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Welcome again to festive On-Call, in which we delve into the mailbag of not-quite-worthy-as-standalone contributions to keep the site busy as the world runs out of tech news before Christmas. Today: Sparky tales of electrical issues. Such as one from reader "Zeke", a sysadmin for a fleet of a few hundred PCs. One of Zeke's …

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  1. GlenP Silver badge

    Power Cables...

    I've had a few power cables not properly plugged in over the years. I always used to ask them to unplug them and plug them back in, try a different cable, etc. warning them that an engineer call would be chargeable if it was just that. They still wouldn't listen!

    Years ago when working for a small software house selling Apricots we always knew from the symptoms when a computer had been switched off or unplugged without being shut down. I had one user who insisted that this couldn't possibly have been the case, she'd left her desk for a few minutes and the data had spontaneously become corrupted. A couple of hours later she phoned back, very apologetic, her boss had managed to dislodge the power cable and plugged it back in hoping she wouldn't notice.

    33 0 Reply
    1. John Riddoch
      Reply Icon

      Re: Power Cables...

      Yup, had one when I was at uni. One of the students reported a PC wasn't working, so I followed her to the room. Sure enough, it wouldn't turn on. Went to check power socket, the plug was slightly out. Pushed it in, powered on the machine gave her a bit of a look as she was looking sheepish and wandered out without saying another word.

      10 0 Reply

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Power Cables...

          "Use latching IEC power cables!"

          It is surprising to me how iffy the standard ones are . Many times I've arrived at someones desk ( who's brilliant diagnosis of "I cant do my timesheet" turns out to be lack of 240v to base or screen ) and started swapping the leads around from screen to base to pc at next desk in order to establish if it the lead , the fuse or an actual fault with the Equipment. 9 times out of 10 , after a bit of swapping around the fault disappears and everythings working! Its kinda frustrating and a relief at the same time.

          6 0 Reply
        2. Alan Brown Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Power Cables...

          (latching IEC cables)

          Unfortunately these don't hold the plug in, but they do stop stuff coming out of the back of the computer.

          You can get PDUs with latching IEC sockets too:

          http://integra-pdu.co.uk/click-lock-pdu/

          There are also friction sleeves for PDU C13 sockets to stop them popping out (APC ones are terrible for this) - https://www.tripplite.com/c14-plug-lock-insert-for-c13-outlets-blue~PLC13BL/ - they're a bitch to use but they do stop accidental unplugging and they're cheap.

          Click-locks grab onto the earth pin and don't require a special plug or other malarky like virtually every other kind of locking connector does. They can be pulled out without releasing the grip, but it takes a hell of a pull. http://www.ieclock.com/videos/?slug=how-it-works--iec-lock-outlets

          These really are bloody useful when fitted to a PDU in the back of a rack or other cramped enclosure. It's just a pity you can't get locking 13A UK sockets.

          1 0 Reply
    2. Richard Gray 1
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Re: Power Cables...

      When it won't start up and I suspect the power cable, that is ALWAYS plugged in, I ask them to unplug the cable from the wall and the computer / monitor etc, "check it" and plug it back in... usually works then

      13 0 Reply
    3. Unicornpiss
      Reply Icon

      Re: Power Cables...

      A classic is with the last couple of generations of Dell laptops. If the power cable is about 1-2mm from being fully plugged into the machine or dock, the machine will operate on AC power, but no battery charging will occur. Drove us crazy until we realized what the cause was. Apparently the pin that provides telemetry doesn't quite make contact.

      18 0 Reply
      1. Dave K
        Reply Icon

        Re: Power Cables...

        >> "A classic is with the last couple of generations of Dell laptops. If the power cable is about 1-2mm from being fully plugged into the machine or dock, the machine will operate on AC power, but no battery charging will occur."

        Yep, had the same thing a couple of times at my site. Also had to deal with a couple of cases where other techs had replaced the docking station (with the not-quite-plugged-in power cable), then declared the dock as dead when the replacement one worked with charging.

        2 0 Reply
    4. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Power Cables...

      My favorite was always when they had managed to plug a power strip back into itself. *FacePalm*

      20 0 Reply
      1. Mark M.
        Reply Icon

        Re: Power Cables...

