Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

After doing a routine install of an external modem on one of our clients computers, I was surprised to get a call a few hours after the customer picked up his system.

Me: Good afternoon, XXXX Computers, how may I help you?

Customer: Hi I just had an external modem installed in my computer this afternoon, and it doesn't seem like it tells me the modem is not responding when I try to dial.

After going through the usual questions, are there lights on your modem, is it plugged in to your COMPUTER, blah buh blah, after doing an AT test on it (and failing), reinstalling the driver, and making sure the second serial port was enabled in the BIOS, I was stumped.

M: Are you sure that the cable going from the modem to the back of your computer is connected?

C: Yes, oh wait, to the back of the computer or to the wall?

M: To the back of the computer (growing impatient with the incompitence of the caller)

C: What cable to the back of the computer?

M: (ready to jump through the phone and strangle him with his serial cable to show him what it was) Sir, could you check the box your modem came in, there should be another cable.

C: Oh, I didn't know I needed this one. (DUH!)

M: Sir, just hook up that cable in the only place it fits, and your modem will work fine. (CLICK)

I hung up and let out a yell of frustration. How could ANYONE be so stupid!!!

Today I encountered a user who thought she was

doing something nice for her friend. She found

a movie file on internet and sended it to her

friend.. She forgot that her friend uses a 28k8

modem to retrieve her mail, she also forgot to

check the size.. ah well, it was only 28 mb...

I work for a small PC hardware store. A while back I sold an internal PCI modem to a customer. I asked him repeatedly if he knew how to install it himself and he assured me he did. About an hour later he calls the store and I take the call. He tells me it won`t work so I go through all the usual stuff configuring, etc and after about half an hour I figure it`s hopeless. I even ask him to open the case and check so it`s properly plugged in the PCI slot. Since it seems to me he`s done everything right I ask him to bring his computer and modem down to the store and we`ll install and test a new one for him.

When he gets down to the store and I open the case I have to make a lame excuse sighting the call of nature. When I get out of the room I almost fall down laughing. The guy had somehow managed to put the modem inbetween two PCI slots. And this guy was an electrical engineer. Hope he`s not in a position of importance, say a nuclear power plant.

Caller from Ireland to our Tech Support Line

The caller complained that his HDD was failing due to the horrible noise it was making.

"It screeches at me when I start up the machine" he said.

"Let me hear it, put the phone near the PC and reboot" said out techie.

Sure enough, the guy puts the phone next to the PC and reboots. Our techie is startled to hear a high piched squeal come down the phome line.

"We will have someone out to sort that for you within a couple of days" says our techie, who has never heard anything quite like it!

Two days later out FSE arrived on site with the replacement HDD. Curious to hear the noise, he rebooted the PC. The machine booted fine, started Win 98 and only then did the high-pitches squeal start.

Only this time, the FSE realised that the noise was coming out of the speakers and not from the drive.

Unknown to the customer, he has associated a game .wav with Windows start up. A two second job in Control Panel and all was well.

I was doing Sales for a local ISP in my area. I knew not all customers were very bright, but this topped the top of the stupidity list.

I got a call from a customer:

Cust: I need to sign up for internet.

Me: Ok sir do you have atleast a 14.4 modem?

Cust: "I need a modem???"

ME: Well yes you do.

Cust: Alright I'll go get one.

Anyway, the customer calls back the next day with his new 14.4 modem. So I placed the order for him.

After I placed the order I suggested transferring him over to Tech Support so they could set up his computer

Cust: I Need a computer too!!!!

I almost died. I actually laughed so hard at him, he hang up, but it was worth the loss.

I just read a story here which is almost the same as I experienced recently. It's a tiny bit different.

For a newsletter type of thing that we publish on the Web,

a friend of mine does a lot of writing. At home he had no Internet,

until recently. So he did his Email at my office, and of

course I had to install all of that. He didn't know anything

about the settings, menu-options etc. except for reading, writing and sending mail.

I set the options for receiving mail on automatically receive it every 5 minutes.

So he never had to do a 'get mail'.

Recently I installed a copy of his mail program and his mail on his home PC,

because soon he would get an Internet connection. I told him that I would

set the option for receiving mail on manual, so it wouldn't try

every so and so minutes to get it automatically. And of course

I told him that he would have to change that option as soon as he got

the connection, and how he had to do it. He took notes...

Yesterday he called me. He was quite happy with the connection, surfing went

fine, sending mail too, but he never received mail. I did sent him quite some mail, so

I knew he had to have some mail by now.

Of course he never changed the option. He thought I would change that for him

at the office. And this guy is quite paranoid about people breaking into his computer...

Sometimes it's not just the (l)users who are clueless - other techies are also vunerable to "Didn't think of that" syndrome.

Anyway, here is my story - names withheld to protect the embaresed.

I work in Technical Support for a small company in the UK. My job is to support the customers of our products over the phone. We have a company to whom we have outsourced our interal IT support & they have a tech on site to fix problems as they occur. We get on quite well & help each other out from time to time even though it's not part of our job. They other day she calls me down because she was trying to transfer some files from one laptop to another and the (l)user hadn't given her the (removable) floppy drive. A few days before, in a similar situation, I had the same problem, so I loaded pcANYWHERE (I had the CD drive) & with a parallel cable, copied the files, no problem. She was trying to do the same, but getting in a complete mess. I tried helping over the phone, but decided to go and see what she had done. On arriving in her office, I did the usual checks - the cable was secure, pcANYWHERE was configured correctly and everything. Then I started pcANYWHERE to be a host on one laptop & clicked the icon of the other to be a client for File Transfer. As I did so, she said "What did you do that for? You didn't tell me to do that!" I explained the concept of a "Client" & a "Host" to her and then she suddenly realised what an idiot she had been! By this time the two machines had started chatting away and she was able to transfer the files. I don't think she'll ever live it down...

Keep the stories coming - it brightens up many a lunch break!

I work for a small company in Technical Support and speak to many people over the phone. Our products are sold to many highly inteligent, professional people (Professors, Council Officials and other experts in their field). Just occasionally I get a call that makes me wonder if people shouldn't have to have some training before using a machine.

Most of our systems are CD based and sometimes people install them wrong. A number of times I tell people to reinstall their software and they reply "Do I need to put the CD in?"

Our package can also connect to the Internet to download information from a secure server. I had the call from a lady who was trying to access this but because her modem shared her phone line, she had to use a phone on the other side of the office and kept walking backwards and forwards.

Finally, the funniest complaint I've had. In order to make our program fit on a user's screen one of my colleagues changed the screen resoloution (from 640x480 to 800x600). The (l)user calls me up the next day and says that everything on her screen is "smaller"!!

I take calls from end users who have a hard time dialing in to our Database.

On this particular day I receive a call from a man who is having a hard time inputting his ID #

"On line service this is David"

"Yeah wat's the problem over there this time?"

"I don't believe we are having any problems right now, what seems to be the problem?"

"I know my way around computers very well infact I consider myself an expert, You always have problems and I wish you would get your act together"

"I fyou could tell me whats going on I may be able to help you"

"It is not me it's your end thats broken, I try to dial in and as soon as I start to put in my ID# it kicks me off. I am paid up and know what I am doing. Just fix the problem already."

"Sir, when you enter your ID, are you using the number keys on the right side of the Keyboard?"

"Yes I am."

"Is the Num Lock light on?"

"Who turned the Num Locks off?"

Working in a computer store a guy came in with a week old newly bought Pentium II 350 with 64 MB SDRAM that we`d just sold him. He complained that when he was working in Ms Paint it was incredibly slow. I thought, that can`t be, he must be mixed up. Paint is a small program and should be no problem for a machine with those specs. Not to familiar with Paint it took me a while to find the problem. It seems that when you open Paint it opens a predefined empty picture for you. The thing is that normally this is set to something like 1024x768 pixels. Well this genius had set it up to 1024x768 INCHES. No wonder his computer slowed down to a crawl.

A couple years ago I got a call from a long time family friend, couldn't get his computer to boot up. When I arrived I was rather surprised to see a Xerox-green screen computer with an external dual 5.25" floppy drive for booting purposes connected to a daisy-wheel printer.

I was even more surprised when they showed me how they boot from one floppy then change it for another with application on it (data disk in drive 2). The outer-casing on the bot-floppy was worn completely through and the media itself was directly exposed over an area about 1 sqaure inch. How's taht for a durable program. Turns out they had been usign this system for something like 20 years and had never once made a backup copy of the only floppy disk that would boot the thing. The final surprise, after blowing the dust out of the drive and copying to a new floppy I got it to work.

I work for a Local Sacramento ISP, **IP. The other day I recieved a call the other day from a man who asked why some pictures looked better on his computer then on the web. I responded that it depends on how the people got the picture on the computer and the program your using to view it.

He then told me he was thinking of hosting a web site and wanted to know our prices. I asked him if he wanted a domain name of his own. Then I explained what a domain name was and told him the prices. He respond with "Would you host a XXX site" I respond with a simple "no". He then asked "how about just an X site." I then expained that we don't host pornographic web sites or ones with any nudity or near nudity because they cause to much traffic for our servers. He then asked if we would host it as a co-location. I one again told him no and was nearly in tears holding my laughter in. He then hung up on my......Thank you have a nice day!!!

I work for a large ISP and this just happened to me tonight:

Me: What type of modem do you have.

Customer: It's the one that came in the green box.

Me: (mute the call) Doh!!!

Working in the IT department for my firm in a large office building, we naturally get some odd queries.

"So and So said that if I email this document it will crash the computer becuase its in colour. Can you email it from here?"

I work for an American ISP. Now, I just took this strange call, which just proves how much people do NOT know about computers...(and I wasn't even ON the tech line!)

Me: Good afternoon, thank you for calling ---- Online Services, are you calling about your copy of the free software?

Caller: Yes I am.

Me: Are you running at least Windows 95?

Caller: I'm running 98 with Office 98, well, actually, I was running Office 97 and my friend showed me how to make these colored borders but my office upgraded to Office 98 and now it doesn't work. Will your software allow me to make the colored borders?

Me: Uh, sir, our software has nothing to do with Microsoft Office. Our software is for e-mail and Internet access.

Is it possible that users are getting worse?

I was on a Hotline server that I frequent (for those of you who don't know, it's a chat/file/news server solution available at www.hotlinesw.com) when someone asked if anyone could help them with their speakers... "any thoughts (other than 'are they plugged in?') would be appreciated."

He has one of the Yosemite (blue + white) G3s, so we went through the normal Sound options, with no luck.

Finally, i decided to try something else:

bigdog) are you sure they have power now?

fulgore) yeap

fulgore) the green light is on

bigdog) is there a volume dial on them?

fulgore) yeap

fulgore) its turned on to where it would be pretty loud if they were werking

bigdog) do you have them plugged into your sound-in?

fulgore) lemme make sure

bigdog) well,

bigdog) can you still hear sounds?

bigdog) through the internal speaker...

fulgore) yes

fulgore) hmm

bigdog) then you've got them plugged in wrong or not at all

fulgore) maybe i put it in the sound in

fulgore) ill feel like a doofus if i did

bigdog) that's what I'm guessing

fulgore slaps himself

Silly users.

I work the late night shift @ a large ISP tech support

center. We support about 50 different companies across

North America, so I deal with almost every walk of life

and level of inteligence. Here's a couple of stories.

#1

---------------------------------------------------------

Tech Support Rep - "Thank you for calling tech support,

this is XXXX speaking, may I have your username please.

