2021 02:23 PM PDT I run an IT department for a senior services organization and I have one help desk tech. The department is rather young and because of that and other political reaons we have not established an on call rotation. At this time, I am the go to when the S hits the fan. As such, I have been called in the middle of the night only about a handful of times over my 6 year tenure. *Knock on wood* In most cases the times I have been called are legitimate reasons to call. My cellphone is in the emergency contacts book at the building should they need to reach me for an emergency. This morning was a different story... Phone rings 1:39am. Me: This is TheGrimCoder User: Hi this is User on the TCU Wing, I have a computer that isn't working. All the other computers are working. But this one isn't. Me: *wipes sleep out of eye, gets up stumbles over to computer* What exactly is happening? User: When I press certain keys on the keyboard that key repeats on the screen. Me: You called me about a keyboard not working? User: Yeah, I wanted to make sure it was working for {User2} when she gets in in the morning. Me: This is not an emergency. Use a different computer for the rest of your shift, we will replace it in the morning. *click* Me: *stares at the ceiling for 2 hours* *dozes off* [link] [comments]  |
| "We moved the print server, why don't our printers work?" Posted: 19 Jul 2021 09:04 AM PDT This is actually unfolding right now. I work for a mid-size MSP in my city and one of our very small clients has a simple setup for their tenants. Two printers in each wing of their building provide print and scan functions for their individual clients using personalized logins. There's a central PC "server" that allows these logins to function. All of these devices are under a TaaS agreement and, while rented by the client, are owned by the MSP. We receive a ticket this morning that both of these printers are giving an unknown error revolving around not being able to login. Our MPS guy logs into the server PC and can't figure out why he's unable to see the printers. He found that not only was the PC moved, a new wireless NIC had been installed so that they could use their SONOS audio system without any issues. (This SONOS system could be its own story regarding the SNAFU around configuring it.) Now we're at an impasse. It's our equipment, but it has a bunch of unauthorized software on it; TeamViewer, SONOS, and Spotify to name the primary offenders. Waiting on proper approvals to remove that software and lock the PC down properly. Not sure why that wasn't done at the start but...here we are. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Jul 2021 04:17 PM PDT This happened nearly 30 years ago, when 15" CRT's were considered large and PC's were heavy iron boxes that sat underneath the CRT. Think IBM PC XT. I was hired as a programmer in IT for a manufacturing company that, due to the type of things we made, was spread out over a large campus. The IT department, being the outcasts we were, was down on one end away from the main admin buildings. Our tech support group was small, and was frequently overwhelmed, so the IT manager made a policy that all calls to the help desk would ring all phones, and we were all expected to answer and help out. Fortunately that did not last too horribly long, as it made it hard to get primary assignments accomplished. One day the phone was ringing, and no-one was picking up, so I answered. The lady at the other end stated that her PC didn't work. I asked what was going on, and she said that the monitor just had white snow on it, "like a TV at night". I asked her if the PC was turned on, and she replied rather indignantly "of course it is, there's snow on the screen". So I grabbed my jacket and started walking the 1/4 mile from my office to her building. I walked in and as I approached her desk I saw that indeed, the monitor was displaying snow. I then reached to the right of her PC and flipped the giant red power switch up to the "on" position, waited a few seconds to ensure it was booting and the monitor displayed that, and without a word turned and walked out. As I passed her I glanced over and saw a look of shock and amazement on her face. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Jul 2021 01:58 PM PDT This is an old one, however it still haunts me until this very day. Back in the early 2000's I was working as a consultant for an IT consulting company. Customers were mainly small business. On a certain day I was sent to a new customer. You know the story: go onsite, do some inventory. Check basic client and server stuff, write a report with recommendations to lure them in. This new potential customer had 2 servers. The oldest one was one of the dreaded NT4 Small Business Servers. Old, but it had large volumes where user data was stored. Next to that one some other IT company installed a brand new NT4 server as a standalone in a workgroup (workgroup name the same as the SBS server's domain, no comment). The new server also had a nice big tapestreamer, so it could backup both itself and the old SBS server. Inspecting the backup configuration on the new server I noticed a script was run just right before the daily backup job. Curiosity killed the cat and I had a look into the script, it was just a single robocopy kind of command (sync, with overwrite, no confirmations etc) from one server to the other. Having a second look, this script did not seem to make any sense to me. Especially the direction of the sync command. I proceeded to interrogate the nearest unsuspecting user: "If you edit or create any document, is it still there the next day?". The answer killed off parts of my brain and destroyed any faith in humanity or technology: "Of course not, that's how the system works over here." The script just synced (a once, probably manually created) copy back from the new to the old server. Thus effectively each backup job destroying any work done by those poor users... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Jul 2021 12:05 PM PDT I was at a client office setting up some new machines when a user asked me if i could help download a specific app onto their desktop. "Sure, I can do that". While trying to download this specific app, I'm unable to because of user policy prevents user's from downloading and installing apps without admin creds. Sooooo, I log out of her of her user account. Log into the administrator account. Downloaded and installed the program. I log out of the administrator account! Which brings us back to the home login screen. I tell the user "Ok I was able to install the app for you. Just login into your account and you are good to go.".......user stares at the machine...."You can login in now with your password" I say. "What's this?" she says, pointing to the administrator name on the login screen. "Oh that's just the admin account" "Well I dont want it there"....."All you have to do is login in with your password" "But I dont want that on the screen!" "Mam, all you have to do is login with your password" "But cant you get rid of that?" "No I cant" as I walk away in frustration over something so petty.... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Jul 2021 08:46 AM PDT The Cast: O - On-call Help Desk F - Facilities technician M - Me B - My boss This happened over the weekend. I want to preface this whole thing by stating - I am the network admin, and backup systems admin, but rather than be a salaried position, I am hourly, as is the rest of our IT department, except our manager. O - Receives a call from N indicating the nurse call paging system at a satellite office was not functioning. Calls Me for clarification. O - Nurse call at X is not working. What do I do? M - Call facilities. they are the ones who inspect and work with the actual hardware. All we do is manage the server. O - Is there anything I can do? M - You have access to vCenter. You can view and manipulate the console of any server in there. The one your looking for is named NurseCall. Right click on it, open the Web Console. Log into it, reboot it. When you log back in, launch Application, use these credentials, and move on. Should work after that. O - Alright. I'll call you back if I can't get it. 18-hours later B - Calls me: Hey, so that nurse call system is still not working. M - OK. Did anyone actually reboot the server like I told them to last night? B - Idk, let me check - Yes, looks like <sysadmin> did. M - Ok. If it's not working now, but it was after he rebooted it, it'll have to be rebooted again. B - Oh, ok. 10 - minutes later My phone explodes with syslog warnings indicating a complete system failure at the prescribed location. 8 minutes after that, my phone explodes again with syslog "all clears." I call B. M - Ok, so who powered off the entire host? B - They rebooted the server, like you said. M - I said reboot the NurseCall server, not the entire host! B - How are on-site staff going to do that!? M - Why are on-site staff leading the charge? I told O how to do what needed to be done last night. She's still the one on-call, so she should be the one doing it. B - Well, you could've just done it, too. M - That's true, but until I'm paid to be on-call 24/7/365, I'm going to enjoy my time off, and not be chained to my work laptop. B - Well, I guess we're going to have to have that conversation over the next couple weeks, then. M - Looking forward to it Moral of the story - even if you're hourly, if you don't want to have to deal with massive amounts of fall out, just do it your damned self. [link] [comments]  |
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