My computer won't turn on Tech Support |
- My computer won't turn on
- Tech Support or Moral Support, Whatever Works.
- Hello, IT? I have a slight issue with my printer.
- Have you rebooted? are you sure?
- Rules of Tech Support - Mantras and Phrases - 2022-06-4
- Small time victory
- "I cant connect my Imac to the Internet"
- Smoking is bad
| Posted: 14 Jun 2022 05:22 AM PDT $me: Hi, this is $me with $support. I have a ticket here that says your computer won't turn on. $user: Yeah, it won't turn on. It must have happened at 5:17 yesterday, that's the time on screen. $me: Ok wait, so you can turn it on? It's just frozen? $user: No, I can't turn it on. It says "Your session has ended, please log in again" and the time says 5:17. $me: So the computer is on? Like there's stuff on screen? $user: Yes, and the time says 5:17 One hard reboot later and she was back in business. Why can't users accurately describe basic problems or answer basic questions? "Is it on?" "No, but it's on" x.x The fuck do you think "on" and "off" even mean? Do you NOT see all that light pouring out of the monitor? Or the light on the power button? [link] [comments] |
| Tech Support or Moral Support, Whatever Works. Posted: 14 Jun 2022 01:04 PM PDT This happened this morning. Tech is having a problem with a device his company purchased through us. Said tech actually knows more about this device than I do because he has installed them and upgraded them and I have maybe seen one or two. I can tell he's exasperated, so I let him explain the problem and we try a few things. Default passcode works, that's good. But what followed wasn't making any sense. About the same time I found the suspected answer, in fact I wasn't really sure if he even heard me, he shouts an expletive and decries how he couldn't believe that's what it was and it it was so simple and we rejoiced. Now, I'm sure with a little more time, and a little more patience, he would have figured it out on his own. But all of us, no matter how good we are, or think we are can always use a voice on the other end of the phone to help them see through the fog. In person, we called it putting another set of eyes on the problem. In this case, I was the blind leading the one who just needed a little help to see. This was an additional great win for me as the president of my company personally assigned me to deal with this issue, and I didn't disappoint. [link] [comments] |
| Hello, IT? I have a slight issue with my printer. Posted: 13 Jun 2022 01:42 PM PDT This was said to me in the most calm tone of voice, the one that is usually reserved for when you talk about the weather or the neighbors new puppy, and I was in no way prepared to what followed. This was back in the day when I worked for the Government and was still an IT-Specialist in Training. There were two other people with me, we had been hauled off into a room that was just big enough to stack the IT equipment, three different tables and somehow squeeze in 3 people as well, and when we were not tasked with special stuff to do we were delegated to work on the IT Hotline. I was not expecting anything to happen, not on this day, but then the Phone rang. "IT, how can I help you?" I ask while Minimizing Cookie clicker to the background and disabling the keyboard binding to simulate mouseclicks via holding numpad 0. "Yes, hello." comes a very charming voice from the other end, "I have a slight issue with my printer." "Uhuh." In my head I already go down the various issues that had been reported before. We did have a rollout of new printers and the config of them was wonky at best. Fortunately there were 2000 of them in backlog so replacing them was easy as pie. "Oh right, you first need my name." The voice continues before reciting the name which I dutifully type into the web form to fill out the ticket. She doesn't even mind as I begin to type in that there is a printer issue and waits all too patiently for me to give the go ahead. "Alright Ma'am, what is the issue exactly?" "I am sorry?" which is followed quickly by my brain going into panic mode, "Which room are you seated in?" I make it in 30 seconds by taking the stairs and hauling myself down over several steps on the way down. On my way to the room I grab a fire extinguisher from a wall, the door is booted open and I like to believe that my mane was flowing in the wind as I struck a most heroic pose while bellowing: "IT! Where is the fire?" I am greeted by young man who looks a bit confused and a smiling older woman. "Oh dear, you didn't have to hurry that fast here." I inform the two that I am legally disabled and can not smell anything but I will just take their word for it. I also tell them NOT to plug the printer in again, I will get them a new one. The trip back to the third floor is not as quick as I get my heart below hummingbird rate, grab myself a new printer and on the way back tell my pals in the IT room that they please assign the new printer to Room 102. When I return is the printer fortunately NOT plugged in, they listened to me. The new printer replaces the old one quickly and the younger guy cheerfully exclaims that he can already use it for printing. You can say what you want about the IT of this particular Government branch, but they made sure that stuff like that worked as flawlessly as possible. All is good as I take the Fire spitting printer back up, place it on the work bench while my boss comes by and smirks. "You look exhausted." "I am." His smirk grows only smugger. "Did you actually have to do some physical excercise this time?" I admit, I am lazy, unless I have to run I don't. "Yeah, the printer was spitting fire. Had to get there quickly. I'll send you the ticket in a few." If he had a monocle it would have popped out for dramatic effect while I go back to the IT room and fill out the ticket. Subject: Printer is on fire. I save the ticket, send it away into the ether for someone else to finish it and go back to cookie clicker. The printer is gonna get written off anyways and no one is gonna bother repairing it. [link] [comments] |
