Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

Senior Sever support where I work had problems coping files from 1 machine to another. It was timing out.

He said it was the fault of server as they weren't made to copy data ??

All it was, was thatthe virus software was scanning incoming and outgoing files

go figure - this guy is on an absolute fortune.

I got a call to look at a computer that wasn't working. Apparently there had been a mystery flood in the kitchen and the computer had gotten soaked. Nobody was admitting responsibility, the kids all pleaded Not Guilty, Mom didn't know who'd done it, Dad was pleading ignorance (he can't use the thing anyway) and it looked like the blame was being placed on the builders who had been doing up the kitchen that weekend. I opened the case and found water ALL over the inside of the unit. Much toilet paper later, I'd mopped up all the water and decided to leave it for a few days to dry out thoroughly. Same for the monitor and printer...I poured a pint or so out of the printer !. Came back several days later and fired it up. The system unit booted OK, but monitor and printer very dead. Hooked up a spare monitor I had in the car, and all was well, so I arranged to get them a new monitor and printer at the local comp fair. When I came to put in the new bits, Dad got me on my own and finally let me in on his guilty secret...he'd been cleaning out the central heating radiator behind the computer desk with a hose, and it had squirted over EVERYTHING. Bad enough, you might think....then he thought he ought to turn it on to see if it was still working..and this guy is alleged to be an electrician !! I think I'll do my own electrical repairs...... Still regretting turning down a golden opportunity for blackmail though...*S*

I work at a medium sized university. I was hired on as an Apple tech and was told shortly after that I would have to work once a week on the help desk. Imagine my delight in learning that I would have to try and answer various Wintel questions from various faculty, staff, and students.

Well, I've been trying, and actually learning. Some calls just take the cake, however. One call concerned a student in the dorms trying to get net access via ethernet.

[me] Hello, xxxxx help desk, how can I help you?

[student] Yeah, I was told that I need an "eee-ther-net" card to get connected to "that internet", right?

[me] Well, are you a student in the dorms?

[student] Yes.

[me] Ok, yeah, you need an ethernet card.

[student] Well, I've already got one, but I don't know where to install it in the T.V. A friend of mine told me to get a card and to just plug it in, but I don't know where to put it.

[me] (very long pause) T.V.? You mean your computer?

[student] No, I don't have a computer, I just have a T.V. My friend told me that this would work.

[me] You don't have a computer. You are trying to install an ethernet card in a television.

[student] Yes. It's an older T.V. Could it be too old? I mean, I know that when things get older they become incompatable.

[me] (sigh) Yeah, it sounds like your T.V. is probably incompatable with the new ethernet card. You should probably go get a newer one which is compatable with your card.

[student] (quite happy) Oh, ok, I'll do that.

Another time, I had a student call concerning with network connection and his ability to get e-mail. It turned out that he had forgotten his password.

[me] Allright, I'm checking out your account and everything seems ok. You've got quite a bit of mail.

[student] Ok, can you reset my password?

[me] Allright, I just reset it back to your student I.D.

[student] Ok, I'm checking it now. Oh, I've got attatchments. How do I get those?

I walked him through the process of downloading attatchments and using the proper app to open them.

[me] So did everything work out allright?

[student] (silence, slight rustling noise)

[me] (pause) So, did you get all of your mail and attatchments?

[student] (silence, louder rustling, heavy breathing)

[me] (concept of what student is doing lights up in head) Hello? Is everything allright?

[student] (louder noises, motion) "Ohhohhaaaa!"

I finally realized the full implications of what I had heard and figured he had gotten an "interesting" attatchment and had decided to "seize the moment" (As well as "seizing" something else)

All I could think was "eeeeewwwwww!!! GROSS!"

I hate working the help desk. I'm working it now, dreading the sound of the phone. Thanks for having this site because from reading it, I know I'm not the only one in hell.

Customer calls up and we have a serious issue installing his printer. Eventually we got it installed and I instructed him to open wordpad up to print out a test page.

me: okay now I want you to type in our web address its..

cust: wait wait! i don't type fast.

me: that's okay. here we go... w... w... w... dot... (etc)

later...

me: okay, now click on file.... print.... and ok....