        Or though plugging in a power strip into another power strip that in itself was plugged into the latter power strip.

        The mains cables themselves was a huge spaghetti mess under the desk so unless the entire lot was pulled out, untangled and tidied up, the user had no way of knowing what was plugged into what.

        11 0 Reply
      2. Servman
        Reply Icon

        Re: Power Cables...

        I always love when someone calls the Hell Desk to complain that their laptop isn't charging only to find out it's at 98%.

        Since Lenovo won't charge if it's above 95%, it's an easy answer.

        0 0 Reply
    5. macjules
      Reply Icon

      Re: Power Cables...

      My favourites:

      Condom used as a SCSI terminator (amazingly it worked for a while)

      Chewing gum used as 10Base2 terminators (did not work)

      RJ-11 plugged into RJ-45 ports (Tech Support get in here NOW!)

      Spending 2 hours explaining to a graphics designer that a RasterOps display required a RasterOps graphics card, not "any one will do"

      Likewise "no you can't just throw any type of memory into a computer, especially the one you bought on holiday" - this when a 16Mb 30pin SIMM came in at around £1,000

      11 0 Reply
      1. Baldrickk
        Reply Icon
        Joke

        Re: Power Cables...

        You can throw *almost* any memory into a computer (dependant on space).

        It may rattle around though.

        19 1 Reply
      2. Andy Taylor
        Reply Icon

        Re: Power Cables...

        RJ-11 plugged into RJ-45 ports (Tech Support get in here NOW!)

        That's usually OK provided the other end of the structured wiring connects to a suitable device.

        2 0 Reply
        1. Down not across
          Reply Icon

          Re: Power Cables...

          That's usually OK provided the other end of the structured wiring connects to a suitable device.

          Quite. USOC and T-568A are quite coimpatible for even two phone lines (assuming RJ11 in this case is for POTS). This is not a coincidence. Of course plugging RJ11 into RJ-45 is not too kind on the outer pins and may well up damaging them.

          2 0 Reply
        2. Servman
          Reply Icon

          Re: Power Cables...

          If you're running 10 or 100Mbps, the equipment may not even notice if that analog line rings ("line 1" would be on pins 4 & 5 - the blue pair - which is theoretically not even connected. Never thought I could plug 89V into an interface designed for 5V and get away with it.

          0 0 Reply
    6. Andrew Moore
      Reply Icon

      Re: Power Cables...

      Got a callout to a remote site- machine not powering on. User insisted that they had checked the power cables and everything. I drove down (2 hours), walked into the office, and in full view of everyone picked the plug off of the floor and plugged it back in the socket. A quick check with the operator that everything was now working and I left for another 2 hour drive. The bastards even tried disputing my callout charge claiming that all I did was plug the computer back in.

      6 0 Reply
  2. Herby

    The first question you ALWAYS ask...

    Is the power plugged in?

    Second question:

    Is the On/Off switch in the proper position.

    Funny how this cures quite a bit of user (1d10t) problems.

    If you want to go further you can always ask:

    Are the lights on?

    17 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The first question you ALWAYS ask...

      "Are the lights on?"

      Yes, but nobody's home....

      38 0 Reply
    2. DJ Smiley
      Reply Icon

      Re: The first question you ALWAYS ask...

      Had a pharamcist one ring me, 'We can't dispense, the computer isn't working!' - after collecting the store details, asking is the computer on at all (no), they then decide to tell me the store is 6 inches deep in water due to a main that burst, and all the electrics are turned off, but they thought they should be able to power on this machine and dispense anyway!

      33 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The first question you ALWAYS ask...

        A colleague had similar from another pharmacist; she was locked out of her shop, and as a result "I can't dispense", which made it our problem as we supplied the dispensing software...

        19 0 Reply
        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: The first question you ALWAYS ask...

          "I can't dispense"

          With thinking like that it might have been for the best.

          18 0 Reply
      2. macjules
        Reply Icon

        Re: The first question you ALWAYS ask...

        That should have made the short list - Mr Sharwood could do worse than read through the comments and select the best ones, which are often far more witty than the original post.

        5 0 Reply
  3. Fihart

    My keyboard stupidity.

