The monitor didn't work but the problem was between the user's ears How do you people survive at work? We're asking because in this week's edition of On-Call, our weekly reader-contributed column sharing tales of IT support, reader “Chilli” brings us a very frustrating story. Chilli once worked for an outfit that had 300 remote depots, all of which turned to he and the rest of the IT for phone …
Not a true story. Agreed - we've all heard it. You missed off the punchline about putting it back in the box and sending it back because "You're too f'ing stupid to use a computer".
However I have seen a PC that wouldn't power up despite everything being plugged in. The plug from the multi-adapter that fed the PC / montitor etc was plugged back into one of its own spare sockets instead of the wall....
I find it isn't generally the bog-standard desk pilots who forget to turn the sockets on. It's us lot, the techies that really do think we know better, and have sat there for 30 minutes convincing ourselves there is something seriously messed up deep within the innards, before making the decision to expose some live terminals and taking the next step of unplugging the.... oh... *headdesk*
"I find it isn't generally the bog-standard desk pilots who forget to turn the sockets on. It's us lot, the techies that really do think we know better, and have sat there for 30 minutes convincing ourselves there is something seriously messed up deep within the innards, before making the decision to expose some live terminals and taking the next step of unplugging the.... oh... *headdesk*"
I have an interesting one from years back. A client who has their heads on reasonably straight reports a PC is dead. I turn up and go straight for the power supply and verify it's dead. I order one, it comes, I fit it, and just at turn-on, there is faint "pfft" and then continued deadness.
At this stage, I'm thinking the motherboard is killing the supply, but swapping with an adjacent box proves this wrong - it was indeed the PSU.
So, I order another one, where another one of the guys gets the job to fit it. He does, he gets another faint "pfft" and again, more deadness. So yes, he orders yet another PSU, it come in, he fits it, and this time properly scratching his head, now notices the 110/240 switch in the "wrong" position.
Turns out, this vendor (not mentioning any names: Compaq) distributes ALL their power supplies the same way, with the voltage switch set to 110v regardless of destination country. They forgot to tell us about it, didn't have any warning labels on it, so it took two techs to kill two supplies.
Turns out, this vendor (not mentioning any names: Compaq) distributes ALL their power supplies the same way, with the voltage switch set to 110v regardless of destination country. They forgot to tell us about it, didn't have any warning labels on it, so it took two techs to kill two supplies.
Which is presumably why, decades later, power supplies tend to be universal now. Eventuallly the feedback got through to the factories? (I think you'll find "used to distribute" would be more accurate)
"Which is presumably why, decades later, power supplies tend to be universal now. Eventuallly the feedback got through to the factories?"
It wasn't just a matter of decision. It took years of serious engineering to get universal input supplies good enough for mass market. Starting from notebook AC adapters where it mattered most. During development there were major obstacles like cost, complexity, reliability, conversion efficiency. Plus a zillion of lesser hurdles.
Try explaining to the new Commanding Officer in a military unit why it is that the power-cut has affected his office (not operationally essential) and yet all the sockets and lights in IT's office are still functional.
The operational reasons of making sure the office, DC and path to the DC stay live are obvious, but the explanation is somewhat undermined when it's pointed out that your coffee machine is plugged into one of the "essential" sockets.
The operational reasons of making sure the office, DC and path to the DC stay live are obvious, but the explanation is somewhat undermined when it's pointed out that your coffee machine is plugged into one of the "essential" sockets.
Coffee is essential in the US. Tea in Blighty. Anyone who says otherwise knows nothing about what actually flows in techie veins... besides beer, that is.
I was always fond of the one, from the days of dial-up, where a user rang support to complain that their internet/vpn/whatever wasn't working. Support go through all the steps you'd expect before discovering that said user is calling them on the line that also served as their dial-up.
Mystery solved.
" where a user rang support to complain that their internet/vpn/whatever wasn't working"
The classic one back in ISP days was people phoning up to complain the internet wasn't working, to discover that they weren't a customer (in some cases they didn't even have a modem).