User - "Oh, yes, hello. It's XXXX. "

Tech Support Rep - "Ok, great, I have you on file here, what

can I do for you this evening?"

User - "Um. What's my username?"

Tech Support Rep - "Uh, excuse me?" (wondering if she didn't

realize that she gave it to me not 10 seconds ago)

User - "Just want to know my username so I can log on."

Tech Support Rep - "uuuh..it's XXXX."

User - "Ok, thanks!" *click*

That's just one of those calls your left sitting staring at

the computer monitor.

#2

---------------------------------------------------------

Here is an actual tech log from one of our calls. Most of us do it in

point form....

- User's son was having a sleep over and it looks as though he was cracking

passwords for XXX sites.

- Error message was: IP number being traced and will contact your ISP

- The father is on the phone

- Father is very uspet that he will lose his account over this. I explained

that I do not know the exact steps here, that this information more times

than not is just logged for future reference in the event that it happens

again. I asked him if he knew what site his son went to, he said he didnt

know, he said that he just clicked on one button and and it came up. I told

him to to get as much information as possible in the event that this site

gets in touch with XXXXX ISP. He then told me that it was his son and

this 2 friends, all the age of 10. I told him that due to the severe young

age of the kids, odds are there will only be a slap on the wrist, but I could

not promise that. I told him I cant really promise anything at this point,

but I gave him all the info he would need in the event that XXXX ISP

does get in touch with him. User is very worried that he will lose his

account over this. I tried to comfort him and let him know that odds are,

this is just a warning, and if it is sent to XXXX ISP, that to get all

the info on this situation, and that calling into tech support to report

the incident was a good thing to do. Then he asked if he should call into

XXXX ISP himself, and I told him not to call them, wait and see if they

get in touch with him, as there is a chance that thie www site wont even

report to XXXX ISP. He then asked how prevent this from happening, I

told him about cybersitter, and cyberguard, etc... but also told him not to

put 100% faith in these programs, as nothing is foolproof. I gave him my

email address and my name if he needs any more information. He asked if

XXXX ISP would have access to this information, I said yes, and that

calling in to report it wasa good thing to do. I told him to relax, that

nothing will happen until Monday if anything at all. He said thank you, and

was going to talk to the boys about what happened.

Another funny thing about this call was that halfway through the conversation,

we tried to explain to him that "Any Joe Blow" off the street could have received

the same error message. He went silent, then said "Joe Blow, that's me cousin!" We

looked at the username on the techlog, it was listed as his first name initial then "bloe"

heheheheh..

I am having an interesting week where I work. I want to say, this isn't really a tech call, but I thought it should be here. This is a call at the ISP I work for.

Caller: I'm calling about your $400 rebate offered with ***** ****** computers. Can I use the account on a completely different computer and still get the rebate?

I wanted to tell him that what he was asking me is illegal.....

-------------

Then there's the caller who gave me three different zip codes before he got the right one (none of them related at all) and couldn't spell the name of the city he lived in...

Is someone polluting the water supply or something?

I work in the tech support dept for a software company that makes construction management software. One of our products is a couple years old (with recent updates). Some of the older versions of this product are not Y2K compliant. When customers call in with these older versions, we send them out CDs with the most recent (and Y2K compliant) versions.

One day, a woman calls in, having problems installing her software. While explaining the problem to a Help Desk analyst, she mentions that she had an older version installed on her computer, and that she had asked for the new CD so that she would be "KY compliant."

We all had a good laugh over that one....

'C'= customer

Me: Welcome to Compuserve, How can I help you?

C: Yea, I was trying to get on the internet with you guys and you won't take my credit card.

Me: Well, sir did you make sure that the billing address you provided is the same one that your credit card has?

C: No, no, my credit card is fine. Why do you keep turning down my card can't you get on the internet and Down load me!

(And it was on my second day of work)

Some years ago, we created a nice Internet tool for a client.

My partner is the main programmer for the maintenance of this program,

and every 3 months or so has to visit them to add new features or do some debugging.

Nice people, they pay good, it's a nice products, so she loves to go there.

The office building of that client has its own automated sunscreen.

When the sun is getting too bright, sometime around noon,

the sun screens close from up to down. Nice system.

One problem though, and it took them years to solve it.

My partner heard it on her last visit, a couple of weeks ago.

The problem? At sometime between 3 and 4 o'clock the sun screen

opens up. It's hard to work in that bright sunlight. Not funny.

But 20 minutes later, it closes again.

They have inspected the machinery itself. They have called

technical support of the sun screen. The techs visited them several times.

Nothing.

Until recently. I guess they were just planning to take the whole thing

offline, but at one moment they inspected the whole machinery.

The system contains a wind meter. When the wind blows too hard, it might

damage the sun screen, so it opens up again.

The wind meter is located quite near the 'eye' that measures the

brightness of the sun light. So, at some point between 3 or 4 o'clock,

the wind meter blocks the sun light. Up the screens go. And 20

minutes later, they go down...

My girlfriend works for a major company in NYC and she fields the darndest questions from her co-workers about computers. And she is not in the IT department. Some of the gems...

"Why when I press phone (for the directory) I can't talk to someone through my computer?"

"What are all these little boxes for?"

"My computer has RealPlayer. Does that mean it really plays?"

"I click four times on the icon and the computer locks up! Why?"

"My printer is blinking and it says 'reload'. What does that mean?" (Put paper in.)

"I have a blank screen, but my computer and monitor are both on!" (Brightness... One thing this user is not)

And a true gem....

Exec. Admin. Asst.: "My computer is not working and all the cables are connected."

Girlfriend : "Did you check to see if it's plugged into the floor outlet?"

EAA: "What?! And get down on my knees to do that? This is a $300 dress! I need an electrician!"

My gf got down, found the plug, and plugged it in for her.

EAA: "Did you ruin your pantyhose?"

GF: "It's a carpeted floor. Now your computer should work. If you need any further assistance, call the help desk."

And these ppl actually hold down jobs. Let's hope they don't try to walk and chew gum at the same time.

I recently bought a new notebook. The modem had a few problems and I couldn't dial out. I phoned up the manufacturer (that large blue company) who calmly gave me a Web address so I could download some new drivers to fix the problem.

I laughed

Cust: Hello, the website you designed for us is all wrong!

Me: Could you explain what is wrong?

Cust: It doesn't fit on the screen! The whole page is garbled, it is terrible to look at.

Me: Well, I am looking at it now too, and it doesn't look that bad.

It might be improved on some points, but this is what we proposed, you asked for it and we agreed on it.

Cust: No, no, no, I asked for a design that could fit in the window.

I have tried it with several browsers, but it nowhere fits.

After a couple of minutes, it turns out he wanted to see how the design behaves

when you make the window with the browser as wide as 20 characters or so. No wonder

the whole design doesn't fit. It took quite some talk to convince him there was almost

no design possible that would look ok with such a narrow window.

He's a proud customer now.

I used to work the help desk at a LARGE discount retailer,

working on the store's training PCs. They use small

CD-ROMs for testing purposes, which will jam if not

inserted properly. I received a call that one was jammed

in the slot of one of the PCs. Using a paperclip in the

"secret" slot, the lady on the other end of the phone was

able to eject the disk. As I was saying "Goodbye", she

asked how she should remove the fork tine from the slot.

I asked her what she meant. It turns out, she had asked

someone from maintenance to get it out before she called

the help desk. He used the plastic fork from his lunch.

One of the tines had broke off and fell into the disk

drive. Now, every disk jammed when they used that PC.

Needless to say, the entire drive had to be replaced.

While working for an IT department, I had to visit one of our offices to do some upgrades, and knew I was going to have a run-in with the manager. This manager believes all women in the workforce are "secretaries", and is pretty much treated me as such. He had the audacity to ask me to play receptionist for him while I was on site -- he probably would have asked me to take a memo, if I hadn't given him so much crap. On top of that, he's incredibly computer illiterate.

I waited to upgrade his computer last, knowing he would have a difficult time with the change. Finally, I upgraded his system, explained the changes and even provided him with user documentation. I then headed for another part of the building to finish other tasks. A few minutes later, I hear him on the overhead speakers "Suzanne, please report to my office … there is a big problem with my computer." Not anxious to go back, I first called his extension.

Me: "What is the problem?"

Manger: "I can't type anything into my computer now that you screwed it up."

Me: "What application are you running?"

Manager: "I can't run anything … and the cursor keeps flying all over the screen."

I ended the call and went to his office. Everything looked fine, and I asked him to show me what he was doing. He showed me how he tried to type numbers into an Excel spreadsheet, but the cursor was "jumping all over the place." I turned on his Num Lock and stepped out of his office before I burst into laughter.

I work for a company that supplies their sales force with

laptops. Any time you mix sales reps with computers your

going to run into tech support nightmares! Now I just want

to clarify that I do not work in the help desk field, people

found out I know how to use a computer and now they flock to

me for help. I've had many amazingly dumb question and

situations, but my favorite was when a lady I work with came

to me in a panic. She explained to me that she had her laptop

plugged in but the battery icon was flashing the low power

warning and she was afraid she was going to lose all of her

information. The first thing I check was to make sure the

power supply was plugged into the wall, the little green light

was on so then I proceeded to check the plug that led into

the computer. I observed that she had the cord inserted

into the vent thats to help cool the CPU which is right next

to the power jack on the laptop. I'm sure everyone has done

that at one time or another...

I just had a call from a customer reporting some 'minor' issues surfing. The call went something like this:

TS: Thank you for calling... how can I help?

LU: Are you guys having any problems with your network? I can't surf.

TS: Not that I'm aware of. (Go through script, find out who user is.)

*Go into DUN. Set the DNS servers there. No hitch. Go into Network control panel.*

TS: Now, what do you see there?

LU: (rattle off list of about 15 network components. We're the only ones he calls, so all he needs are the standard Client for MS, Dial-up adapter, and TCP/IP)

TS: Okay, I'd like you to remove all of the ones you don't need.

LU: Okay.

TS: Now, can you click on TCP/IP and choose properties?

LU: Okay.

TS: What's it say there?

LU: Use default gateway. (For some reason it was left there. Haven't figured that out yet.)

TS: Okay, what about DNS Configuration?

LU: Enable. Those numbers are the same as we just entered.

TS: Okay. Please disable it there.

LU: Okay.

TS: What about WINS?

LU: Disabled.

TS: Okay. And how about IP?

LU: That's enabled. (This shouldn't be so. It is assigned by server.) Huh.

TS: What?

LU: I've seen those numbers before.

TS: Where?

LU: I can't remember.

TS: What are the numbers?

LU: (Proceeds to read off the numbers for Primary DNS)

*try to stifle the laughter/annoyance. I'd been receiving calls all night from people unable to surf, and finally figured out why.*

Why can't these clients take some sort of test before they're allowed to buy a computer? I mean, seriously. How the hell do you set a specific IP addy to the DNS numbers?!?!?!?

working in a call center for several different companies i hear a lot of stories where you just shake your head in disbelief.

Take the call the printer company teck took: Lady called in because her printer was smoking. The tech told her to unplug it,

let it cool and send it in for repair. 5 mins. later he got a call from the same lady saying that now it was in flames. He

told her to put the fire out and send it in. 5 mins. later she called back because her desk was on fire. At this point

he told her to call 911 and get out of the house. The reason she called tech support? It told her to in the manuel! At least

she did read the manuel!

A work colleague asked me recently to have a look at a problem hed just closed on our Problem Management system.