    Friend reported that her Sony laptop's keyboard was playing up. I too couldn't access certain letters on the keyboard and feared the worst because it persisted even after rebooting the machine. After some head scratching, turned out that this Sony's Num Lock remained on despite restarting the computer.

    Lesson learned -- though I never got round to testing whether this was normal for all brands as I avoid using laptops because the keyboards are, generally, so awful.

    In my defence, I should add that the Sony's Num Lock LED was particularly small.

    15 1 Reply
    1. ArrZarr Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: My keyboard stupidity.

      I've had a few times where people ask why Excel is asking oddly when they try and select cells with the arrow keys. They never explain it that way, of course; they just say that it's acting weird.

      Upon seeing the problem, I'll press the scroll lock key, smile and walk off.

      13 0 Reply
      1. GerryMC
        Reply Icon

        Re: My keyboard stupidity.

        Had this recently on my wife's laptop. Of course, being a laptop it wasn't obvious how to toggle it - or how it got turned on in the first place.

        0 0 Reply
    2. Baldrickk
      Reply Icon

      Re: My keyboard stupidity.

      It's a bios setting, usually.

      13 0 Reply
      1. Aladdin Sane
        Reply Icon

        Re: My keyboard stupidity.

        Number of times I've had to show people how to switch from US to UK keyboard settings or show them how to switch off shift-lock (caps lock is the worst thing ever to be put on a keyboard).

        11 0 Reply
        1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: My keyboard stupidity.

          (caps lock is the worst thing ever to be put on a keyboard).

          Its surprising how many people use it as a shift key - both I.T. literate and the muggles

          24 0 Reply

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

          2. usbac Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: My keyboard stupidity.

            "(caps lock is the worst thing ever to be put on a keyboard)."

            Agreed! At our company I have a number of users that do everything in all-caps. I sit at their computer and try to log in, only to find their Caps-Lock on! When I comment, the answer is always "x system requires everything to be in capitals". My answer is always "there is not a single system in our company that requires all capitals". Doesn't change anything.

            I swear, one evening I'm going to take a screwdriver and break all of the Caps-Lock keys off of every keyboard in the company. I wonder if anyone makes a keyboard without Caps-Lock? I could be a product idea?

            4 0 Reply
            1. Donn Bly
              Reply Icon

              Re: My keyboard stupidity.

              Superglue is your friend. Been there, done that, and blamed the stuck key on "it most be something you spilled into the keyboard, if you can live with it I won't tell the boss why we have to replace it"

              6 0 Reply
            2. Julian Bradfield
              Reply Icon

              Re: My keyboard stupidity.

              You can't break off the caps lock key - where else does Control go!

              5 0 Reply
            3. patrickstar
              Reply Icon

              Re: My keyboard stupidity.

              This is why God's greatest gift to Windows users is Ctrl2Cap.

              (You'll find it at Sysinternals and not your local church though)

              2 0 Reply
          3. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: My keyboard stupidity.

            "(caps lock is the worst thing ever to be put on a keyboard)."

            A tie, I fear, between Capslock and Numlock on laptops where it used to take over the right hand side of the keyboard.

            Although back when I got paid a bonus per fix, I used to love getting the jobs of "letter keys keep typing numbers". A five quid keypress, and try not to make the job card back to the customer too sarcastic.

            1 0 Reply
        2. druck Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: My keyboard stupidity.

          The BBC Micro had a CAPs lock and a Shift lock. Didn't seem odd a the time as it was my first micro, but very confusing if I try to use one now.

          4 1 Reply
        3. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: My keyboard stupidity.

          If only caps lock on a PC worked the way it did on (many? most?) manual typewriters and pressing shift would release caps lock. In a lot of cases that would self-correct the error reasonably quickly.

          9 0 Reply
          1. Anonymous Custard
            Reply Icon
            Mushroom

            Re: My keyboard stupidity.

            The one I always fall over when using French colleagues machines (with their keyboards) as the numbers are on the shifted keys there, with the punctuation etc being the "normal" keypress.

            Apparently it's designed that the users use the number pad for the numbers and so having them directly on the row above the letters on the keyboard is redundant. But of course this does not consider that a) they're the only ones that do this, so everyone else just gets confused and b) the laptops we have don't have number pads, although the external keyboards do.

