"My computer won't power on" I wonder why?! Tech Support |
- "My computer won't power on" I wonder why?!
- Monochrome is just a state of mind
- Windows cannot connect to the printer
- The march of progress
| "My computer won't power on" I wonder why?! Posted: 19 Feb 2022 01:56 PM PST I've been working in the IT world for about 9 years now, so I have PLENTY of stories like this, but this one is more recent. I got a desktop tower that the customer stated "would not turn on" the first thing I do is plug it in, and turn it on, nothing happens. So now I open it up and DEAR GOD! The amount of smoke damage, roaches, and corrosion in this thing was enough to make me gag. I noped out of that one, got some pictures of all the damage (per company policy), tagged it and bagged it. Sent it back to the customer stating that this is a biohazard and we are refusing work. Honestly with the amount of crap in the computer I would hate to see their house. I mean, I consider myself messy but my computer NEVER gets even close to that bad. [link] [comments] |
| Monochrome is just a state of mind Posted: 19 Feb 2022 06:34 PM PST This happened today when a call comes in on our emergency weekend support line, and the way ours works is we have a third party answering service that fields the call. Kinda works like this: User calls in -> Call center answers -> call center emails me the details. This is important as I usually get to see the issue before even talking to the user. Subject line reads "User can't print in color (good luck with this one)". Uh oh. When the call center drops the formalities, you're in for a rough time. I call the user, and once they answer I start the usual schtick. "Hello, this is u/nwojdak with [COMPANY NAME] and-" "Yeah, I know who this is, you know why you're calling, are you gonna fix the problem or not?" Pleasant start, I know. "Sure thing, let me hop onto your computer and see what we can do to get you printing." While I'm connecting, this user launches into a tirade of "I've been troubleshooting this for two hours, and I need to print color for a big presentation on Monday, and it's a brand new printer that just got installed on Wednesday so it should be working fine!" Yelling and screaming with the ferocity of a rabid dog. I connect to his computer, check the printer in Printers and Devices, grab the model number, and plug it into Google. First link is for the printer's manual as well as a brief description of the printer. While the manual was loading up, the user was still barking at me about how he had read every line in the manual and how there was nothing in there to fix the problem and how I was just wasting his time. Well, the manual finally loads. And there, staring us right in the face, was the line "Premium monochrome printer". Now, you would think highlighting the word "monochrome" would be enough to make the user understand, but no. Because they followed that up with "That's unacceptable, I need color printing." "I understand, unfortunately it is a monochrome printer, so it can only print black and white." A harsh huff and exhausted sigh comes over the phone. "I know what monochrome means. Fix. It. Make it print color." I pause, not sure how to continue. "I... I can't. It's a monochrome printer, I can't make it print color, it has no color in it. You'll need to talk to your manager to see about replacing it with a color printer, or to see about getting access to another color printer at the office you can print to. If your manager gives us permission to add you to another printer I can-" Another exasperated, drawn out sigh cuts me off. "Yeah whatever. Thanks". The satisfying click of the phone ended the conversation. After that, I closed the ticket with the simple line "user was attempting to print a color document to monochrome printer", updated the print server entry to have B/W at the end of the printer name to avoid other calls about the same issue, and moved onto the next "emergency" weekend problem. TL;DR: User attempts to print a color document to a black and white printer, does not understand why a black and white printer can't print color even when told the printer has no parts to print color. [link] [comments] |