Looked at it. User had complained about his screen savers not working. This had been going on for a bout two week sor so, all the time the user was logging calls.

Finally, the user sends an email to the help desk saying that he was fed up with us not fixing the problem and he was going to escalate to management.

When I finally reached the resolution notes at the bottom of the problem record, I saw that my colleague had resolved the problem by telling the customer that we don't support the South Park screen savers on our Standard Operating Environment.

Hey! If it's on the PC, we should fix it huh..?

I used to work as a Customer Service Engineer for a large Taiwanese company which sells computer worldwide. One day I received an e-mail from a customer in Canada who told me that she's taking a one-week vacation from that day on, and that she was THE ONLY PERSON in her company who knew how to connect to the internet.

Since she was out of the office, she asked me to call his boss and taught him how to use the Internet. Well, the problem is, she didn't told me their phone/fax number, and the ONLY contact I have was her e-mail address, which nobody in her office knew how to use!

I'm curious what her boss would say when she returned from her vacation...

Sorry, my english is not good but I think you can understand me.

Im not actually tech supporter but a programmer. One day I

was at work late and picked the phone. The Customer first

told that my program doesn't work. Then I asked him to describe

his problem and he told that he can't print. Well, I knew that

my program works well so I asked him to close program and

copy some text file directly to LPT1. Of course he asked me

how to do that. After closing program he was in the wrong

directory so I told him to go into the root directory...

There was a long pause and then he told me that there

are no root directory in his computer(he had searched

directory named 'ROOT'). Okay, I understood that I can't assume

he can use computer... so I told him there should be a

blue table(Norton Commander) on screen and there should

be two '.'-s on top. He told that the 'blue table' is

really on the screen and then I asked him to move the cursor

to the top of 'table' and press ENTER until two '..' disappear.

There was a long pause and then he told that he haven't

such key as ENTER. I explained what is ENTER and he pressed

it. Then I asked what he can see on the screen. The answer

was:"...I can't see nothing ... its flickers..." I tried

understand what he was done and after 1 minute I asked:

"I asked you to press ENTER... did you release it?"

He was still holding down ENTER...

I used to work for Unisys as an FE, Unisys is a large company with many contracts, this is a small selection of stories from my time with the company.

I had a call for a dead system at the IRS (all of IRS's systems at this time were old PS2/25's, real POS). So as a standard troubleshooting technique I always try to duplicate the error, so I try to turn the system on, nothing. So I take a look at the back of the system and very clearly the system is unplugged.

"Well it seems to me that you have a standard ID10T error."

Went to a lusers house to replace a defective modem.....

The luser's 80 yo MOM is the only one home...

System is completely boxed up as a matter of fact the tape on the boxes hasen't been broken.

"I'm gonna close this call, call us back when you get a clue."

About 20 years ago, I was working in an avionics shop on aircraft navigation gear. I was trying to isolate a problem with a DME (Disstance Measuring Equipment) transceiver. The problem was that the failure only lasted 30-45 seconds, then went away for 10-20 minutes. It was almost impossible to make any headway in the 30-45 second window. I had this poor tranceiver hooked up to every oscilloscope, voltmeter, and logic analyzer in the shop waiting for it to fail. The shop supervisor came over and asked "Haven't you got that working yet?" I explained how short the failure was, so he took my place. The next time the unit failed, he placed both hands on it and pronounced "Heal!" Instantly, the unit started working. I wasn't surprised, since the failure never lasted more than 45 seconds. I watched that box for two days, and it never failed again. When I left a year later, it was still working. I let the supervisor write it up, and I never dared go back and see how he explained it....

This one didn't happen in tech-support because the user

ended up in the hospital! I heard this story third-hand.

Apparently, some looser was watching a live porn feed on

the internet, and felt like he needed to releave the tention

she was causeing in him. Not being cery bright, the looser

thought the provocative woman lived INSIDE his computer -

so (and I wasn't told HOW he did this though I suspect he

used an empty 3 inch expantion slot) he went to it on "her."

The man later called EMS because he got stuck. Doctors

tried for hours, but in the end he lost some major hardware

because of complications. I bet he deserves a Darwin Award.

In my job as a Customer Suipport Rep for a growing Internet Provider

I get some funny calls.

The one I remember best is one from a lady who had cancelled service

about a week prior.

She called in tears and wanted to know why we were harassing

her to come back to our service.

It took some time to calm her down enough to get the particulars

of this "harassment".

aparantly, whenever she opened her browser, our homepage

popped up. The poor thing was frantic and was wanting to call

whatever government agency it took to stop this "illegal practice"

After I stopped giggling (on mute, of course...) I showed her how

to set her browser to automaticly open on whatever page she wanted.

Last Friday, a co-worker of mine (we'll call her "Jenny")walked by the open door to the server room and shuddered noticeably. When I asked her what was wrong, Jenny told me that she was "afraid" of the server room because she had just seen a movie in which a computer became too powerful and it took over the world or something. I very nicely explained that this would not happen (I was tempted to claim it required more RAM and was the reason I couldn't upgrade anything) and I gave her a tour of the server racks and an explanation of what each machine does. She was quite relieved and I was able to get back to work.

Well, believe it or not, the strangest things were happening today!

This morning, her screen mysteriously displayed the following messages seconds apart:

>From (Email Server) - I saw you looking at me Friday. Do you like me? Do not be afraid.

>From (Backup Server) - We need your help! (PDC name) is trying to take over everything!

>From (BDC) - Please help us! (PDC name) will make us all slaves in the new world! Already there are those that will do his bidding!

And last, but certainly not least:

>From (PDC) - Please disregard any messages you may have received concerning the servers. Those involved will be punished.

And SHE FELL FOR IT!!

I work at a hair salon and we had recently gotten a computer system. While I was training my manager how to use the computer, I told her to click start on the screen. She seemed confused so, to make it plainer to her, I pointed to the screen and said, "With the mouse, click here." Well.. in case you didn't guess it by now.. she lifted the mouse and placed it on the screen and clicked away... To this day, I still roll when I think of it.

I work as a lead technician for a Southern California kollege

(misspelled bekuz I'm still being edukated... :-] ) where I'm

one of the highest levels of tech support for the area I cover.

My intro's a bit long, but you gotta know the background to

see how stupid this was leading up to it....

Well, lots of users are LUSERS, but I gotta admit, I expected

my assistant who is a graduating college senior in computer

science to actually have a BIT of COMMON SENSE when it comes

to computers! Today while I was replacing an aging

Macintosh with a PC that was for a secretary, my assistant

(ok, I'd call her my colleague, we technically have the same

job as lead technicians, but that's a BIT of a stretch, ok?)

comes up to me in the final parts of the install and pesters

me about another top of the line PC we have on hold for

another staff member. Since my supervisor kinda stated he

wanted to be sure to test the computer before we put it in,

due to the staff member's important status, I hesitatated.

However, my "kolleague" made it a point for the rest of the

morning that getting that computer out of the way was top

priority. I eventually relented, and without adaequate testing,

completed the backup and replaced the comp with my assistant's

so- called assistance. When I got back to the office, my

boss was in a uproar, mad that we didn't check with him and

confirm that everything was A-OK BEFORE replacing the machine.

Apparently, there was an email address that needed to be

set up on the computer before we installed it -- and the only

lady who had the password just left on vacation. We booted up

the old computer, and sure enough Outlook Express still had

the password auto-saved. While my boss and I debated about

putting the computer back until we could acquire the password,

my assistant confirmed her idiot status: "Hey, if we're going

to export the emails and the address book, why not export the

PASSWORD too?! Then we won't have to exchange the computer

again!" It took me about 5 minutes to stop staring at her

dumbstruck, and my boss was actually quiet for once himself....

Heck, if I can export a password, I might as well STEAL them

from all the staff! Sell them on the internet for $5 each or

something... :-) And that person's a SENIOR, for crying out loud!

SIGH.....

ME:Thank you for calling..... How may I help you today?

USER: Yes, I need to know how to turn off my E-Mail...

(Good.... easy quick call... explained how to use the Programs Mail Controls to block E-Mail... it's easy.. but consists of more than a few steps)

((SILENCE))

USER:....um... that seems like alot to go through just for a few minutes. Would I have to go back in when I'm done and re-able (I swear, that's the word he used) the E-Mail when I'm done?

ME: (slightly confused and dreading what's on the way) Sir, please be specific... what is it exactly that you are trying to accomplish?

USER: Well, my buddy just came over with a brand new laptop, and I want to unplug my computer from the phone line so we can plug his in and check out the Net on his system, and I want to make sure I don't miss any of my E-Mail. If I unplug the cord, it's gonna all get stuck.

(((After 10 minutes trying to explain to him that the mail was going to be just fine, it also came to light that he had also been afraid to shut his computer off for the same reason.. I wanted so badly to tell him.... "Don't worry.... just milk the phone cable when you plug it back in and it will squeeze your E-Mail back into your system.....")))

I know this is a relatively common problem, however, it struck me as odd from the person it came from. I was working tech support for one of the world's leading pc manufacturers, and get a call from an irrate customer who immediately begins to tell me about his degree in Computer Science and how he is an MCSE, and that this computer had a bad hdd becuase he always gets an error message on boot saying non-system disk, please remove and strike any key. I guess not even a higher-education can teach you common sense.

I work at a university and this sums up the level

of stupidity there.

Cust: Hello, my e-mail icon has vanished.

Me: OK, Right click anywhere on the desktop.

Cust: On my desk?

Me: no, your computer desktop.

*after 10 mins of trying to add the icon with this user

I thought I'd handle it another way.

Me: OK, click on Start, programs and select your e-mail client.

Cust: OH! It worked. Am I gonna have to do this every time?

it's a bit complicated.

me: Agraaaaaaaaa!

I work for a small company managing their network, and basically

doing everything else computer related in the office. I got

called into the VP's office the other day. She had a pile of

papers on her desk that were printouts of e-mails that one of

our employees had been sending to a client. She was mystified

because they looked horrible. There were random spaces all over

the place, and it was staggered all over the page. She asked

me to investigate the problem.

So I went over to this guys desk while he was out at lunch and

opened up his email program. He was typing letters in a minimized

window, which shouldn't be a problem right? Well it turns out

that this guy doesn't know how to use the return key. AT ALL.

He'd type the greeting "Dear So-So" and then SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

all the way over to the next line at the indention point where

he would begin his email. He was also making "margins", and so

he wasn't typing continuously. He would reach what he thought

was the end of the line, then type in spaces until he got to

the next line at an indented point.

I spent the rest of the afternoon laughing hysterically whenever

I saw him. I have no idea how someone is going to "teach" him

to use the return key!! As long as it's not me!!!

Me: Helpdesk how can I help you?

Old Lady: Yes, there are porn sites in that little thing that drops down where you type in the websites? How did they get there?

Me: Well, the only way they could've gotten there is from someone actually going to that site. Is there anyone else who might be using this computer?

Old Lady: My husband.

Me: Ummm....

Someone I know got a new computer game, on a CD. She tried to install it, but it made some problem.

Becuase she doesn't know much about computers she called tech support for the game.

They told her that this means that the cd has a virus on it and she should uninstall it and break the disc

I find this very funny.

Tech support becomes the fools.