(printer sounds)

me: now, what came out?

cust: the page is blank!

me: Okay, we probably missed something here... (we proceeded to check out the ink carts and make sure they are in right=they're fine).

me: alright, lets go back to the computer where I had you type that in...

cust: i didn't type anything... I thought it self typed!

AARG!

Here's the exact verbage from a tech note sent by our user:

"We need to have the computer replaced the ENTER key is not working. Thank-You."

Ya know, you never believe the coffee cup holder and keyboard in the dishwasher stories until you see it yourself... Or hear it from your mom.

There's a woman in her office. Clean freak. The type who wraps the cord on the coffee maker so short it has to be half an inch from the outlet to be plugged in (and wrapped the tie so tight it broke the cord!) Religiously wipes her phone down with alcohol. After every call. You get the idea. "Nancy" decides that the computers in the department need cleaning. Full bottle of Windex (LARGE size) and roll of paper towels. By the time Mom caught her, the bottle was 3/4 empty, two monitors were sizzling a little and 3 keyboards had to be turned upside down over the trashcan to empty all the liquid out of them. There's only 4 computers in the room. Nancy had got all but one (Mom's) to some degree or another. Needless to say, my mom was a little --concerned. Two keyboard replacements later (somehow the monitors and one keyboard survived. Good thing; low budget) Mom now understands why Nancy has no television at home, and why the keyboard of her computer has been on the fritz since last month. I hate to think how this woman cleans her children! (Mom invested in a dust cover for her computer. Seems this visual deception is enough to make Nancy think the computer stays clean. Heaven forbid this woman ever figures out that the computer box isn't actually part of the desk)

Cust: I'm calling in regard to registration. I think my computer is having problems because I didn't register.

me: (mystified) - okay, what exactly is going on?

Cust: It keeps on popping up errors saying there is a problem with the registry.

me: no ma'am.. (I explain breifly what the windows registry is).

Cust: Well, I had a tech come out and he said that he'd need to reinstall everything. I asked him if the registry error had to do with me not registering, and he said yes.

(Oh my gosh! I shouldn't be here, I could be making a mil in in-house tech support!)

a customer called, said he turned on his system went to start)programs...and there used to be stuff there.

then he said he went to settings and there used to be control panel.

i then had him go to dos to check c: there was nothing left

i advised the eu that we would have to fdisk and reinstall

he asked if he would lose all his data

i told him that he couldn't lose all his data bacause he had none left

as we were going through fdisk he said

"i guess maybe i shouldn't have got rid of my anti-virus eh?"

huh!

I've heard anti-christ rumors of famous men since

Nixon. Why just men.

I needed some software from Microsoft. I opened

Netscape and typed "microsoft" on the location line. The

Microsoft home page begin to appear. I always watch the

status line at the botton of the window. The network

stalled for a second while the status line reported "14%

of 666."

The rest of the page appeared and the transport

stopped. I sat staring at the Microsoft Corporation home

page, stroking my chin in thought, trying to imagine the

invisible lines between its resources. After a minute, I

chose the Microsoft Corporate logo, saying "no way" to

myself. Right click, save to desktop, minimize Netscape,

right click, properties reported "mslogo.gif, size: 666

bytes."

Too cool. I sent a quick note to their contact email

address saying, "You have to be kidding me, the Microsoft

Corporate logo, mslogo.gif, is 666." A couple of days

later, I received an email saying, "I don't see 666. All I

see is the word, Microsoft."

I responded explaining that the file size of the

Microsoft Corporate logo on the Microsoft Corporation web

site was exactly 666 bytes and that this file was a global

resource of their site which millions of people view all the

time. I spoke about "Revelations" and sited rumors of

Bill's unholy parentage and that his own web site really

shouldn't be adding to his problem. I said that Bill

probably wouldn't be too happy about it.

The file "mslogo.gif," a global resource of the

Microsoft Corporation web site and probably the single most

viewed representation of the signature of the Microsoft

Corporation and Bill Gates changed in size from 666 bytes

to 628 bytes so fast my head spun around.

Two days to get a response for clarification; seconds

to get a reaction. I actually noticed the change after a

couple of hours, but I bet there were some people running

at Microsoft.

D. Bryan Chaney

Information Technology Consultant

Consortium of Arts and Sciences Colleges

California State University, Sacramento

This isn't a computer tech story, but to funny not to be shared.