| Windows cannot connect to the printer Posted: 19 Feb 2022 06:42 PM PST This is a short little story (well it felt short to me) about the time I got to help with a printer problem at my school. Cast and context: BEGIN! So I'm in the school library, which also functions as a printing center. I'm not printing - instead assembling notecards into an accordion-like thing that uses obscene amounts of tape - but I notice that the computer in front of me is still booting Windows. Granted, these machines are OLD. Thankfully Core i series and not Core 2, but a 3rd gen Optiplex probably has a hard drive in it, plus the HDD activity light is blinking. So I continue taping. 10 minutes later, still nothing. More taping. It's now been 20 minutes. I'm almost done, just two more notecards left. ...it's still not booted. The HDD drive activity is no longer blinking, so I force-restart with the power button. I resume taping, and am on the last notecard when $SuperTech comes in. He talks to the head librarian and she mentions a printer problem. Oh no. I listen in. $Librarian: "...said that it wasn't printing at all, either M604 or M651." (M604 is black and white, M651 is color. Both are laser printers.) $SuperTech: "Alright, did they say which one?" $Librarian: "No." As $SuperTech comes over to where I'm working, I mention that the machine I'm sitting in front of is booting for eternity. He goes into the tech office which is right next to the library, and comes out with a machine labeled "LIBRARY PRINTER SPARE" because apparently they just have a few spares. He sets it next to the desk and asks me "can you hook this up" so I do. Takes me about 2 minutes; just keyboard/mouse/display/power/Ethernet and put the monitor on top. It was already configured as the old one was, so I boot it up and we're good to go. Back to the printers. He goes to test the other working machines by opening Chrome and printing the welcome screen, so the printer prints a bunch of Chrome welcome screen webpages. I've finished hooking up the spare, so I test too. Booting the machine next to me, we have "Windows cannot connect to the printer". Clicking "More Details it gives a hex value. Error 0x0000004C or something like that. I open Chrome and try to print. No printers listed, just the Save to PDF and MS Print to PDF ones by default. I call $SuperTech over and he stares at it for a few seconds. $SuperTech: barely audible "F***ing printers." He goes through the basics - opens Chrome, Ctrl+P, printers dropdown, See More. Just Save to PDF and MS Print to PDF. This is logged into my permissions-lacking student account, so he logs out and logs into his account, with full permissions. Goes to Chrome, Ctrl+P, printers dropdown, See More. Save to PDF, MS Print to PDF... and a long name that seems to be garbage, but had M604 in it. $SuperTech selects it, Enter, and... Nothing. So he goes into Windows' printer settings and re-adds them. They're back now, and printing works. He asks me to log into my account, and they're back! The printers are back again. He prints another Chrome page, and it works. Windows can connect to the printer. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 18 Feb 2022 10:16 PM PST Seeing a post about Novell NetWare reminded me of something that happened getting on for 20 years ago. As happens in large companies, they get "consultants"in. They decided that our perfectly serviceable, ultra reliable Novell NetWare system needed "upgrading" to Windows NT. This was very expensive, involving buying 6 new high end servers to replace the old Novell ones, sending us all on training courses and gradually migrating all the data and systems on to the new servers. Finally it got to the weekend of the Big Changeover where we would actually take the Novell servers offline. We had a representative from every department to check everything was working and hey presto! Jobs a goodun! Come Monday morning I'm in early just to be on the safe side. Walk into the office and the phone is ringing. I answered it to a panicked "Our systems are completely down! Help! So I nipped upstairs to take a look. This system was unrelated to ours apart from piggy backing on our network. It connected about a dozen terminals to an off-site mainframe they rented time on. One call to the Mainframe company tech support had them as puzzled as us. It had occurred to me my this time that it was rather a large coincidence that this failure coincided with the switching off of the Novell servers, so I slipped down to the server room and switched one of them back on, let it boot up and went back upstairs. Lo and behold, every thing was working again. It took us ages to find out why. About a month later I went in to the server room to find an engineer from the mainframe company doing maintenance on their Comms equipment. I got chatting to him and he told me that this kit was ancient and should have been replaced years ago but nobody wanted to pay for it. Then he said something that my ears prick up. He said that the terminals used IPX/SPX protocol rather than TCP/IP. This is what the old Novell system used. So a bit of digging later led me to discover that IPX/SPX needs a Novell NetWare server to act as a "session manager". The correct solution, of course would have been to upgrade the Comms to TCP/IP but the cheapskate company wouldn't pay, so we just left the server switched on. [link] [comments] |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Tales From Tech Support. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment