Time for a cracker joke: What's got one ball and buttons in the wrong place? How many sleeps 'till Christmas? We don't care, because here at El Reg, we count in On Calls, and we can tell you there are plenty to come, so fret not. This week's On Call column of tech problems solved with panache stars not one, but two basic user errors that took very little thought to fix. Just the kind of thing the IT …
The team was having the weekly meeting in bosses office. Boss wants to show us the usual performance figures and turns her laptop round so we could all see it, explaining that the poke mounted dirty big monitor (DBM) on her desk had stopped working
I looked across her desk. The DBM was edge on to me and I could see the mains power rocker switch.
Yes, it was off.
With a suitable "excuse me", I leaned across the teak and tipped the power switch, explaining that these things work much better when turned on.
Anon ' cos she might read this .
Just a few months back, I received a non-starting LCD TV from another section of where I work that was hoping I could fix it (I pull a lot of monitors and TVs from e-waste, about half of which just need new power supply capacitors, so have that reputation). When I benched it ready to unscrew the back and check the caps for obvious bulges, I noticed there was a rocker switch under the bottom of the bezel. In just the right place so that if the TV was placed on the floor without its stand (such as when getting ready to wall-mount it), it would sit on the switch and flip it off. The switch turned out to be a secondary hard power switch (presumably to save power-conscious people the trouble of reaching behind to the power point). In fairness to my colleagues, the switch was quite discrete, and I only noticed it once I had the TV face down on the bench with the bottom of the bezel towards me.
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Interestingly, you can put a Yubikey USB dongle into an RJ45 port! I was talking on the phone and trying to sign in and was looking at the screen, whilst sticking the dongle in the side of my laptop, it went in, but no ding sound and it didn't light up. I looked down at the laptop and saw that it was stuck in the network port.
I have an ancient dell lattitude E6320 sitting in my 'scratch monkey' bin with one of these; the eSATA port was for an external drive bay; the USB connector was for normal USB things. (I want to say that the drive bay could let you swap the normally installed optical drive for a floppy drive, but I don't have the floppy drive that fits that specific dock.)
"you can put a Yubikey USB dongle into an RJ45 port"
With a bit of force you can fit any standard USB (A) connector into a RJ45 port.
As I found out when a user came to me complaining that their laptop dock/port expander wasn't working (well, actually they were complaining that their email wasn't coming through). When I got there my first thought was to check the ethernet cable, which was plugged securely into the dock, and the USB connection for that was also plugged securely into...the RJ45 port in their laptop.
I did congratulate them for managing to do something I had never thought possible, but they didn't seem that enthused.
If you're going to try this, pick an ethernet port you don't care about, it might well damage it a bit.
"...plugged into an ISDN TA rather than the 10/100 NIC. (Both RJ45)"
I used to see this a lot with German students turning up with hand-me-down PC's. Usually reported as a "No network" problem, and the sole RJ45 connector on the machine would be attached to an AVM Fritz! ISDN card.
They gave me a new PC to setup - and it came with an Ethernet card installed, and there was an Ethernet cable in the box - although, as I discovered later, the company was using a Token Ring network - I had never seen one until then, and wasn't able to recognize its connectors.
So I plugged the Ethernet card into what looked a Ethernet port under my desk - but it was actually a another phone line.
Later they explained someone should have showed up to replace the card, but that day he didn't.
I've seen this with some Openreach supplied xDSL filters here in the UK. The connector for the 'broadband' side is an RJ45 (bizarrely) . People see a port labelled broadband, with an RJ45 jack on it... and ... I get calls where the Hub (broadband modem router)* is still in the box because 'we didn't need it'. Which designer thought that connector choice was sensible.
*probably the same one who thought calling a combined modem router the same name as another piece of networking equipment was a good idea
@martin
Our splitters from open reach always had an rj11 on the "internet" side.. never seen on with rj45.
Still quite possible to stick an rj11 into a rj45 port on the back of a PC... My first job was tech support round the time that people were switching from 56k modems to dsl.. had this at least once a week.
About 2012 ish.
Our VOIP phones have two RJ45 ports. One for the LAN the other to daisychain a PC.
We used to keep spare Ethernet cables connected to the floor ports in the conference rooms.
So during a meeting a manager sees the unused Ethernet cable and open RJ45 port on the phone and gets the idea they should be connected.
Oh and Spanning Tree was not enabled.
Hilarity ensued for about an hour.
Found the phone. Manager confessed. Spanning tree enabled shortly thereafter.
"As a manager in IT, such a rookie mistake would be embarrassing,"
When was the last time any IT manager had any feelings, leave alone being capable of embarrassment? And the last couple of IT managers I had prided themselves on having no clue whatsoever about IT, only about management (at which they were also a disaster).
Anonymous because some of those IT managers are still alive and the one thing they excel at is holding a grudge.
I used to work for a global company that was trying to specialize in eLearning. Because of the "global" bit we started using conferencing software (Centra for those old enough to remember it). Our CEO found it extremely difficult to use, so during the conferences, I'd go into her office and literally guide her hand and mouse around, pressing on her finger to click. I rather admired her for admitting she was finding it difficult to use and not being afraid that the whole company could see me holding hands with her. ;-) (Reader, I didn't marry her).
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In my early life, I taught some basic computer intro courses for people who -mostly- never had used computers before. Once there was a lady who complained about the difficulty in using the mouse as the cursor moved on the wrong direction(s). Sure enough, the mouse's cord was under her wrist and all went smoothly after showing her the right way to hold the device...
I worked with a guy who used it like that, he had used them since they first came out (he was old school ICL) and was never shown the 'right' way until he had already got proficient like that. While pressing the buttons with the palm of his hand was OK I don't know how he got on with wheel mice.
"I worked with a guy who used it like that"
moron.
Did he have L & R written on his hands to facilitate driving.
" was never shown the 'right' way" FFS 20 seconds of using the thing you show you the right way.
If it dosent you are not a thinker and have zero independant thought processes , you are a programmable meatbag , you know , like in the beancounters office?
I've seen films where the zombies have more intuition than that.
Its lucky his mommy showed him the right way to dress himself , or he'd be walking arounf looking into the hood of his jacket.
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