I work at a major office supply store. A person called for information

on paper for a paper shredder.

As always, a helpdesk has a host of "regulars" whom most of us know by first name, even by username or however we pull them up in Remedy's Action Request System (I used to program the UI for ARS, it's nothing more than a fancy front-end to an Oracle database). Well, I had a good friend who would call in at least weekly to get something minor fixed that he just wanted me there to hold his hand during. Let's call him Tony. When he called in for the first time, he wanted to find out if "the new guy" (he knew everyone there by name, even came to our XMas party one year) had a sense of humour. His company hadn't renewed their contract with ours in a LONG time, and thereby had incessantly slow PCs and old software to work with (Compaq Concertos, 486 sl 33), but he knew this well and knew I had no control over it. Anyway, the story follows:

me : $support, this is "ArcSin", how can I help y..

Tony : Yeah this is Tony $lastname, my computer is too slow

me : (frantically typing in his name and running a query on him) Well, let's see what we can do about that... Open your c:\temp directory.

Tony : Okay, type dir and read it to you, right?

me : Exactly. What kind of files do you have in there, and how big are they?

Tony : Don't have but a couple files, and they're all really small.

me : Well then, let's open your Control Panel, increase your swap file size.

Tony : Done that. Didn't help a lick, your darn bloatware chokes the whole pagefile.

me : wow, you know your stuff... That's refreshing.

Tony : But I don't know it all like you do, so I'd like you to tell me how I can make the computer faster.

me : Well, we could defrag... Maybe clean up your autoexec and config.sys for TSR programs

Tony : I imaged this thing a couple days ago, and ran a defrag afterwards.

me : Well there's not muc...

Tony : Damn straight there is, you can send me a SIMM or a faster processor

me : Your Concerto's processor is soldered down, and there's already a memory expansion installed

Tony : Can't you send me a Micron or one of those Tecra 8k's that $competing_company has?

me : I could, but I like my job, and I'm too much of a softie to go to jail...

Tony : How about we juice it with a 8 ferad capacitor?

me : sounds like fun, but then I'd have to bill your company for a new one

Tony : Just make it faster already!

(I hold him for a moment to confer with my Leads on what to do, and get laughed at incessantly for falling for Tony's trick)

me : Tony, how about we run a resetc.exe (custom program) form the CD to refresh the program files?

Tony : That might do it, the more software this thing gets, the faster it goes!

me : Not really, the pagefile size is restric...

Tony : Agh, I know about the pagefile, I just want you to write some software to make it faster!

me : I really don't code very well, I seriously doubt I cou...

Tony : Maybe I should do it.

me : Good idea. Go out, buy some Sams' Publishing books on C++, write your own damn program.

Tony : Hah, you took 28 minutes to crack, that's a record.

me : argh... Is there anything else I can help you with, Tony?

Tony : Yeah, make my battery last longer and make my screen have more colors!

Needless to say, he gave up huranging me and hung up.

I do tech support for about 45-50 isp accross north america, and one night, at about 4:30am, i got a call from a distressed woman who couldn't get on the internet. I explained that she was not going to be able to get on the net tonight and that she'd have to wait and try again tommorow. Now this lady was VERY drunk and was sluring all her words. She told me that she HAD to get on the net to talk to her honey... and that it was very importent that she get on now... i again explaiend that she was not going to be able to get on the net because of the outage, and there was nothing i could do for her. So then it came... right out of the blue she said "you sound nice, will you talk to me for a while?" i almost didn't hit my mute button fast enough and almost laughed my butt off in her ear. so once i calmed down a little bit, i told her i wouldn't be able to talk to her as there were other calls coming in and i was the only one there that night, which was a lie, there wasn't another call for 4 hours.

I used to work for Dell Tech support years ago. I heard

this from a couple of our techs.

A woman calls up and says that she can't get her floppy

(5.5 inch) into the floppy drive. The tech asks her why

not and she says when she tries to put it in the drive it

won't go in. Tech askes her what she had previously been

doing. User explains that she is installing Word Perfect

and it had asked her to put disk 1 in, and she did that,

then it asked for disk 2, so she put that in, now its

asking for disk 3 and it won't fit in with the other two

disks in the floppy. Obvious fix, but we were amazed that

the second disk was readable.

Another tale supposedly from Dell

While i was at Dell tech support heard this story. Whether

true or not?