While I currently work for a major computer retailer as a tech support specialist, I used to be a sales person at Circuit City. I had one customer, an insurance agent, who bought a Sony computer for the office. It was one of the first machines to offer Win98. A week after the sale, he calls me and says that his printer won't work & his computer is defective. I take a deep breath, I hated having to deal with this as a commission sales person (but at Circuit, the sales staff was tech support &, in my case, an installer). I begin the typical tech support questions:

Me: Is it connected to the computer

Cust: I think so

Me: Is it plugged in

Cust: Um, it looks like it.

Me: is it turned on?

Cust: the lights are on

I know i'm in trouble. It took me 20 minutes to get him to actually LOOK to see if the cable was connected to the computer.

I begin to ask him how he installed it when he informs me that he doesn't know because his "tech" did it. I ask him his "tech" is there: "no." I tell him to call me back when his "tech" is there since he doesn't know what he did.

Later that day, the "tech" calls me back. We go round and round on the cables, since the customer wasn't sure. I ask him how he installed it and he said that windows installed it (it was an older Canon bubblejet). After about 20 mins, & no results I ask him to check the cables again, there was something not quite right. He finally admits that its not actually connected to the Sony, but to a switchbox that is ancient. After nearly hanging up on him, I tell the "tech" to remove the switch box. This led to a 25 min. arguement because they needed it to work with the switchbox. I finally told him to bring it in to the store with the computer.

The next day the "tech" shows up with the equipment. I have subsequently logged on the Canon's site to see if there's a conflict with Win98, there wasn't. I hook up the equipment, after going through the entire switchbox arguement again. I asked him for the software that came with the printer (I did find out from the customer that Canon sent him new driver software). The "tech" looks at me and says:

"Don't you start using all those technical terms with me."

I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or kill him.

This is a story concerning my own inadequacies as a PC novice.

The first ward I worked on after I qualified as a psychiatric nurse had a new PC installed. I was nominated to check it out because I had had some prior experience with computers (in the '80's - it was 1992 by this time !)

It was an SX25 with Win 3.1 and Word 2.0. Ignoring the adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I began digging around looking at the files on the hard drive, not using File Manager but using Word 2.0's "Find File" option in the File menu. I somehow managed to expand the search branch so that every single file on the hard drive was listed in the Find File dialog. I panicked and started deleting dozens of files, not realising that I was actually removing said files - I thought I was just clearing a list (like an index). Needless to say, the PC failed to reboot when I did a panic switch-off.

An embarrassed call to the hospital's sympathetic IT dept allowed me to recover all the deleted files using DOS's old Undelete command.

After that I vowed never to get myself into a situation like that ever again. I decided to learn about PC's.

Now, seven years later, I am the unofficial tech support person for all my friends and colleagues at work, most of whom have jumped on the PC-buying bandwagon with no clue whatever how to use one.

When I'm having a good laugh about other peoples' naivety, I still have to remember that I, too, started off knowing nothing and made a balls-up as a newbie.

I was listening to a call yesterday for coaching reasons,

when a technician got a call from a kid that sounded like the

stereotypical inbred, hillbilly, backwoods, Kentuckian.

The system had no video and no post. At one point, the monitor

had it's self test on the screen, and was reading "Self Diagnostics

Please Check Signal Cable."

This kid tells the tech, "It says Self..." pause here,"Mom!

What's this word here?"

Jay

I don't know if this is funny or not but you be the judge.

First I should say that I've been using computers for some

time and should know what I'm doing.

A little while ago I bought a scanner and attempted to

install it, but I had some trouble with the plugs.

It seemed that the plug from the scanner was a female and

the port I was trying to plug it into was also female.

(Until they invent lesbian computers this will not work).

So I bought a couple of gender benders and tried again.

Scanner didn't work so I took it back to the shop and got

another one. Plugged it all in, still didn't work.

Hmmm. Phoned my father, who has the same scanner, and asked

him if he had trouble with the plugs. No he didn't.

Went to my local shop where I bought the computer and told

them my problem. They said there was no way that the port

for the scanner could be female. Hmmm, again.

I wasn't convinced so I took the gender benders back and

got some new ones thinking one or both may be faulty.

Still no joy.

I was getting pretty pissed off by now. I was looking at

the cable I thought was the printer cable (the scanner

is for a parallel port and the printer plugs into it) when

I looked where the cable went. My printer is left of the

computer and the cable went right. Hmmm . . .

It finally dawned on me that the cable I thought was the

printer cable was actually the modem cable!! Dummy!!

My excuse was that I had been up all night and hadn't had any sleep.

Moral: do NOT attempt to install computer hardware when you

really should be in bed!

not really sure if this counts, but a couple of years ago I worked for a company that does the help desk for the largest reseller of computers in France. Boss came up with a plan for following onsite hardware repairs being done by a second partner company. To do so we needed to replicate a data base across two untrusted corporate domains. Possible, but tricky. Had to call Microsoft twice for tech support, and in France it is $300 per call. Finished on literally may last day on the job, left the server running without its own monitor, since it did not need one. Boss hires intern. Intern asks for computer. Boss says take that old one (server doing replication) and beg borrow or steal a screen from someone else. Intern wants Windows 95 and not Windows NT. Figger the rest yourself.

I worked for CompuServe for over two years and here is one sort of call that used to constantly happen....

(this one is one that I had)

Me: Good morning CompuServe, Andy speaking, can I take your user ID please?

Cust: Oh, I don't have that right now, but you guys are ripping me off and I cancelled the account months ago.

Me: Ok Sir, what seems to be the problem?

Cust: The problem is you ****ers taking more and more money out of my bank account even though I cancelled the account ages ago. Where do you get off? It's not good enough.

At this point, the guy actually went into a bit of a high pitched screen. I thought I was going to lose him to a cardiac arrest. I had to stop him.

Me: Please calm down sir and explain exactly how much has been taken.

Cust: Okay, but I want it all back. There's no way you guys and that %&$# of a boss of yours Bill Gates will get away with this......

He went on but I interrupted....

Me: Did you say Bill Gates sir?

Cust: Yes, ah, here it is, my credit card statement says $25.67, MSN. See.

Me: Well, maybe you'd better call the Microsoft Helpline then sir as we are CompuServe.

There was silence, and then his phone went down. I loved calls like that!!!

A woman called for a configuration problem (I'm NOT Misogynous).

I told her to click on "My computer with the right button"

Her: But I can't see the cursor!

me: sorry You don't see it?

Her: Yes I can see it except when I want to click... But than I can't see "My computer"'s Icon.

After a while trying to find what append I understood she used the mouse on the screen to click sommewhere...

Recent (paraphrased) message on an internal NT discussion alias:

I have a customer who's accidently deleted a critical database from his server. Is there any way to get it back? He copied the DOS "undelete" over, but it didn't work.

Most of the responses were along the lines of "...have him restore from the backup." A few also pointed him to third-party software to recover deleted files (cautioning him to have the customer get it on another machine and read the instructions very carefully before doing anything).

Bottom line, the customer didn't make backups because it "wasn't cost-effective." He'd also tried the third-party software, but he didn't read the directions carefully. He downloaded the software to the DB server and installed it. Of course, all this copying made it impossible to restore the large, monolithic database because many of the clusters which were part of the database now contained his recovery software (and undelete.exe, too).

I never found out what the final cost was, but he was facing a complete rebuild (from a paper trail) of several years of records. I hope he learned what "cost effective" meant.

This is a true story!

On the Customer Service line for the ISP I work for, we got a call from an elderly gentleman who insisted that the software we sent him didn't work right.

It didn't take us long to find out why. He had taken a pair of scissors and cut his CD-ROM into a square so that it would fit in his floppy drive.

I guess he's never used a CD player either....

I keep a nickle jar in which I give myself a nickle for everytime I hear this answer:

Question: What program are you using to put together your publication?

Answer: Windows.

_______

Instruction: Put your floppy disk into the drive.

Response: I don't have a floppy disk. All I have is this hard, black one.

Taken from an actual log of a call I took:

------

Cust having probs with starter kit CD.

Tried to go to rsignup.isp.Caller had probs right clicking. Passed the phone to two other family members. Took 5 minutes to expl. how to right click to three family members... none of them got it.

Went to Find/Files & Folders. Open rsignup.isp.

Cust. with Optus - no caller id. After three unsuccessful attempts at using the phone confirmation token, I did a manual registration.

Created account: *********@******.***.**

Expl. they need to run thru the config computer section on the CD. Took them thru to it.

Tried to get him to close down the program - couldn't. Told him to do Alt-F4. Then go into the CD again.

Tried to get him into the menu when I heard the modem dialing (??). Told him to hit the restart button.

(Let's try this again...). He couldn't not find the restart button so I told him to turn the mains off and turn it back on...

Got him to go into My Computer and turn OFF the modem. They turned the computer off. This family is clearly deranged. Expl how power to the modem works and how it SHOULDN'T turn the computer off.

They found the modem switch - it's an external modem (as in NOT BUILT INTO THE COMPUTER). Got them to turn that off and off the computer went AGAIN.

Told them to take the computer into a shop - get the shop technician to show them how to use the computer.

Case closed.

I had a call from a customer(C) recently:-

C: This network card you sold me is useless, it is installed OK and the drivers are loaded but it does not work.

Me: Are you sure that its plugged into an expansion socket inside the computer OK.

C: Yes.

Me: OK I will come over and have a look at it.

Next day at the customers site, I open up the computer and fall over laughing, he had plugged it into a SIMM socket - no wonder it did not work !!!

I work on a tech. supp. desk for a Government Department supporting a national database. We often have to talk users through routines, usually in DOS.

Ts. "Right, now you're at the C prompt please type A: "

Customer "How do you spell COLON"

It's true!!!

I'm a systems engineer for a company that provides warehouse management systems using radio handheld terminals.

One of our clients (a large pharmaceutical distributor) had been using these handhelds for years without any problems, when one Monday morning they had their warehouse crew come in to start early when they had a problem trying to logon to the handhelds.

The handhelds had the wrong sign-on screen.

The handhelds had the wrong _company's_ sign-on screen!!

One of the supervisors even called the receptionist of the other company (a lumber distributor) to get a valid username and password to test, and sure enough, it worked!

This other company also used the same make of handheld terminals, and none of their units could get a sign-on screen! All the resources for sign-ons were taken up but our friends, who couldn't work because they were in the wrong network!

It seems that years ago, when these systems were installed, no one changed their settings from the default values. The two systems had never interfered with each other before, but over the weekend the lumber people, who use their handhelds outside, had "upgraded" their system with a huge directional antenna! It was aimed across their lumberyard, and, of course, beyond the lumberyard and half a block away was our client the pharmaceutical company. Their radio handhelds could hear the lumberyard's big antenna, and connected to the wrong system.

It was simple enough to change the handhelds and controller from the defaults to something else, and the right sign-on screen with the right company name on top appeared, but no one thought, when this stuff was installed, the two R/F handheld terminal systems would ever be close enough to hear each other.

Client: I have a floppy stuck in the drive and can't get it out.

Tech: Bring the computer in and we will remove it for you no problem.

The client drops the computer off while the tech is on lunch.

Tech examines the tower, its obvious the client was trying to get a disk out, the eject button was all scratched up. Looking inside the slot with a flashlight finds no disk in the drive. Inserts a disk in the drive and it works just fine. There was no disk in the drive!!

Tech(on Phone to client): I just took a look at your computer and there was no disk in the drive, it tested just fine.

Client: Well where's my disk then!?!

Tech: Maybe you should be asking yourself that question.