| Have you rebooted? are you sure? Posted: 13 Jun 2022 04:10 PM PDT I work in the IT world and currently working in IT help desk. This guy calls in complaining that his computer is too slow. I tell him to reboot the PC and he hangs up. He calls back like an hour late stating that computer is still running too slow. I asked him if he rebooted, he said he forgot because he got busy, so I tell him to reboot. He called a 3rd time a few hours later stating once again that his PC is too slow. This time I'm fed up with it and try to remote in. My software that I use tells me many details about the computer in question including how longs it's been on. 9 days. It's been on online for 9 days straight, I remote in. check updates, nothing. do a disk clean up and optimization to make him happy, then I reboot the computer. He hasn't called since. I have no emails, no missed calls, no nothing. Care to guess what solved his issue? yep. The reboot. Edit: to clear something up, many of you have stated that 9 days uptime isn't very long. You are correct. I brought this up because it confirmed that he never rebooted the PC. After I rebooted it the uptime went from 9 days to a few minutes. [link] [comments] |
| Rules of Tech Support - Mantras and Phrases - 2022-06-4 Posted: 14 Jun 2022 01:08 PM PDT These two are so short that I am combining them in this post. Feedback is appreciated and Rules don't have to be serious. These are also available at https://github.com/morriscox/Rules-of-Tech-Support MantrasOM1 - Mentat Mantra (Dune modified)It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. OM2 - We the Willing mantraWe the willing, led by the unknowing Phrases by tech supportPhrase P1 - "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"Phrase P2 - "Is it plugged in?"Phrase P3 - "Unplug it and plug it back in again."Phrase P4 - "While you're here..."Phrase P5 - "We did something on our end and you need to restart for it to take effect."Phrase P6 - "Humor me."Phrase P7 - "Try it again."Phrase P8 - "Please do the needful."Phrase P9 - "You can just use Google."[link] [comments] |
| Posted: 13 Jun 2022 05:58 PM PDT TL;DR at the end In the interest of being vague, I have a mostly non-technical role in a decidedly non-technical department in a large national (US) corporation. We resolve tasks on certain issues that have been through other departments first - Primarily one I'll just call OtherDept. Sometimes tasks go into hiding... (misdirected faxes and the like). There is a Very Important Timeframe for each task, that if it goes past... Bad Things happen. This story starts with me enjoying a nice Friday late afternoon... Just kidding, it was a mad scramble, like every Friday, with a sprinkling of several tasks that had been hiding. Most of these single socks had been wrapped up in the past couple hours; the last one is with an excellent coworker ($EC). It's about 4:45 Pacific Time, and $EC is on the last step of the last task, which is adding the final resolution to the program that OtherDept uses. With the end of the day in sight, I grab a fresh cup of Tea with two bags like the heathen I am - after all, it's Dungeons and Dragons night - *bing* IM pops up ----------------------------------- Here is where I pause for a flashback... You see, this program of OtherDept is their "new" program as of about 18 mos prior. Because of the vast amount of data, workflows, laws, and other Very Good reasons, the customers, data, and departments are being moved to this NewProgram over the course of about 2-3 years. We're about 18 months in now. Most of the tasks that we deal with are in this new system now. For the past year, nearly every evening somewhere between 4:30 and 5:30 Pacific Time for 10-20 minutes the system goes down. It's excellent for stress levels and trying to finish one last thing at the end of the day (not!) 9 months prior $EC had raised a stink about it to our IT folks working with the NewProgram folks and the final answer was basically: ----------------------- Back to the main timeline--- I should mention, that while this is a Nationwide company, most of the customers and decision makers are on the East coast (3 hours ahead). I should also mention that at the time of this story, I was freshly upgraded to Lead, newly minted semi-IT as an access requester for our systems, and had the honeymoon energy of someone who hasn't yet realized what changes they can't accomplish. I knew that NewProgram support wasn't going to listen to the complaints of our immediate team - it was only 4 of us that worked "late". I reached out our SisterDept that also uses that program - only