Tech support gets a call. User says that the keyborad keys

are getting stuck all the time, because when she stops typing

characters are always appearing ont he screen. Assume it is

a dab keyboard, send a replacement. That doesn't fix it, so

we end up eventually sending a tech out. He comes back with

the following explaination.

Apparently this woman had two remarkable physical aspects.

She was very short sighted, and whenever she stopped typing

she had to lean way forward to read what she had typed.

The other aspect was she was very very very well endowed and

wore one of those 1950's bras. So when she leaned forward

her breasts pressed down the keyboard keys, but her bra was

so thick she didn't feel it. I would have loved to hear the

tech explain to the woman what was happening.

Some stories are sad.

While at Dell we had a user that would call regularily

around 1:00 in the afternoon. Every day for the 8 months I

was in tech support this guy called. All he wanted to do

was play solitaire. The poor guy had Alzheimers and couldn't

remember how to play, but he knew he wanted to play. Best

caller I ever had. You basically got to sit and play solitaire

with this guy for a couple of hours. Supervisor would walk

by and see you playing solitaire and knew you were talking to

this guy.

One of many calls fielded:

Customer: "What's wrong with your Internet? I keep getting a message that says: No dial tone."

Actual call from a customer:

"My monitor is making crackling noises and there's smoke coming out... should I turn it off?"

I used to work phone support. One day it took me 20 minutes to get a person to type in 'cd\wp51'.

All I needed to do was look in the Wordperfect directory and delete a file I suspected was causing a problem. Each time I had her type in 'cd\wp51' the error msg 'invalid dirctory' was returned. I had the lady type in 'dir wp*.*' and the system clearly showed a wp51 directory existed. But typing in 'cd\wp51' returned the error message 'invalid directory'. Pretty soon I started to get attitude from the client as if I were telling her to type in the wrong thing. I went offline for a few minutes to think about it and then it hit me. I went back on line and said Ma'am you are typing in 'c' as in cat 'd' as in dog, backslash, the backslash is the one over the enter key. You are typing in 'w' as in water 'p' as in Paul, the number 5 and are you typing in the number '1' or the letter 'l'? And the client said 'OOOOH'. It had finally occured to me that typists never use the number '1'. They always use the letter 'l' because they look the same on paper.

My company sent new software to our field sales reps. on 3.5" floppy disks with full instructions on how to install the software. One guy called our helpdesk questioning how to put the disk in the "slit". After I explained how to insert the disk he wanted to know if the laptop had to be powered on for the software to load!

I wanted so badly to tell him that it would install by osmosis.

My first day teaching an Introduction to Windows course. "Lets Get aquainted with the mouse" I said to my class. To practice I had the computers opened to Paintbursh and just had my students wiggle the mouse around to see how it moved on the screen. "Damn...Damn.....DAMN..." One of my students hand was shaking. The mouse was gingerly cradled like a delicate Pringles chip between his goliath sized thumb and forefinger. "Ahhhh Damn...." His eyes darted around the screen like Department of Health inspector looking for a cockroach on the walls of a greasy spoon diner. "Is everything allright Larry?" I asked walking over to his computer. "Well no, I've lost my mouse" he replied. He turned and looked at the screen of the student sitting next to him. Her mouse proudly dancing on her screen. Pulling his glasses lower on his nose he peered at the mouse on her screen and pursed his lips. "Excuse me" he asked pointing to his neighbors screen, "...is that my mouse or yours?"

Despite the slow start the class was a success and we covered using windows, maintaining your equipment, and even how to purchase your first PC. A few days later in the class Larry had shown considerable improvement, and was my star student. My supervisor stepped in on the final day to audit my performance. I had boasted to him previously of the notable improvement with Larry and was therefore psyched to see he had raised his hand for another one of his enlightened questions. "Yes, LArry do you have any wrap up question concerning your systems maintenance." I asked. Like an Einstein he lowered his raised hand, tucked his pencil behind his ear, and squinted his eyes, "Well I am clear on installing a new monitor but can you please review again how we clean our mouse balls"

Our help desk got a call one day from a rather upset user. It seems that he wanted a technician to come right away and remove a cpu fan that someone had glued to the side of his desk, and was quite upset that someone would play a joke such as this. Naturally curious, the technician took the call and went to investigate. Once inside the users office, the user pointed to the unwanted device there on the side of his desk. Upon futher observation, it was pointed out to the user that this was not a cpu fan glued to his desk, but rather a small roach trap that the maintenance crew must have had placed there the night before! Needless to say, the user didn't "bug" the helpdesk again with the matter.