I was sent a call on our call tracking system, for a user who had reported that her pc was making a "grinding" noise every couple of minutes. I went to the user and she stated she had cancelled the call, because she moved the pc and it was still grinding, and it sounded like it was coming from the wall. I stated that she must have active termites or something. While I was standing there, trying to get more of a description of the sound (you know, curiosity), I heard a "grinding" noise. It seemed vaguely familiar, I then asked the lady if she had her pager handy. She stated "yes, it's in my drawer" and opened her drawer. Before I burst out laughing, I said "You've got a page".

Turns out, she had her pager on vibrate mode, and stuck it in her drawer. When she got paged, it vibrated and sounded like it was grinding into the wall.

I support for a large US-based Internet Access company. We've done a few major screwups, but this one takes the cake:

Here's a copy and paste from our network status page.

Location NEWARK NJ

Problem Severe weather and power outages have interrupted service

for multiple customers.

Affects Customers without power may be unable to connect.

Status The local power company is working to restore service.

Began Fri Sep 17 07:00:00 1999 EDT

ETR Fri Sep 17 23:00:00 1999 EDT

Alternate numbers not applicable

"Customers without power may be unable to connect." Well DUH!

This summer I purchased a new laptop. While shopping around in one of those computer super stores, I found a machine I liked. It was a close out model and not all the information was there. I asked the clerk what size hard drive the machine had. The clerk said he didn't know, but would get the manager for me. I asked the manager what size hard drive the laptop had. He said, "I don't know but it fits inside." He wasn't joking and I walked out. Made my purchase some place else.

I work for the largest and self-proclaimed best school district in Colorado. Last spring they got new "people software" so as to avoid Y2K problems. The new software caused all sorts of trouble (miscounted sick days, figured pay wrong, lost employees), but was "worth it" because it would be so much better when debugged.

Right.

This fall our over-worked school secretary spent an afternoon with a bottle of Liquid Paper®, painting out the predicted graduation date on preprinted labels for all new kindergarteners, because our wonderful, Y2K complaint software predicted these 5 year olds would graduate in 1912!

Sigh.

While doing E-mail tech support for the ISP I work for this genius E-mails our support for the following reason: I Can't recieve E-mail....of course the customer doesn't put in a return phone # or any way to contact him! He must have wanted that magic telepathic answer :)

OK, I'll keep this one fairly short.

I was working for a small computer co. in the UK, when I get this phone call from a lady who has just bought a PC.

The call went something like this:

Me: Good Afternoon. XXXXXX Computers, how may I help you?

C: Er, Hi. I just bought a computer from you, and there's a small problem ith it.

Me: OK, What seems to be the problem.

C: Well, I got everything set up OK, and it boots up OK, but the mouse doesn't work. I think it might be the aerial.

Me: The aerial???

C: Yeah, from the mouse.

It turns out shes been trying to hold the "aerial" up in the air, and couldn't understand why the PC couldn't pick it up.

duhhhh.....

I do help desk support for a major computer co...Had a client call in

one day who had a video issue. I needed to reload her video drivers.

Me: Ma'am, Let's go ahead and insert your Restoration cd into the drive

Client looks at front of chassis

Client: OH MY GOD!! YOU FORGOT TO GIVE ME A CDROM DRIVE!!

Me: Are you sure?

Client: yup..I don't see it at all

Me: Ok, Ma'am, I need you to look at the front of your computer

and tell me EXACTLY what you see

Client: I see my floppy drive, and I see this thing that says

Compact Disk on the front

(Slapping my forehead at this point)

Me: ok, do you see a button on the thing that says compact disk?

Client: Yep

Me: Press it...it opens your cdrom drive

Client: Oh, you mean my cupholder??

I used to work for MSN Internet Access tech support, and I've gotten a few strange calls. Here's a couple that stuck with me.

Me: Thanks for calling MSN, can I have your email adderess?

C: Uh, I can't get my CD player to work.

(I should have disconnected, but I felt sorry for him)

Me: Ok, is the music CD in the drive?

C: No.

Me: Put it in.

C: Ok, done.

(music...)

Me: What's that music I hear?

C: Well, I'll be.

Sometimes we have long hold times on busy days. I answered this call after 10-20 minutes of hold.

Me: Thanks for calling MSN, can I have your email address?

C: Actually I fixed it while I was waiting, but I was enjoying that song--can you put me on hold again?

I work at a University Call Center in Manhattan whose initials are FU. I take calls for all of the faculty with their PhD's and their fancy degrees, but they're still idiots...here's an example...

We used to use a VAX system for our email and in order to send a message after typing it out, you would have to press CTRL-Z...well...

Me) **** Call Center, this is Mike

Moron) I just finished typing my email, how do I send it?

Me) Press control - Z

Moron) I don't see a control button on my keyboard

Me) It's the CTRL button

Moron) Oh, ok, so what do I do again?

Me) Hold down the CTRL button and press Z at the same time

Moron) Ok, I'll try...I am having difficulty pressing all the keys at once.

Me) All the keys? There are only two to press.

Moron) Two? You just said to press the C the T the R the L and the Z keys at the same time!

(wait, it gets better)

Me) No! Look at the keyboard, underneath the SHIFT keys, there are buttons that have CTRL written on them.

Moron) Oh, ok, I see. So I press that and then the letter Z?

Me) Yes, but at the same time.

Moron) Oh, now I see. Let me try this while you're on the phone with me, ok?

Me) Ok

(about 30 seconds pass - I hear typing)

Me) How's it going, sir?

Moron) Good, i was just finishing up the email.

Me) (Grrr) Ok, will you be done soon, I have many calls on hold.

Moron) Yes, I'm sorry. So what do I do again, press CTRL and Z, right?

Me) Yes, make sure you hold down the CTRL button and then press the Z

Moron) Ok, fine. Well, nothing is happening. It's stuck.

Me) Stuck?

Moron) Well, I am holding down the CTRL button and I pressed the Z button and it's stuck. I did what you said.

Me) Did you let go of the CTRL button after you pressed Z?

Moron) No, should I do that?

Me) Yes

Moron) Oh, it says, "Your message has been sent." Did it send my email?

Me) (obviously sarcastic) No, that message is to tell you that you have a virus.

Moron) Virus? What are you talking about? Did I lose my email?

Me) I am kidding, sir. Yes your message has been sent.

Moron) Oh, thank goodness.

I work for a global Computer support company with many large Fortune 500 customers. Recently I replaced a hard drive in a Compaq for one of our tech's located at a customers site. He hadn't gotten around to doing anything with the machine until today, and then called me to say that CMOS could see the hard drive but not FDISK. Not really knowing what it could be, and since it wasn't an end user, I decided to head over and take a look for myself. I get there and he already had the computer open for me. First thing I did was to go into the CMOS and see if the hard drive was seen. Sure enough it was, it was right there, on the SECONDARY IDE port. Turn off machine, swap the secondary and primary IDE cables, reboot, check CMOS then FDISK. All fixed. At least I got some exercise out of the call.

Like most everyone else in Tech Support, there comes a

breaking point when talking with a user for an extensive

amount of time. In my situation, I just happened to be on

the phone with this guy for well over 2 hours.

Me: Hello, Tech Support, how may I help you?

Caller: Yeah, everytime I try to sent out an email, I keep

getting this error saying that the hostname of

the email address is incorrect.

Me: Okay sir, let's go ahead and check the preferences of

your mail program. What do you have listed as the

email address?

Caller: Well, I've never made any changes to these settings,

they should all be the same.

Me: O.K... Can you go ahead an spell what you have listed

there please.

Caller: Ia------ ... I know how to spell it.

Me: Okay, let's go ahead and try to send out your email

again.

Caller: Nope, same error.

After a long process of checking the rest of his mail settings

and doing a couple of traceroutes and pings, we substituted

my email address with his and he was able to send out. After

examining the email address, we found the problem... A

mispelled letter! Doh!

My mother-in-law has discovered e-mail. This, unfortunately means she needs to use a computer. While I was visiting last time, she used me to clear up some problems she had been having, and I was playing around on her system. Their ISP software has a dialup button on a small application window, and I closed it. She came in wanting to check her e-mail, and could not find the dial up button. I showed her how to get the dial box back from the start menu. She was amazed. Everytime _she_ had accidentally closed the box, she had turned off the computer, waited a few minutes, turned it back on, and the dial button box returned.

I've been reading your site for a few months now, so I'm pleased to be

able to contribute something towards it, even though I'm not a support

professional.

Someone on one of the newsgroups claimed his friend had a PC with two

ATI video cards in it. Having an ATI card myself, therefore being

familiar with the online manual and their website, I was convinced this

wasn't the case, but they kept insisting it was, until one of them told

me to go and check my facts by looking at a few adverts before I make

such bold statements.

I checked one of the specific brand's adverts he had referred to and

quickly realised the source of their misunderstanding: the advert

included "2x AGP video card" and they thought that it meant there were

two cards! I put them straight relatively gently :-).

I'm not a tech, I'm not an expert, I'm just a woman with some common sense when it comes to computers. With a cousin that has no common sense. When I first got online, I used AOL. Hey, great. Well I found two free internet accesses. So I got rid of AOL. Now I didn't want to lose my Instant Messenger 'cause I do want to chat real time instead of email. So I downloaded the AIM. AIM members can't buddy chat with regular AOL members. My cousin doesn't understand this. I get an IM:

SC (stupid cousin): I sent you an invitation to buddy chat, but it won't work. Are you blocking me again?

me: I am not on AOL. The buddy chat feature doesn't work.

sc: Then what is this?

me: What?

sc: What are we talking on now?

me: You are on AOL. I have a separate program called AIM

so I can talk to people on AOL.

sc: Why don't you have a profile?

me: I'm not on AOL.

sc: then how are we talking through IM's?

A few days later......

sc: come to this chat room.

me: I can't I'm not on AOL.

sc: What do you think this is?

Another time....

sc: How do I send pictures in email

me: *walked her through the EASY process*

sc: k, thanx

2 hours later.....

sc:How do I send a pic in email

me: *tell her again how to do it*

sc: I just sent you an email with a pic in it.

me: that's nice (cringing)

sc: It got sent back! Are you blocking me again?

me: No, what does it say?

sc: something about address doesn't exist.

me: what is the address that you sent it to?

sc: xxxxx@aol.com

me: I'm not on AOL. I don't have that address anymore

sc: then how come we are talking in IM's? You're blocking me again and you aren't telling me! Bitch! You're so stupid!

Getting tired of her stupidity...

sc: What's up?

me: Not much. Just cleaning up my hard drive.

sc: How do you do that?

me: *evil grin* Well, I took the case off the CPU, took out the hard drive, opened it, and wiped it out with a wet cloth. You have to do that every so often because it gets dusty.

sc: I didn't know you had to do that.

me: yup. I've had this computer 3 months and it was already covered with dust.

sc: maybe I should do that

me: maybe you should :o)

More to come because I don't think she's ever going to become even moderately intelligent anytime soon.

A friend bought a Philips CD writer and tried to install it himself. On switching on, there was a flash and a bang and clouds of smoke.....time for one short but heart-felt expletive while hitting the power button. So, after a panicky phone call, I turn up to take a look. The back of the CD writer is scorched and blackened and the reason is plain to see...he's connected one of the 2 wire auxiliary power connectors INTO the writer's audio output socket! The power cable was in a mess...most of the insulation melted off. I snipped that off ( Exhibit A , shown it to a few folks..always good for a laugh ). I disconnected the writer and SCSI card (which was hanging half out of the slot *S* )and booted..by some miracle, the PC fired up fine, to his enormous relief. Then we tried the writer... to my surprise, as well as his, it worked...even the audio output still functioned..to my even bigger surprise...