about a dozen more. Hmm... 5:00 pm Pacific time and I start popping up org charts in MS Teams and messaging West Coast grunts in OtherDept as well as AnotherDept that we don't work with at all, but I know uses this application. I message at least one grunt on every team... It's better than I thought - they plan their day so they don't have to use this program for the last half hour - no small feat, since basically everything they do is in it. By the time I'm done, I have a list of about 10 impacted teams and about 150+ grunts. Also that it's getting worse. It was 10-20 minutes. Now it's routinely 20-30 minutes. I list the name of the Supervisor for every team I found that was impacted and the number of people. ... I get a follow up meeting with my company IT! Awesome! We talked about the issue, he promised to follow up w the vendor for NewProgram, But then... nothing for a couple weeks. I figure his hands are tied, but I'm not done. Because, guess what... $EC and another coworker have a meeting with him and the vendor for NewProgram about a completely separate issue - and guess who just happens to get the invite forwarded to them. So I show up at the meeting with my nice voice and a pocketful of CorporateSpeak. Gotta give my tech guy ($TG) his ammunition! As the discussion on the other topic wraps up... $Me: (with my Very Nice Voice) Oh, well, in our experience the Larger Issue is that it's often closer to 20-30 minutes, especially lately. And it's Very Disruptive for those working Pacific time, which per my ticket is over 150 people. That's a lot of PRODUCTIVITY being lost. Not to mention the RISK of missing the Very Important Deadline... $TG: Ah, well, in light of that, NewProgram Vendor... maybe it's possible that we can try to reconsider the time that the script runs? ... 3 weeks later (ie, at lightning speed for corporate), we got a notification that the next update of NewProgram would have the daily running of the Very Important Script pushed back to 5pm PT. Oh - and for anyone worried, the program did come back up in time that day so that we didn't miss the Very Important Deadline. ---------------------------------------- TL;DR Small time victories! Edit: Words and formatting are hard some days... [link] [comments] |
| "I cant connect my Imac to the Internet" Posted: 13 Jun 2022 12:06 PM PDT Hello there! This is my fist post so I hope all of you enjoy it. To put you in situation I work in tech support for a grand TELCOM company. I usually work as Back Office but when its required , sometimes i take calls to help the Frontdesk to keep a good service level. Today I was taking calls when the next call ocurrs: A Lady, lets call her Imac-lady, says that she is having many issues with her internet connection and last time that a tech went to her home, didn´t change the router but the tv decoder. So After a brief complaining about our tech services it starts: $Imac-Lady: My internet doesn´t work. I cant connect my Imac. $Me: Are you connecting via WIFI or via Cable? $Imac-Lady: WIFI. After a few questions its clear that she is only having trouble conecting the Imac, other decives connect perfectly. So I start making the tipical troubleshoting for this case: $Me: Can you see your WIFI SSID on your Imac´s disponible networks list? $Imac-Lady: Yes $Me: Can you connect? $Imac-Lady: No. $Me: Any error messages? $Imac-Lady: No $Me: Ok, Im gonna remote log into your router to see if there is any isue with your wifi configuration. So i remot log and there is, Imac-Lady`s Imac connected. So I say: Pardon lady, Im seeing your Imac conected to your Wifi , ¿What's the trouble? $Imac-Lady: Google doesn´t work, it stays blank. $Me: ¿Can you write in the browser any web that you use oftenly? $Imac-Lady: The web browser doesn´t open. $Me: Ma'am, a web browser must open even without an internet conn.. I heard an incomprehensible gibberish and - click. What a nuke sized dumbass I just dodged!, I think to myself. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 13 Jun 2022 08:34 AM PDT *Disclaimer: got carried a bit away while writing and probably overdid it a lot while describing. But i hope it is still entertaining* We "on site" or "on foot" admins probably see and smell the craziest stuff people have to offer. I read stories here about cat urine and dumpster offices so i'm not alone. I'm not squeamish. I worked for 5 years in the public sector more presicly healthcare. I've seen and smelled stuff most people would have fainted. Most of them aren't stories for TFTS but i still give you two of the worst examples. The container of surgical waste that was forgotten for a week in the sun in the summer i found. Me strolling through the halls of the surgical center thinking "hmm somehow smells like kentucky fried chicken" getting hungry for my break when i realised i was close to the break room but closer to the operating room were they were cautherizing *something* and the break room was behind a (google said it) Airlock Now that you have an idea what i can stomach i will tell you the story about the office that made me vomit. We had a ticket from a doctor that needed a new computer in his side office. Most of the chief staff had multiple offices. One in the main building, a few shared offices and one in a secondary building. There they had a bed, tv and stuff to chill after a hard shift