I just LOV your site - I used to download the Tech Support Tales from AOL's file library 5 or 6 years ago, and I STILL haven't stopped laughing.

What REALLY makes me laugh is when tech support people write in about the calls they take; but in fact expose *themselves* as the brain dead ones!

Here are a few from the site, along with my comments...

-----

1) You'd think this idiot would know that copies of the drivers would (most likely) be in the WINDOWS\System (or WINNT\System32) directory, accessible with a Find File...

Where's the Drivers

Me:Thank you for calling tech support.

caller:Hi, I called before about setting up my internet and

now it is asking me to setup my modem?

Me:Oh ok, what kind of modem to you have?

Caller:.....whats a modem?

Me:uhhh(not used to having to descibe it)..it is what is

in your computer and dials up to the internet.

Caller:oh ok, I don't know what kind it is.

Me:Do you have a box that it came from or documentation of

the computer?

Caller:No, I don't have any of that.

Me:Were you given a CD or Disk with the modem or computer

that might have the modem Drivers on them.

Caller: Oh yes I have a buch of CD's that I got with the

computers.

Me: Great, what is on them.

Caller:They are a bunch of computer games I got.

Me: Nope that isn't what we need, you are going to have

to find out from the manafactuer either the type of modem

you have or on what CD or disk the drivers for it are

located.

Caller: Your sure they arn't on the game CD?

Me: Positive, they ore going to be on a CD or diskette.

Caller:Is it written in the Book I got with it.

Me: No, they are on a CD or Disk.

Caller: Oh so they have to be on the Hard drive then.

Me:No ust call company X and ask them to tell you on what

CD or disk the modmem drivers are located and then call

us back and we can help you, ok.

Caller: Ok I'll do that.

Me:thanks for calling.

Luckily I only work weekends and it was sunday. I pity

tech who gets her on the phone.

Thanks to: Anonymous Tech Supporter

-----

2) You would think this support nerd would tell the user to download the FREE Eudora Light or Outlook Express, instead of trying to use PINE...

Printing 101

I work at the helpdesk of a small, New England public college. One day, a student asked for help with e-mail. Someone had sent her some JPEGs with an e-mail message.

We use Pine for E-mail. Though it's great for sending text, it can't display anything that's not text. After 30 minutes of walking this student through saving and downloading the files, she finally opened them.

As she oohed and ahhhed over the baby pictures, I thought my work was done. Then, she asked about printing. That was as easy an pressing "print", but there was one slight problem; she wanted to print the pictures in color, and the room's only printer was a monochrome laser.

I suggested that she save the pictures to the network and print them in a friend's room, since most students have color inkjets, but she refused. I tried very hard to explain why a monochrome printer can't print in color, but she still doesn't get it.

The student is studying Broadcasting. If she knows a color TV show won't be seen in color on a black and white TV, why can't she grasp the same concept in a printer?

Thanks to: Giordana

-----

3) You would think that having a maximum password length of only 8 characters wouldn't be too secure...

Forget ABC's lets start with 123's

Our passwords are limited by way of character length. So

when people call to have their passwords changed, we do

explain about those limitations but sometimes I wonder about

the basic skills that some of our employee's have.

Me (M): ok, I've reset your password... your Temporary

Password is #######. Your new password has to be between

6 to 8 letters.

User (U): Ok thanks.

(I hear tapping on the keyboard...)

U: It didn't work.

M: ok, let's try again... where is your cursor.

U: It's on password.

M: ok, type #######

(I hear tapping on the keyboard)

U: ok.

M: hit enter then at NEW PASSWORD, type your new password.

U: ok,

(I hear the user hitting the ENTER, then proceede to hear

nine keystrokes)

M: did you hit enter after your new password?

U: No,

M: how long is your password.

U: (slight pause as user is counting letters) eight.

M: Erase your new password and try it again please.

U: ok, (again hear nine keystrokes then Enter) It didn't

work

M: I hear you hitting nine keystrokes, can you try it again,

and this time count out loud.