Needless to say, this did serve as a marketing opportunity and we ended up doing a lot of (paid for) service calls to people who were customer of other (larger) ISPs because we'd actually get things fixed.
Unlike the local computer stores, that didn't mean "erasing the disk/reinstalling windows and destroying EVERYTHING on the hard drive" (usually masses of non-replaceable stuff such as accounting files and documents) in response to any reported issue.
We billed our own customers $100 a shot to sort that out, producing a report on what had been done, with specific instructions to recover the costs from the "repairer" concerned. After claims against a few of the outfits were upheld in small claims court, the practice rapidly stopped.
Whilst the issue of resetting the credentials was minor, the shops in question had been slagging us off/trying to sell them on another ISP (which paid them a commission for the sale) whilst fucking the customers over data-wise. In the end we were making more money from data/virus recovery services - because we could actually recover data, rather than just reformat/reinstall by rote - than from the actual ISP biz and we gained a bunch of very loyal customers.
Maybe an old IT joke but if you have worked for a company or customers and not received one of these calls then I am jealous.
Its only happened to me a few times, these are always the most annoying calls and most of the time the caller thinks the operator is telling them a pack of lies (Damn laptops for having batteries in and damn wired phones for working to allow said phone call).
I wouldn't lie to you, friends and neighbors. This did in fact happen to me in 1999, on Helldesk for a US retail chain, Upton's (long since gone). The store manager called me about "the network is down" including all POS terminals. After several minutes of checking this and that, I had her making sure the server was plugged in, she kept saying "It's too dark to see back there". When I discovered the lights were off, it finally came out that power was out for several blocks around the store. Idiot.
She truly never connected that the network and computers could not operate without electricity. Wasn't very happy when I pointed out that fact as I might to a four-year-old. Yes, this is a TRUE story, at least once in the history of the world. Sad as that may be...
Have some sympathy. The plain old telephone network still functions if the power is out. At least at home the PC is plugged into this magic socket, where it goes to at work will be a mystery. If the phone works during a power cut why not the PC/network that is plugged into the same wall socket?
Woeful education and training of the user but you, the professional, are working on a help desk. Just help OK.
I don't think it's as simple as that. Our building went through a spate of area power cuts. And I did get a couple of staff in the early days asking why the computer wouldn't go on, despite sitting in the gloom having just witnessed the lights ( and monitors) go off. But then, we also had one or two who couldn't get their heads round the idea that the pub over the road had also stopped serving.
"Crappy pub. Decent pubs will have hand pumps for the proper beer. Only lager comes from electric pumps"
Of course, you can have all the hand pumps you want, but they won't help when the tills and card machines go down, thus making it impossible for the pub to accept cards and potentially dangerous to accept cash.
>If I had a quid for every colleague who hadn't caught onto the fact that the monitor isn't "the computer" so switching it on/off doesn't of itself make computing happen I'd be a good few pints better off.
I've encountered a few people who referred to the monitor as the 'computer', and the PC itself as the 'hard disk', and I've never been in (paid) IT support.
So, anecdotally, accounts like Terry's are (or at least were) far from rare.
I've encountered a few people who referred to the monitor as the 'computer', and the PC itself as the 'hard disk', and I've never been in (paid) IT support.
My head teacher for the last 4 years does this. I correct her every time. I thought thing would change wen she got a portable hard drive - which she calls the usb.
When we were putting somewhat secure PCs on office desks in 1996, they came equipped with removable hard disks which were supposed to be locked away at night. Several folk discovered that instead of doing the whole "Start, Shut down", power off thing at home time, you could get out of the door a few seconds earlier just by yanking the spinning RHD out of its slot and slinging it in the cupboard. Needless to say, file system corruption and disk damage ensued. In one (perhaps apocryphal, who remembers?) instance, the user complained that the open document he had been working on wasn't there when he plugged the disk back in the next morning.