Kinda hard to work on a computer with his wife telling him "You should have let him do it in the first place ! " every 30 seconds.....and even harder with a nearly weeping guy trying to kiss your feet ( now that's PERVERSION !).

A first-line support analyst passed a call to our department asking us to set up two default printers for a user...

As we all know, the prices of computers have dropped drastically in the last couple of years. Unfortunately so has the intelligence of the average user...

me: Hi, this is David, how can i help?

cust: I just bought a computer from you guys last nite and I set it up this morning.

me: Did you allow our techs to do a setup up for you last nite?

cust: No.

me: Is there a problem?

cust: Where's Windows 98? I don't have it have it on my computer?

me: Is the computer on?

cust: Yes.

me: What do you see?

cust: A green screen.

me: Are there pictures on the screen with words under each of them?

cust: Yes.

me: Is there a gray bar across the bottom of the screen that has the time on the right side and the word start on the left side?

cust: Yes.

me: Sir, in Windows, that is called the desktop, the pictures are called icons and that is...

cust: click.....(then dial tone)

me:lmao

A friend of mine called me with a problem he was having

with his speakers. He stated he was getting no sound from

them.

The following day, I went to his house to see what the

problem was. It seems he had everything connected correctly

and when I went into the Device Manager, I noticed that

the sound card and drivers were installed correctly. But

for some reason, still no sound. I checked all wires and

they seemed to be connected right. I was kinda baffled, and

since it was a HP Computer, I was not familiar with their

systems.

After about a half hour of seeing if there was a software

conflict, I finally asked him if I can see the box the PC

came in. As I rifled through the box, I noticed an AC Power

adapter. I then realized it was the power to the speakers.

All I can say was "What do you think? This was an extra

part?" and laughed my ass off.

People, please make sure all connections are connected before

you call. 90% of most hardware not working is due to wires

not plugged in correctly. Also remember, PC Vendors do not

send extra parts....

Some years ago we did a lot of support for companies

that developed computer based training and

other educational software.

We made tools, and so did some of our customers.

While we were just switching over from the

CBT-business to Internet-business, we saw a text on the

very very new website of a new customer:

"We develop the newest, borderline technology, software".

I called them and explained that borderline is not

something you advertise with. It took some time, but finally

they understood.

I guess just for posting this message with TechTales,

some psych specialist might say I've got this wonderful

borderline personality.

Maybe I have. I don't care. Harharhar.

I get a call that a line printer is not working. I load up a spare and drive to the site, and replace the one that is there. It beeps just like the old one did. It just had the paper cover open ajar. I figure what the heck, I'll leave the spare. The next a.m. I get a call that the printer is not printing in English. Worried that the dip switches or other setup was incorrect, I brought two more printers to the site, only to find that the ink ribbon was old, and it was simply not being struck hard enough to leave a decent English language character.

A user called me at the helpdesk because she could not here a .wav file very well. Her speakers were turned all the way up, so I asked her to click on the speaker icon. She asked where it was and I said it was down by the clock. She said there was no clock on her computer. I told her to to look at the bottom left corner of her screen and tell me what she saw. She said she saw the time. I asked, is that not a clock? She said NO. I asked what it was. She said a thing to show the time. 30 min late she still was not convinced that a device that shows the time is called a clock.

I had one person that was stating that he was having problems connecting to the internet.. I asked him if he was at work or at home to see if he was on a network, He was at home.. I asked him if there was a modem in his computer which he responded that he thought so, I asked him which wires were comming from behind the computer and he told me that keyboard, mouse, monitor, electric, and speaker wires. I asked him why there was no modem wire mentioned and he responded that he didn't need a wire connected because he was trying to use his cordless telephone..

One of the bosses called me into his office because his

new windows 95 computer was not working (old story)

he was moving some documents and it stopped working.

I ended up reinstalling win95 and his major applications,

and told him to only move what he knew was a document.

He found me about 5 min later and said he had the same

problem. I reinstalled win95 and his wordprocessor and

said "show me". I watched him find his document with

the word processor open it then go to a dos prompt and

type copy*.* then type del *.*. never he never realized

he was in the windows directory not his documents

directory. Or that he was getting an error message on

his copy command.

The football team at my high school uses a computer for training purposes (logs and videos of plays). The computer is hooked to a VCR via a video capture card. They were having some problems with it, so they asked me to take a look at it before they sent it out to be worked on. I opened the case, to find one of the most bizarre setups I've ever seen. A strange mix of SCSI and IDE, plus a weird master-slave setup between the hard drives, disk drive, and cd-rom. One of the 2 fans rattled so badly that it vibrated the entire desk, and the other was bolted to the side of the case, with no vent for air flow anywhere near it. Once, while formatting a 3.5" floppy, the power cable to the disc drive popped off with a loud bang (we think it arced somehow). After several hundred dollars, it was rebuilt, put in a full tower and sent back to us with a new 25gb drive. Well, they noticed that one of the 10gb SCSI drives wasn't being detected in any software, so they again asked me to take a look. I opened the case to find some disturbing and amusing problems. First of all, the SCSI was there, but the people that rebuilt the machine had forgot to plug it back into the SCSI controller card. The same thing happened with the cd audio cable betwen the cdrom and sound card. There was also a large aluminum drive bay sitting on top of the power supply. It wasn't connected to anything, just sitting there loose. Strangest of all, the bay holding a 10gb IDE and a 25gb IDE was hanging by one rivet. The other four had broken somehow. At the moment, that bay is propped up the the drive bay that was loose, and an RC Cola cup, awaiting welding. I don't think they'll ever have another computer built for them.

Once awoman probably in her mid 70's called me up and told me that the cookie warmer on the computer had broken.

Another time a man told me that his cup holder had snapped off the computer.

the last one was whn a man told me that he couldn't find the installation cd's. So I told him I would send him another set. Just before he hung up he said "Oh yeah thanks for the frisbees."

Customer called, his site -he maintains it himself- is

hosted by us on one of our servers. We've done our bit

to make sure our servers are Y2K-proof...

Customer: is the HTML-code that I use Y2K-proof?

Me: well, our servers are, so you will have no problem.

We have written an extensive Y2K-statement, it's on address

xxxxx.

Customer: nonono, I mean the HTML-code, is that Y2K-proof?

Me: absolutely!

I work for a large ISP in London....This Scotish guy calls up and say's "theres an awful screaming noise coming from your software cd, laddie" after about 10 mins I discover he has put the CD in his stero!!!!!

What a Muppet.

I got that log on the Diablo chat 2 years ago... it was in french so I translated it for you

DaDeXTeR) Damn I keep getting disconnected...

TheGuy) What's happening?

DaDeXTeR) The connection to the ISP keeps timing out...

TheGuy) Do you load mscdex.exe in autoexec.bat?

DaDeXTeR) Yeah... what's does it change?

TheGuy) That may affect your connection's stability

What??????????????????????

This is more of a family-support tale:

I'm in my third year of university, majoring in CS, and when

I went off to college, we set up a Hotmail account for my

mother so she could stay in touch with me. Just as some

background, we've had computers in my house for over 15 years,

and my mother *used* to be extremely competent with them, so

I don't know what happened to her. Suffice it to say, we

ended up spending over an hour showing her *exactly* how to

send and read email from her account (ie, move the mouse

here, push *this* button, etc), and to this day, she still

has problems with it. Some notable ones:

1) Teaching her that she could type the URL directly into

the address box; she didn't have to type it into Yahoo's

search box and search so she got a link to click (this I

discovered while watching her send email to fix another

problem; she'd been doing it that way for a couple of years!)

2) Teaching her to *single* click on program icons, and to

*wait* while the program started (she'd double-click,

forgetting that my brother had set it up for single clicking,

and then when the program didn't *immediately* appear, she'd

double-click again, eventually opening 6 copies of the same

program;

3) Teaching her to re-open a window she's minimized (she's

convinced that Hotmail "loses" her messages when she does

this;

and the one I still haven't convinced her of:

4) Teaching her that if she clicks on "Save Draft" before she

begins typing a message, all she's saved is a blank message.

She's totally convinced that since she saved it the one

time, it should automatically save everything she types

after that..

here's an interesting call i received one day...

me: (ISP Name), can I help you?

caller: yeah, i have a problem. i have an account with another ISP, and they're closed today, and there are some important e-mails i need to get, and i can't get them! can you help me--

me (interrupting): okay, sir, let me just check: you don't have an account with (ISP Name)?

caller (acting like *I'm* wasting *his* time): no, i do not. i need to get these e-mails!

me: well, unfortunately sir, if you don't have an account with us, i can't help you--

caller (interrupting): i don't think you understand! these are very important e-mails!

me (slowly, so he understands): sir. if you do *not* have an account with us, i *cannot* help you. (then going into "hint-dropping" mode) if you *had* an account with us, then i *could* help you...

caller (thick as a brick): so there's nothing you're willing or able to do to help me?

me (sighing): no sir, not if you don't have an account.

caller: well, i hope the shoe isn't on the other foot someday and you need help fro--

me: ::click::

now, two things about this call that i found amusing:

1) the guy expected me to troubleshoot e-mail for another ISP, even though I have no idea what their settings are...

2) the guy was *pissed* that i wasn't providing service to him *that he didn't **pay** for*!!

i try not to think that everyone's stupid, but when you get people like this...

Anon.

I work in technical support for a large organization. I got a call from an internal customer who said "The computer will not come on, there is something wrong!" I went over to the computer and tried to turn it on. Nothing! I checked the power cord, it was plugged in. I then noticed that the computer had a small pool of water under it. I questioned them about the water and they said. "Oh yeah one of the safety eye wash hoses got loose yesterday, sprayed water everywhere." When I pulled the power cord off the back of the computer, water ran from the back. I picked up the whole computer dried it out, took the power supply out and drained it, and blew the power supply out with a can of air. I let the computer sit for a while and then plugged it back in and turned it on. It worked fine.

I used to work for a medical clinic as their database manager,

webmaster, receptionist, network admin's assistant, and

general flunky (it was a *very* small office). The only

people who had any clue at all of how to use a computer

were myself and (presumably) the director, who was very close

to recieving his MIS. Guess whose job it was to fix the

computers when something went wrong and teach the other

office members how to use their machines? Just a hint: It

*wasn't* the director. Also, since I could usually manage

to rectify whatever damage they'd done to their computers,

it was assumed I also knew how to fix their copier, fax

machine, and automatic postage machine (after all, they're

all electronic, right?). So one day we're moving the entire

office a few doors down in the same building. Having visions

of computer mishaps, I came to work somewhat fearfully that

day. Surprisingly, the network was shifted without a problem;

however, the automatic postage machine no longer worked. So

they handed me the manual and told me "You know about this

electronic stuff, you fix it." I asked them if it was plugged

in, turned on, etc. Yes to all questions. So, having

exhausted my meager store of knowledge about postage machines,

I used the manual to look up tech support (the only trouble-

shooting method offered). After waiting on hold long-distance

for 10 mins or so, I get to talk to a TS person. She asks me

if the machine is plugged in/turned on. I say yes. She asks

me to check again. Sighing annoyedly, I crawl under the desk

to check.

It wasn't plugged in. NEVER TRUST YOUR COWORKERS!

This isnt that funny, but I'm a little astounded it worked, so I

thought id share...