U: (after counting nine letters) oh, I guess it's too long,

let me think of another word.

(I remind the user that the password has to be between six

to eight letters long. after another attempt, the new

password is again rejected.)

M: How many characters are you typing.

U: (with confidence) Five.

Believe it or not, it did take a while to teach this user

how to count...

Thanks to: Anonymous Tech Supporter

-----

4) Didn't this joker think that just maybe the user had stored his files on a server volume... Can you say "Drive Mapping?!"

And as if by magic.....

I work for a software company, in both Customer Support and

Training. We had a Senior Engineer from a client company

come for his third training session (this is a person who

I'm told has written his own software in the past). When he

returned to his office I got a call from him, in which he

complained that he couldn't find the projects he'd created

in the training session on his machine.

To cut a long story short, twenty minutes later (this is

not an exaggeration - I have witnesses) I finally

worked out what was going on. He had used one of our

machines on the training course. When he got back, his IT

people had just unpacked a new PC from its box for him, and

he couldn't understand why his stuff from the course wasn't

on it. I had to explain that files couldn't magically fly

through that air from our PC to his PC - he had to transfer them

himself. I wonder what his software was like.....

Thanks to: Anonymous Tech Supporter

-----

5) It's pretty easy for first time users to get their password usage confused. Haven't this firm's Web designers heard of using cookies for authentication?!

Why are you asking me for my password?

I work for a company that sells financial research reports

on the Internet. We do it through our website, and in order

for the users to use it, we require them to register first.

Of course, every user must choose their unique user ID and

password.

We do receive a number of really stupid e-mail from some of

our users (AOL users in particular). We are quite use to

most of the stupidities that these people write about.

However, today we received a particularly interesting

message. Here's the text of it:

HOW DARE YOU ASK ME FOR MY USER NAME AND PASSWORD? AOL SAYS

NOT TO GIVE THAT OUT TO ANYONE!

Personally, I consider this one a classic. How could anyone

be so dumb to think that instead of asking a user to type in

the desired user ID/password we want to know his AOL screen

name and password instead?

Thanks to: Anonymous Tech Supporter

-----

6) And this one is my favorite: This support geek forgot about the swap file; and also forgot to tell the user which files to *not* delete...

Is 10MB HD space enough for windows?!?!

A member calls me up running window 3.1, trying to install our software.

Member: It is telling me I don't have enough hard drive space.

Me: OK, lets try to clear up some space for you then (thinking I could delete temporary files and possibly have him run defrag).

Member: Well I already tried that.

Me: Is it working for you now?

Member: No

Me: How big is your hard drive

Member: 220 MB

Me: OK, and after you deleted files, how much is available?

Member: 210 Megabytes, but now I am getting an error messaging on a black screen saying something about a system disk.

Well… He was quite angry I wouldn't help him, insisting it is my fault he deleted 90% of windows.

DUH!

Thanks to: J.S.

-----

As you can see, some of the people that are in tech support are so arrogant that they don't even realize how stupid they *really* are!

Yours truly,

Daniel L. Schwartz,

Electrical Engineer.

Dan's MacOS Consulting

239 Great Road

Maple Shade, NJ 08052-3044

Voice: 856-642-7666 (-- Note new area code (was 609)

Fax: 413-451-4391

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I'm constantly amazed how stupid some of the tech support weenies are that write in to your site... No wonder they use pseudonyms! The very computer I'm writing you on, an IBM Netfinity 5500, has hot-swap PCI slots!

Here is the article you posted by "Alptraum:"

This guy took pnp a little too far

What happened is a customer called in wanting me to help him config his cable modem. Perfectly normal call, until he tells me about his experience installing his network card.

*Since this guy sounds "computer challenged", want to see if this is going to be a quick call or not so I check to see if his nic is installed properly.

Tech: OK, let’s goto winipcfg

Customer: OK

Tech: Is you nic listed under adapters in the drop down listing, or is their just PPP?

Customer: Just PPP

Tech: Did you install the nic yourself?

Customer: Yeah, I took the case off, plugged it in, and nothing seemed to happen

Tech: Didn’t a plug and play wizard come up when you turned the computer back on?

Customer: I never turned the computer off

Tech: *alarmed* You never turned the computer off when you installed the nic?