Saw something similar to this in the late 1960's. The IBM 360/30 in question had removeable hard disks (2311's with a whopping 7.5MB capacity if you must know) and the operators would 'speed up' disk swaps by opening the enclosure before the disk had stopped spinning and use their hand to stop the disk.
Management put an end to that after the platters on a disk were warped by such operator antics.
operators would 'speed up' disk swaps by opening the enclosure before the disk had stopped spinning and use their hand to stop the disk.
Classic design flaw. The creators of the machine couldn't conceive of anyone being so stupid, so they didn't integrate some sort of interlock to prevent this kind of abuse, but anyone who designs something like this today deserves a solid smack to the side of the head. And that includes USB hard drives that can be (and often are) unplugged before the last write is complete.
Who insisted on us sending someone out to "fix" her computer.
Every time we arrived, we'd find the program in question had been minimised and pointed this out when producing the bill and report. She swore blind that it was our fault and she hadn't touched anything - nor did she seem to understand how to restore the program from miminized position.
This went on for several months - eventually her husband admitted to minimising the program so he could run something else. *sigh*
35 years ago, disc drives were standalone, waist-high units, each with their own off/on button and a set of lights that indicated off/on status, disk activity, etc.
One morning one of my customers - an NHS consultant pathologist - phoned up and said they couldn't get the lab minicomputer system started.
I went through a number of basic questions. I didn't know their exact configuration, so I asked "Are ALL your disk drives powered up?". The answer was in the affirmative.
Couldn't get the damn thing to start up. Then a colleague, who knew their configuration, came into the office. He asked "Are BOTH your disk drives powered up?".
"Oh! No - I haven't turned one on. That'll be it. Thanks."
Working on helpdesk, call came in, stuff not working, found out it was power outage on top floor (apparently there was a kettle with a dodgy plug and anytime anyone boiled for a cuppa there was a chance it'd trip all the sockets on that floor).
The person ringing me was one of the most IT illiterate people I've ever met and she often had issues of a similar calibre. But yes, complaining about her PC when the power was off took the cake.
After the above, criticising users for not thinking is a little mean, but after: "Mouse not detected. Click here to change" the word hypocrisy springs to mind. Imagine how much users would laugh at us if someone programmed computers to put the clocks back one hour on the last Sunday in October at 1:00am _local_ time.
In a similar vein: disconnecting the VGA plug of the computer of your "favorite" coworker and putting it back just so it looks connected but isn't.
Using remote desktop to move mouse occasionally (just slightly) and introducing typos.
Swapping mice between adjacent desks (each now moving the cursor on the other screen).
Disconnecting plug and reconnecting after clear varnish was applied.
Inverting vertical on screen and turning monitor upside down.
Redirecting names like facebook in the DNS to very NSFW sites.
Setting mouse acceleration to very fast or very slow.
Inverting directions of mouse movement.
Full screen image of a desktop, of course nothing can be clicked.
Setting max delay of double click very short to make double click virtually impossible.
Leaving a file named '* you are an idiot'.
Early Sun workstations had the audio device (connected to a loudspeaker) left 'world writable'. One of the developers had recently acquired a new system and was still learning her way around it, when a colleague on the floor above remotely copied an audio file to her audio output.
His timing was unwittingly perfect, she had just completed a successful demo to a visiting manager when her system burst into Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus". According to others in the office she looked stunned, spluttering "It's never done that before".
I recall at university sitting in front of a Sun SPARC workstation which suddenly started to play the theme from Mission Impossible, whilst my friends sniggered on the other side of the room.
Slightly later on there were some SPARC IPX (I think), which had floppy drives. Of course that led to a spate of remotely unmounted floppies.
in the old days when the monitor power was daisy-chained out of the back of the PC, I connected a novell netware server to the output power socket on my colleague's PC, and connected his monitor power and VGA to the output of the netware box. when he turned the PC on, the monitor turned on and he saw netware booting up.
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