Because that's the way I was trained. Tech Support |
- Because that's the way I was trained.
- So many desktop files.....
- The New Guy Chronicles - Episode 1
- Backups keep the machine running
| Because that's the way I was trained. Posted: 27 Aug 2021 10:32 PM PDT I was temp worker at a government office. I was a clerk, filing, forms, mail, etc. But folks soon figured out I knew about computers and I responded much faster than the IT team. The IT team was in another building in another part of the city. One day the admin assistant for the Senior Director flags me down. "My computer is very slow. Can you look at it." Wow this machine is old. Still running plain old DOS. Early 90s, not unheard of, but every other system in the building was running Windows. I start looking around and find the root directory is filled with *.tmp files. So I clear them all out and reboot. Zoom (relatively speaking) it boots. She fires up WordPerfect and everything is fine. A couple of weeks later, same thing. This time I stuck around to see her work. Starts WordPerfect, types up a document, prints it, and shuts off the computer. She grabs another set of notes, starts up the computer, types up the document, etc, etc. I try to convince to do saves, to not shut off the computer every time. Nope, Nope, that's how she was trained so long ago and she's not going to change. I'd already done time in the trenches of Tech Support so I knew arguing with a long term Senior Admin Assistant was not worth my time. So I created a autoexec.bat file that deleted the tmp files on every start up. She never bugged me again [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Aug 2021 11:13 AM PDT This happened recently, I work as a Systems/Network Engineer, but do a solid amount of Tier 2 "troubleshooting". So I get a call from our hardware guy, who is a great guy, but not the best troubleshooter. He is replacing someone's computer (He does a profile restore from the old computer, which copies down Desktop, Documents, etc, etc) and when he gave it to her, she complained it was incredibly slow on login and when they logged in it was taking a log time for things to load etc, she also mentioned she could not see the files on her desktop. He calls me up for some guidance. So I remote into the computer and sure enough nothing is showing on the desktop. The computer is definitely crawling too, I look at task manager, nothing seems to be particularly high as far as usage. Navigating into file explorer I go to the users desktop folder. They had over 2600 files on their desktop.....apparently Windows finally got fed up and decided it just cannot handle loading that many files at login. I promptly highlight all the files and put them into a new "Old Desktop" folder, then reboot the machine. Of course it logs in like a dream and the remaining 7 folders that I left show up on the desktop. I've been in IT for 10 years and it never ceases to amaze me that someone would think having 2600+ items on their desktop wouldn't be a problem....I don't even understand how this person worked before on their old laptop with that many files..... [link] [comments]  |
| The New Guy Chronicles - Episode 1 Posted: 27 Aug 2021 01:37 PM PDT These are the stories of the New Guy. All of what you are about to read is true. I write you these tales of mirth and woe, of entertainment and anger with as much accuracy and as little embellishment as I can manage. Many conversations are written as best I can remember them from my notes and memories about the incidents they describe, but the heart of what you are about to read is as true as I can make it. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. And the guilty. PREFACE "We need a new tech on the team. We have a team of three guys supporting almost 600 users. Tickets are up almost 60% over the last five years and we can't keep up. On top of that we have to migrate almost 500 workstations from Windows 7 to Windows 10. How are we supposed to find the time to do that?" My director, Laurie, looked at me tiredly. We'd had this conversation many times, and the answer had always been 'no'. I hoped this time would be different, but I knew not to hold to that hope too strongly. "I'll bring it up with Steve, but he won't want to spend the money on another person." Ah. Steve. The CEO. The penny-pincher. "Look, I'm not even necessarily asking for a full-time person. Even a part-time intern or whatever would be a huge boon to the department. I'm just telling you we don't have the resources to keep up with day-to-day tasks much longer, nevermind a massive migration project." "I'll see what I can do." A few days later I got word from Laurie that it actually looked promising. I began excitedly writing job descriptions for two different positions. One for a full-time tier-1 helpdesk technician, and one for a part-time intern. This was exactly what we needed. A full-time helpdesk technician could work almost exclusively on Windows 10 upgrades and get us finished by January 2020 without us having to do much with it at all. A part-time intern could at least take most of the burden off the main team. I sent the job descriptions over to Laurie the next day. A few hours later I got the call. We're definitely getting our guy. "That's fantastic. Are we getting someone full-time or part-time?" "Full-time." "Awesome. Did you take a look at the job descriptions I sent over? Do you think it needs any changes?" The briefest of pauses. "Well..." Oh no. No good can come of this. "He's already picked out, actually," she continued. "Whose kid is it?" "Was it that obvious?" "Yes. Whose kid?" "Sherry." The director of HR? You've got to be kidding. Surely she knows better than this. sigh "Alright. I'll get with her." a few hours later "Hey, Sherry. I understand your son will be starting with us soon." "Yes. His name is Jordan. Now you'll have to teach him, because he doesn't have much experience. But he's very smart and he loves technology." "We'll teach him whatever he needs to know." "That's great! He'll start in a few days. And don't worry. He'll be treated just like any other employee." DAY 1 - The Arrival 7:50 "Welcome. I'm Andy, I'll be your manager. John and Daniel usually arrive around 8:30; they're the more senior sysadmins. So how much experience do you have?" "It's mostly just from playing around with computers at home and stuff to be honest. I took a couple classes in school but I don't have a degree." "Well, as long as you're willing to learn we'll teach you everything you need to know. I will tell you that a lot of your time - especially at the beginning - is going to be spent upgrading and imaging computers. It's not going to be particularly fun work. All of the computers here are still on Windows 7 and we need to be on Windows 10 by January 2020. Along with imaging them you'll be upgrading a lot. Some of them are over 10 years old and we'll be adding RAM and upgrading them to SSDs." "10 years? I can't believe you have modems that old." And so begin - The New Guy Chronicles [link] [comments]  |
| Backups keep the machine running Posted: 27 Aug 2021 12:10 PM PDT Another, very recent tale. Caution: german without proofreading skills. You can guess what the tale is about just from the title, and see in the end if you guessed right. The setting: one robotcell with an IPC* (Industrial PC, see below) which is connected to the customers company-lan (vlan) customer difficulty: easy it difficulty: easy players: $me: me $itguy: the it guy of the customer $cust: the customer story: We installed a new robot cell with an IPC with Win10. My policy is that the $cust gets a patched system which is up to date, and can decide if he wants to run it off grid, or connect it to something and takes the responsibility for security and updates. This customer does the latter, and his external $itguy gets an local admin account and sets his things up (AV, Backup, ...) After a few days the $cust calls me and tells me that every night at around 9pm the IPC is shutting down, bringing the production to a halt. I have no clue what happens, so I decide to visit the site at 9pm and have a look. Did you already guessed it? Yes... the backup runs at 9pm. And the standard-setting for this customer is "do the backup, and then shut the machine down". Why? Because the it put the IPC in the office-group for the backup, and not the machine-group. And the office workers have to leave their pcs on, they make the backup and shut down. A short mail to $itguy solved this rather quickly. TL/DR: After the backup the PC gets shut down. Stopping the machine. Edit: spelling corrected after I woke up refreshed. And a little bit of clarification here and there. IPC = Industrial PC Special Hardware for running 24/7 in rough enviroments like workshops. [link] [comments]  |
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