            Hence when they're doing a lot of number work they use caps-lock (which puts the number row into number mode) and then tend to leave it that way.

            These days I just switch the thing over to UK language/keyboard mode, touch-type and be done with it. And of course get moaned at if I forget to switch it back when I finish.

            3 0 Reply
            1. My Coat
              Reply Icon

              Re: Hunt to blame for NHS attack

              Back when I programmed in perl, I used to use xmodmap to remap the row of number keys to the symbols (!, @, #, ...), and shifted press to the numeral (1, 2, 3, ...). Programmed perl in emacs for years without getting RSI, so it was worth the ten minutes to set up.

              1 0 Reply
            2. macjules
              Reply Icon

              Re: My keyboard stupidity.

              Try Swiss keyboards with multiple options for French, German and Italian layouts. I never understood the need for Alt Gr until I went there.

              1 0 Reply
        4. Naselus
          Reply Icon

          Re: My keyboard stupidity.

          "Number of times I've had to show people how to switch from US to UK keyboard settings..."

          Though this has allowed me to 'magically' guess when a user has a dollar/pound symbol in their password and yet mysteriously can't get it to log them in...

          2 0 Reply
          1. Mage Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: guess when a user has a dollar/pound symbol in their password

            I thought it was only £ and # that swapped (# is called pound some places rather than hash) also @ and " but never $. There are some other changes with ~# key and |\ key.

            2 0 Reply
        5. Mage Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Caps Lock

          I set dual shift to be caps lock (either cancels) and Caps Lock to be the Compose key. Mårvəll°ŭß…

          Keyboard US, paper size Letter, dates "wrong" etc. Default on Windows used to be USA regional Settings. Linux Mint asks at install time. Maybe Windows 10 does now? I forget.

          The numlock on laptops is a menace. Who uses it?

          1 0 Reply
      2. VinceH
        Reply Icon

        Re: My keyboard stupidity.

        "It's a bios setting, usually."

        But not the worst one I've encountered, on a laptop from a couple of years ago.

        It's common on laptops for the F1-F12 keys double up as system functions; press 'fn' and one of them to turn up/down the volume, brightness, whatever. But on this laptop, they defaulted to those system functions, and 'fn' had to be pressed to use them as F1-F12.

        I use a piece of software A LOT that uses certain of those keys, so it was bloody annoying until I found the relevant BIOS setting.

        12 0 Reply
        1. David Nash Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: My keyboard stupidity.

          'fn' had to be pressed to use them as F1-F12.

          That seems to be the latest trend. I guess the old Alt-F4 to close, F5 to refresh, F1 for help (only pressed by accident!) are not so much used these days and people are more likely to want to adjust the brightness, volume etc.

          But I hate that trend, and wherever possible switch it back.

          9 0 Reply
  4. Mugwump7

    Monitor weirdness

    I have three monitors on my Office PC. Shortly after I moved to my present location I found that one of them randomly goes black and mostly comes straight back on. Occasionally though it stays black and it is necessary to switch it off and leave it perhaps 10 minutes before I can get it back to life.

    Eventually I realised that this flicker only occurs when someone uses the shredder. It doesn't happen every time the shredder is used and it's better than it was now I have a surge protector extension lead on it, but it is still an annoyance.

    7 0 Reply

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Monitor weirdness

        "I have three monitors on my Office PC"

        Golly you must be busy :P

        I'd have 3 if I opened the laptop lid , but I find it's too many . I end up staring at one screen waiting for an app or dialogue box to open , only to find it popped up on a different screen !

        8 0 Reply
    2. Baldrickk
      Reply Icon

      Re: Monitor weirdness

      I found that using a spark igniter (the sort you can extract from a handheld gas firelighter) within about four or five metres of my keyboard causes it to instantly cease operation. No contact required. Even the backlight fails (I thought that the static backlight would be more resilient).

      It needs to be unplugged and re-inserted before it will work again.

      1 0 Reply
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A neighbour said her PC wasn't working properly. The mouse worked but the keyboard didn't. The keyboard was wireless - and then she said her son had just sent it to her. Had she put batteries in it? Yes she said. I opened it up anyway - and sure enough two brand new AA batteries in place - nose to nose.

    22 0 Reply

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