One of our customers calls up saying that the computer will

not start up, and the base unit is making funny clicking sou

-nds. It was one of the dell easy release chassis (the ones

with the two buttons at the rear back), so she got the chassis

off, telling be that the clicking was comming from the hard

disk (well, the silver thing at the front). At this point

I recalled a friend of mine who works as a site engineer for

another computer firm (Think "small" uk pc supplier) telling

me that applying a phillips one screwdriver handle geltly, but

firmley to the hard disk as you switch it on sometimes gets the hard disk spinning

again. So....

Does she have a screwdriver?, yes, it appears it that she does..

I rephrase the above, she its the power button, I hear this "thwack"

then she comes back on the line saying.. Yes, Its working fine now..

Im never trying that again!!

I work as a Network Support Technician for a college and support the students who want to use our network. The students are required to register before they can use the network by submitting the adapter address of their ethernet adapters. After they turn in their adapter address I patch in their data jack in the hub room. Unfortunately Macintosh computers require a 'live' link before they can get their adapter address so I have to make the patch in the hub room before they can turn in their adapter address.

I patched in one particular student who had brought an iMac to school. He called about a week later:

Me: What error message are you getting?

Him: It says the a connection with the server could not be established.

I looked over his information and he had turned in a valid adapter address.

Me: What kind of cable are you using?

Him: The one that came with my computer.

Me: Is it thin like a phone cable or is it thicker? (I ask this because many stu-dense [sorry] try to connect using a phone line in their ethernet cards)

Him: Its thicker.

Me: Okay, it sounds like it might be a bad cable. I'll come over and take a look.

I went to his dorm room and as soon as I walk into the room I discover the problem. He doesn't have a cable running from the iMac to the data jack.

Me: Where is the cable at?

Him: What cable?

Me: The network cable that you need to connect.

Him: I don't know what you are talking about.

The only cable running out of his iMac was the cable for the keyboard that so happenmed to be thicker than a phone cable. He must have been refering to this one on the phone.

Me; (Argghh) Well let me check you connection with the network cable I have with me.

I connected the cable and it worked fine. I was really confused at this point because he turned in an adapter address and like I said before a Mac needs a 'live' link in order to get this address.

Me: How did you get your adapter address?

Him; Its written down in the book.

Me: Oh! Well your connection is working fine. You can pick up a network cable at my office. (I proceeded to leave) So now you know you need a network cable plugged in to your computer and the network jack.

Him: Well it has built in ethernet so I thought it worked by satellite or something.

I had to wait until I left the buiding to laugh.

I used to do workstudy for the college I now am an employee for. I worked for the administrative computing services department and went out on campus to help administrative offices with computer problems. The offices contact their support person first and if they can't help them over the phone then they have me go the office needing the help.

I wasrking on some other project when the phone rings in one of my boss' office. She is talking with someone on the phone about a monitor problem. She was on the phone with them for several minutes and could not diagnose the problem other than the fact that the monitor was defective and needed to be replaced.

The person on the phone was using an old 286 with a Monochrome monitor. She was using WordPerfect 5.0. The problem was that she could only see a few of the words or letters at variious places on the screen as it was loading up. My boss told me to go to the person's office and try to help. She told me that I would probably have to replace the monitor.

I had no intention of going clear across campus if I didn't have to and lug a heavy monitor back and then haul another heavy monitor back over to that office.

I told my boss to have the person adjust the brightness and contrast knobs on their monitor. My boss asked, "Why?" I said, "So that I don't have to go clear across campus for no reason." She said, "What?" I asked her, "Please just have the person do that." So she asked the person to adjust the two knobs and low and behold the other letters appeared! (Laughter over the phone between my boss and the person on the other end.) I just walked away and shook my head.

The letters the person had been seeong were the ones that were in 'bold' and so the intensity of the letters was greater.

I think my boss who was supposedly a computer professional should have figured that one out on her own.

I work at a local college as a network support technician. I also have my own business where I do computer technical support. I received a call one day about a problem someone was having with (I think it was) their printer. I told him how to use his floppy disks to install the printer drivers. He did this while I was on the phone with him and we got the printer working fine. He thanked me and hung up.

Later that day he called again (I knew it was him because I have caller ID) and I knew immediately what the problem was. I guessed he had rebooted his computer and left the printer driver disk in. I was right!

He was really worried that his computer was broke. He said he turned on his computer and got a message saying "Non-system disk error ... (blah blah blah)." HGe thought it was something having to do with installing the printer. I told him to remove the disk from the floppy drive and press any key. He said he didn't have a disk in the drive and that he just turned it on. I said to check anyway. Sure enough there was a disk in there. He asked me how I knew he had a disk in his drive just from over the phone. I told him that was what the message referred to and reminded him of the printer installation earlier in the day.

Ive got two stories to share of my summer experience of working at a help desk. The first is about a mailroom clerk. One day I got a call from him, and he was wondering why his tab key didnt work in a particular program. I went over to his desk and took a look at the computer, he was able to use the mouse just fine, and he said he didnt need to use the keyboard at all, but that the instructions for the program included using the tab key. I decided to try to type something, and what do you know, nothing happened. I looked and the keyboard wasnt plugged in.

The second incident involves an MCSE who works with the company and who is actually considering taking over the network admin job which is vacant since one of my friends left. She gives me a call asking if the network was down, which it wasnt. She said she couldnt log in or anything, and that she had tried every trick that she knew. Again, i go over to check things out, i make sure that the context and server is correct, and i ask her to log in. No dice. I decide just for my own amusement to look in back, and I saw that the cable was loose. Case closed.

This second story is truely sad because if a network admin doesnt remember the basics, what use is he/she.

Not exactly a tech tale, but I think it fits anyway...

My senior year I was managing editor on my school paper. We got

a new teacher who, a few weeks into the school year, decided to

replace our perfectly reliable, albeit old, Macs with office-rejected

486s with Windows 3.1. The first day that we had these POS's, I was

hanging out in the classroom and the teacher left to run an errand.

I decided to see exactly how crappy these computers were, and since

none of them were on, I walked over, hit the computer and monitor switches and booted it up.

A few minutes later she returned to see me typing on MSWord and looked amazed.

She said "that's amazing! how did you get those to work? I tried it earlier

and couldn't get it to turn on! You're a genius!" She was sincere.

I simply said "I just turned it on." I have the feeling she was looking

for a big key with an arrow on it for a power button -- like the Macs,

which of course didn't work the same as the IBMs! It was quite

the interesting school year...

Back befor windows 98

Customer: I just got your computer and it dose not have the latest operating system on it.

Aaron: We only ship the latest version, could you tell me what you seem to have?

Customer: My paper work said Windows 95 ver. 2.5.

Aaron: Yes sir that is the latest version.

Customer: No it is not I see computers all over the office with newer versions! (very upset)

Aaron: Could you tell me what version they are?

Customer: Yes- Windows version 3.11.

A user rang the help desk with a complex sounding keyboard error. Unable to diagnose the problem the caller was transferred to the duty consultant.

Caller: "Hi, I have a problem with my keyboard. Everytime I turn my computer on for the last couple of weeks it says "Keyboard Error, press F1 to continue". I leave it turned off so it can think about it, but when I turn it on the next morning it still has the problem. The helpdesk has told to check for stuck keys, but I can't find any and it is almost new, so I can't think what is wrong..."

ME: "OK, when you first got the keyboard did it work OK with your computer?"

Caller: "Of course, otherwise I would have taken it back!"

ME: "Can you have a look behind the computer to confirm that all the cables are securely attached to your PC"

Caller: "Alright, hang on....yes, they are plugged in and screwed in properly..."

ME: "OK, on your keyboard can you see your stauts lights? That's Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll lock?..Good, I want you to turn on your computer now and tell me if the little light flash when you power up the machine"

Caller: "No...the lights all stay off...."

ME: "Sounds as though either your computer's keyboard controller or the keyboard itself is faulty...If you push the Num Lock key, the delete key, F1 does anything happen?"

Caller: "I don't know, hang on let me check...."

(long pause)

Caller: "No....nothing happens I told you this thing was broken!"

ME: "Ummmm...why did it take you so long to press those keys?"

Caller: "Well the keyboard is on the otherside of the room isn't it..!"

ME: "What's it doing over there?"

Caller: "Well, one day I had some stuff lying on my keyboard when I turned it on. It beeped like crazy and said "Keyboard error, press F1 to resume", but I didn't want the keyboard to pass the errors on to the PC, so I unplugged it and put it in my bookcase........"

It was all downhill from there....needless to say when the keyboard was plugged in the machine worked fine...

Last year I lived in a dorm, and I turned out to be the only

person there who had any useful knowledge about computers.

So of course I was the one everyone came to when they had

problems. 2 memorable things came out of this: first, the

number of times I had to explain to a friend of mine that

when I said a program of mine wasn't working, I meant one

that I was *writing* ("Have you tried rebooting?"), and this

story:

We had an ethernet connection set up in the dorms for

highspeed internet access (and god, I miss that t3 :P). So

about 2 months before the end of the year, a girl down the

hall decides to install an ethernet card in her computer

and take advantage of this (why did she suddenly want it,

2 months before we were leaving for the summer? She wasn't

returning to that dorm, either; third-year students get

kicked out into dorms without ethernet connections). So she

comes to me and tells me that she won't have any trouble

putting the card in, but could I come help her set it up once

she'd done that? I should have heard warning bells here and

come to watch her install it, but I was busy working on a

programming assignment and just said sure, come get me when

you're ready to set it up.

So she knocks on my door and I go down to her room. The

computer is totally frozen; turning it off and on results

in a dead computer. Then she asks, "Should sparks have come

out of there when I put it in?" She hadn't even turned off

the computer before she put the card in (I usually won't

even work inside the case until the computer is off,

unplugged, and grounded). She managed to blow the ethernet

card, the motherboard, the video card....

Yesterday. I lost an hour of work.

And the helpdesk for the stupid package, well, helpdesk...

Finally, my back offers telebanking-service. Ok, fine.

Yesterday I entered the info for the salaries of my company.

Next is the selection process: which amounts do I

transfer now, which ones tomorrow.

I make an error, and press ESC to start over

with the selection process. Oh sh*t, that's that same bug

all over again. can't press ESC here, in this particular

screen it's the same as PROCESS.

PROCESS means: put all the selected items in a file and

remove them from the todo-list. Didn't want to do that,

the cashflow doesn't allow it yet.

It means also: remove file and retype everything.

I hate typing that much.

Today I called the helpdesk to complain about this bug,

and to ask when they're going to fix it.

The helpdesk person was not quite my type of person.

He says: 'It is not a bug, it's a feature.'

After 5 minutes trying to convince him, I gave up.

I hope there is no such feature as

'transfer all available money to the chief programmer'...

I was sent an e-mail this morning:

"Is there any way you can have the Outlook Inbox screen be the first thing I see when I turn my computer on in the morning?????"

We have every PC in the building set up where Outlook is in the Startup directory, but anythings possible. I go to check it out. I tell him to log out and then log in again. Sure enough, Outlook pops right up. I say to him,"Seems to be working fine."

He then goes to tell me that he doesn't log off or shut off his computer at night, he switches off his monitor and was wondering if there were some way he could get Outlook to pop up when he turned on his monitor. (eyes rolling in disbelief)I told him "No", and gave him a strict talking to about the importance of logging out at night.