when they were too tired to drive home or to just have some time for themselves to work on stuff in peace. It was a bit like their apartment. Most would have their own furniture. At that time we didn't have any central software management or something like that. We had outlook a special centralised software system and most of our admin stuff we did with a remote application so there were a lot of computers i never even touched. The ticket i got this faitful day stated "Computer old and slow need a new one" So i start to work on this guys computer...it was simple i remoted in copied his profile installed all programs and went for his office. It was in the same building as IT so i didn't need to go outside into the searing summer heat. At least i got that going for me which is nice. After a bit of searching i found the room. Do you know the feeling you get when you walk inside an old public building 60s-90s era where smoking was the norm? The cold icky feeling on your skin? The smell of cold smoke? I hadn't even opened the door that much and i got a whiff of that so hard it threw me off. This will be great. Just for everyones knowledge. Smoking was forbidden in this building. The small "data center" we had was in that building too and a "top of the line" centralised fire alarm system. We used the bad stuff to flood the DC the one that kills you but it was cheap. You could cut the air in this room like butter it was that thick. The light that came through the browned window and browned curtain could bareley light up the room because a cloud of fine ash got whipped into the air when i opened the door. The brownish light rays coming in, looked like i was in a Fallout game. Everything in this room had a fine layer of ash on top. There was a big bookshelf with all kinds of medical books. Some of them i knew should be white, because i seen them in other offices, but those were yellow brownish. He had a big oak desc in the middle, a once white leather sofa to the side and a small bed close to the wall where the windows were. At last the bedsheets were fresh and white. The first thing i got were my rubber gloves and a one of those masks....i knew before corona that those fuckers dont do shit. At least i didn't had to crawl under his desk ontop was enough. There were so many files and stacks of paper on that desk if the legs broke while i was under there it wouldve crushed me. At least a dozen ashtrays in reach of the desk full to the brim of the worst brands of cigarettes and even friggin cuban cigars. There were more scattered across the room and even the once paper bin was filling up. A bin with meshed walls is NOT suited to hold ASH. I was already feeling sick. My skin felt like i had rubbed two packs of butter on it and somehow i was extremly cold even though it was 22°C. I started to unplug those cables on the back of his computer. That thing must've been from 1996....or maybe it was white once?....you know the era of beige computers because you couldn't see the smoker grime on it? I also took the freedom to replace keyboard and mouse as well as his monitor. (Both keyboard and monitor has burn marks and a significant amount of ash inside) The monitor was the worst. It had so much grime on it, it was slippery (the room also had a really high air moisture). After i was done i felt horrible like i was sick for days. My nose was stuffed and my lungs burnt and i had the need to throw up. I should ask if i get a raise for working in hazardous environments... I threw keyboard monitor and mouse directly into the garbage but i had to remove the harddrive from the computer first. I carried it as careful as possible into our workshop because it drizzeled ash everywhere when i shook it too much. My colleague was already in there cleaning out a set of computers from different offices....with the air hose nozzle of a compressed air system... The only thing i remember was him askin if it needs a cleaning and him aiming the nozzle at me then it went kinda dark...i dunno the next thing i know is me above the toilet seat unwillingly reverse eating my breakfast. Never ever did i ever go into that office again and now i know why that building always had that 80s feeling for me even though it was renovated. The irony? That guy is an onkologist....sadly not lung cancer but close. TLDR: Chief Doctor ist heavy chainsmoker and his secondary office looked like mount saint helen went off. I had to replace his pc. Smell and grime was so bad i almost vomited. My colleague made mount saint helen actually go off inside our workshop in an accidental assassination attempt on me with an airhose nozzle aimed at the old pc all my self control was for nothing and i decorated our bathroom with my breakfast. Shouldn't have eaten the last piece of apple pie. Edit: I realize my intricate description of this place was really painting a bad picture for the character of this doctor. Please don't think this, he is a really nice guy. When he learned about the incident he gave me a hand full of giftcards for a local cinema where he knows the owner (at least 10 movies worth) He felt reallz bad. He just didn't have awareness for this problem. Yes i talked to him about the firehazard and stuff and he later moved his smoking habits to the roof terrace. [link] [comments] |
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