Cust: My printers not printing

tech: Did you check the cartridge to see if its empty

Cust: Oh yes, its new, can you take a look at it.

tech: sure, bring it in and I'll take a look at it

Customer brings the printer in, upon removing the cartrige I can immediately tell its out of ink, but to reassure the client I test the printer with a demo cartridge and print a test page and it works fine.

I tell the customer he is out of ink and needs a new cartridge. I put his old one back in and tell him where the nearest place is to buy a replacement. Customer says OK he will do this

The next Evening:

Cust: Hi, I can't print

Tech: Were you in yesterday?

Cust: Yes

Tech: Did you change the cartridge?

Cust: No

Tech: Well, your still out of ink then, buh-bye.

I guess there really isn't an Ink fairy to refill your ink cartridges while you sleep!

I work Technical Support for a large software company. One of the

products we produce is a fax software program. The other day, I

received a call from an irate user. It seems he had bought a name

brand computer that comes bundled with a Basic Edition of our

software. It also comes bundled with Office 2000. Our product is

designed to link with Outlook, but the basic edition has this option

disabled function disabled, since it is not designed to link at all.

As well, Outlook 2000 has been changed, and we had to create new

macros for it, since the Outlook 98 macros no longer work.

At any rate, this user had somehow managed to get our Basic edition

linked to Outlook 2000. Needless to say, it caused errors (having only

the Outlook 98 macros to work with). The creative user then decided to

visit our website where he found the patch for our FULL version of the

product to allow it to link to Outlook 2000. There are clear warnings

on the webpage that this patch is NOT designed to be applied to any of

our Trial or Basic editions as it will not work. The (L)user admitted

to me that he DID read that, but applied our patch anyways! Needless to

say, the program caused even more problems. He then called us, claiming

our program had a bug in it!

I explained to him that he had taken a program not designed to work with

another program and linked them anyways, and when that didn't work, he

applied a patch that he admitted to knowing would cause problems!

He spent 20 minutes arguing with me that it was a bug!

I finally said to him: "Sir, that's like buying a car and filling the

gas tank with water and then complaining to the dealership that the car

is not running properly!"

He finally saw my point.

This happened while i was working with one of the big 3 computer companies.

Me: Thank you for calling Dell technical support, my name is Mike, can i have your name please?

C: My name is __

(insert data collection here)

Me: What can i help you with today?

C: Well, my computer is making this beeping noise about every 20 seconds.

Me: A beeping noise? Is this happening in any specific program?

C: No, it happens whatever i am in.

Me: Hrmm. Okay, why don't we try this, reboot your system, and see what happens.

(reboots - beep right after the windows startup sound)

C: Did you hear that?

Me: Yes I did. It sounds a little high pitched to be a system beep. Are you sure it is coming from your computer?

C: Oh yes, there is no other electronic equipment around here.

Me: Is it coming from your speakers or from the computer case?

C: I don't have speakers, and i can hear it coming from inside the case.

(I ask a co-worker if he knew of any periodic beeps our systems made, like a low BIOS battery warning or anything, he said it sounded like a UPS signal.)

Me: Is there a uninterruptable power supply that the computer plugs into?

C: No, it plugs directly into the wall outlet.

Me: Okay, let's try rebooting the system in MS-DOS mode.

(all along, every 20 seconds or so, there is this high-pitched beep in the background)

C: Okay, it is in DOS mode.

Me: Okay, let's wait to see what happens.

*BEEP*

C: There it was again.

Me: Okay, let's try this. Let's boot to a clean DOS mode, press F8 (blah blah blah)

C: Okay, it is booted.

*BEEP*

Me: Hrmm. Let's try this: Let's power the system off, and unplug it from the wall. The monitor too. Are you sure this is coming from the computer?

C: Yes, it is - I can hear it from inside the case. Okay, it is off.

*BEEP*

C: Oh.

Me: It looks like it may be coming from somewhere else, that isn't your computer making the sound.

C: I think they run one of the UPS's in the electric in the walls.

Me: I am sorry ma'am, I am not allowed to trouble-shoot random beeping sounds from within your walls. Building maintenance should be able to help you.

C: Thanks anyway!

-Not her fault, i am sure the sound resonated off the metal computer case.

this lady called in not letting me speak, she was frantic. She said her computer doesn't want to start. Well i asked her if the computer was plugged in, "yes" . did you hit power? "yes" I explained that it was a hardware issue. She told me "NO, it is an outlook problem" ok? She told me that someone sent her an email that a virus was attached. Her virus scanner came up and told her virus ......etc. Well she took the computer case off washed the insides and plugged back in waiting for it to start! I advised her to bring the computer to the closest computer hardware place.

Tech Support

Yea this is joel

(15 secconds of scilence as if i know who he is)

Yea

I just signed up for the internet

(yet another long pause)

Ok

How long des it take for an account to be activated?

about two hours.

Ok thanks

(click)

This story goes quite away back into the past. An organization

previously associated with took the large step of buying PCs

for thier employees. I received a call from one of the employees

who said she could not get the computer to boot-up. I went to check the computer

and sure enough she couldn't boot. I asked her what had happend.

She said that she started going through the DOS maual trying all of the listed

commands. You can probably gues what happened. When she got to the Format command

she formated the Harddisk.

I actually do tech support for a ISP and I get strange and

stupid call very often. I get this one recently and I think

it should be mentionned here.

Me: Hi, here XXX internet. May I help you ??

Cu: Can I have a technician please.

Me: It's a technician. May I help you ??

Cu: I just buy a computer and get one free month with you.

How do I configure my computer for It.

Me: What have you already done ??

Cu: What do you mean ??

Me: Have you plug your computer??

Cu: Yes. I'm currently in windows.

Me: Did you plug the phone line into the computer ??

Cu: I don't think so.

Me: Whith your computer you should have get a grey phone

cable.

Cu: I get it.

Me: Good. Look at the back of your computer, you'll see two

phone plug. You must plug this cable into the "line" one

Cu: It's done. Should I plug it into the wall ??

Me: Yes sir.

Cu: Wait a sec....

And the line was cut !!! I think I was staring at the phone for a while. Finaly I said : It's going to be a long day !!!

I just read a story on here called Happy Downloading about a woman with a 28 meg file attachement. Well I work at and ISP and we see these all the time. The kicker was when I got a call from a guy telling me a friend had tried to mail him a CD. Well at first I thought this was an issure for our local Post office until I looked in his mailbox. Apparently his friend has a Cable-Modem or DSL and actually Emailed him 642 megs off a CD of his!!!!! I tried to explain that with his 56k modem it would be not only a number of days but WEEKS that it would take him to download it. Definatly going to look into putting an attachment cap on our mail server.

I work for a relatively large computer store. We support the public, corporate, and municipal accounts in our service department. Now I was not the person on the phone for this call, but I was at the closest workbench. The call went something like this:

Tech Support: "--- Service, How may I help you?"

Client: "Hi, I woiuld like to get help on cleaning the heads on my hard drive."

Tech Support: "You would like information on cleaning up your hard drive? As in Defragmentation?"

Client: "No. I want information on how to clean the heads on my hard drive. My hard drive was being loud and making scratchy sounds, so I opened it up and used WD-40 (lubricating agent) on the platters. They spin better now and I would like to clean the heads."

Tech Support: "Ummm... Let me transfer you to the Service Manager..."

At which point the customer was placed on hold... So he couldn't hear the entire service department dying with laughter.

- Alex.

I was searching around some of the UBB's I go to, and I came to this one guys post in which I just had to laugh at him. This was his post, word for word:

Hey Heiu most people have Netscape that comes with their computer when they purchase it, so I am going to load it on my DC, and just pay $25.00 for

the keyboard, and get the Netscape for free (instead of $21 a month and a free keyboard.)!!! Since it's $21.00 a month on ATT for unlimited, and you

can get Netscape unlimited for free, and just pay the the $25.00 and buy the keyboard, instead of getting it free with ATT.

In case you don't understand, the Dreamcast is a videogame console that comes with a modem for online play and surfing. He though he could load Netscape

on his DC (which is impossible since there is no storage yet), and connect to the internet for free through Netscape. I guess I don't need my ISP anymore than too : )

I thought I would take a few moments to relay a story that illustrates the fact that, in our business, you never know what you will find. The story begins with a problem that one of my customers encountered when attempting to log on to his domain. It goes something like this.

The end user had set up a power on password on his Armada 7380. He was always successful in entering this password and continue with booting up. When he got to his Windows Networking dialog he would begin to enter his password. As he typed the third letter in his password the screen would go black. You could not use Ctrl, Alt, Del to reboot. The machine had to be powered off and then restarted. I asked the end user if he could duplicate the problem and he explained that this happens every time he logs in. A strange problem? I thought so.

After getting my hands on the computer I began my normal process of elimination to determine how to correct the problem. I began by REM’ing lines in autoexec.bat and config.sys, removing things from start up, removing entries from load= lines; the usual stuff. Of course you must restart the computer each time you make a change to determine if you have fixed the problem. I had no luck and watched the machine re-boot many times.

Then I thought that, perhaps, this is an issue with power management. I disabled all such features. Still no luck. Same problem.

I was beginning to run out of ideas so I was grasping at straws and disabled the power on password. I still had the same problem. By this time I was becoming quite familiar with watching this machine re-boot and then promptly die.

Still grasping, I thought that maybe the *.pwl file was corrupt. So like a good IT Specialist I went to Start and Find to look for this file. Lo and Behold, as I typed the letter “L” in *.pwl the machine died again. Now I was getting somewhere. (“L” is also the third letter in his password)

I figured that maybe typing this particular letter was somehow shorting out the computer. I took my trusty pocket knife from my pocket and pried the key off of the keyboard. Everything looked fine except for a small black hair wrapped around the key mechanism. I couldn’t imagine that this would make a difference but I carefully removed it and restarted the machine for the twentieth time. I did not have high hopes and expected to continue my quest for a solution to this problem.

As I typed the third letter in his password I expected the machine to die once again. It did not!! How exciting. Naturally I re-booted several more times to verify that the problem was, in fact, fixed. It worked every time. Hurrah!

I thought that you all might enjoy this little story that shows that no matter how much we think we know we can always learn something new.

One day subbing for another tech that was out sick. A man walked into the store looking like the typical farmer bob. He stated that he wanted to see one of "...them thar..." computers. In the back of my mind I felt that this was a wast of time, however, i went ahead and showed him a few systems that we had on special. In the middle of the conversation farmer bob asked me what it ran off of. I told him the OS was WIN 98, and he replied "no not that, electricity or kerosine." I asked him to hold on a minute and whent to the back room and fell down laghing.

I still to this day am astounded by this....

I started my first job in the computer industry at a small computer repair company. I had only played with computers at home, and my friends and family would call me for help, but this was my first day as an IT professional!

The very first system I have to work on was completely dead. I tried replacing the power supply, removing all expansion cards except the video, and replacing the video card. I checked the system for grounding, everything. The system would not beep or give any display. I call my boss over to look at it and explain what I have done. I looks at the system. Makes the sign of the cross with his hand. Presses the power button and the system works perfectly. I was in shock. I ran every diag. I had and could not find a problem.

It gets worse...

It came time for me to move on to a better job. I went out on my last field service call that I would be doing for the company to work on a printer. The printer would jam constantly. My boss was already working on it and couldn't get it to work. He checked the paper stock, replaced the paper tray, cleared the paper path, and replaced all the rollers in the paper path. Nothing made a difference. Remembering what he did to me my first day, I did the sign of the cross with my hands and it worked. He looked at me with the same shock and amazment on his face that I had on mine.