Customer: No, was I supposed to? I just pulled the case off and stuck it in a open slit thingy *his words*

Tech: And this was all done with the computer up and running?

Customer: Yeah, was that a bad thing or something?

*Boy, some people simply amaze me.*

Thanks to: Alptraum

T=Tech

C=Customer

T)Thank you for calling _____ My name is Blair and how may I help you?

C)I can't connect

T) OK and are you getting any error messeges?

C) Yeah, error# 720.

TOK, can you double click on My computer, then Dial-up Networking.

C)OK, now what?

T)Right click on your connection and chose properties...

C)OK, now?

T)click on Server Types, and make sure that you only have Enable software Compression and TCP/IP checked..

C)OK

T)Then click on "OK"

C)Alright

T)Now right click on the connection again and chose: "Create Shortcut" It will then tell you that Windows is unable to create a shortcut here, would you like to place it on your desktop instead and you want to click "Yes"

C)WOW! How do you know this?? Are you one of thoses psycics on that TV show!?!?!

T) no sir... {by this time I wanted to have some fun}

C)Really??

T) I'm not psycic, I can just see everything you do...

C)You're kidding!

T) nope, you see that little green light on your monitor??

C)yes..

T)That's me...

C)OH MY GOD!!!

*Click*

I am a teenager. I attend a small high school that just "upgraded" a couple of years ago. (I was a freshman, I'm a Junior now.) The computer labs replaced their Apple IIes and Commodore 64s with some newer looking computers with Windows 95 on them. The school also got online and and all the computers were supposed to be networked. During this time, I was constantly being called to a teacher's room to fix something small or unimportant. Here are some of the best stories:

1. Our Gym teacher asked me to hook up her printer. She believed that it would take a long time, so she allowed me to work in her office and not change clothes for gym for a week in order to set it up. (She asked if it would take longer than that, but I didn't want to use her THAT much.) Of course, I played solitare for the first four days, then took the five minutes to hook up the computer and told her I thought I had gotten it in record time. She bought me a Beanie Baby for my services.

2. Our English teacher allowed us to watch the "3D Maze" screen saver for a whole period one day just to see if we, too, saw the rat that is in there.

3. One teacher still cannot comprehend attaching files to an e-mail. She also frequently askes me to "find her lost bookmarks!" She also wanted to know if things from a floppy disk can be put on the hard drive.

4. The language teacher believes that "the computer hates her" when she moves an icon when attempting to double-click it.

5. One teacher asked me how to hold a mouse, and, after having that accomplished, wanted to know what those little things in the top right hand corner where there for.

6. The librarian wanted to know why her hard drive name always became bad names after a certain period. (I explained that she had a public computer and some bad kids. She can now change the file names back.)

7. Our "Technical Advisor" took away my internet access, explaining that I had caused a problem on the school server. (Which I don't even have access to change.) About a week later, my access was reinstated due to the fact that he had discovered that he had, in fact, caused the problem.

I may not be in Tech Support, but with the experience I have had with my teachers, I can really sympathsize with all of you out there!

I do tech support for a large ISP and recently recieved a funny call: The customer sounded extremely confused, like a little boy who just found himself in Bizarro Land. He said that his company just gave him a new computer and his phone cord simply would NOT fit in the jack on the back of his computer, no matter how hard he tried to cram it in! Pretty quickly, I found that he had a network card rather than a modem. He almost cried when I told him that he would need to get a modem installed.

I heard from a friend about a guy who had bought a modem and complained he could not connect to the internet

"Hello I've just bought a modem, put it on my computer and cannot connect to the internet!?!?!?!"

"Have set up the modem correctly?"

"Yeah the modem is on the computer"

"Is the modem connected to the computer?"

"What do you mean?"

"Have you plugged the modem into the computer?"

"Its just sat on top of the computer"

"Okay you have to plug the modem into the computer and install it!!!!!!"

>From a very puzzeled amatuer

I had just begun working for the vice-president for a very prestigous airline when I quickly realized that my computer came equipped with a modem. I asked my boss (a very difficult man to get along with) if I could load AOL so that I could surf the Web during my lunch hour. He reluctantly agreed after I promised him time and time again that it wouldn't cost the company anything since it was my own account.

One day while he was looking over my shoulder as I surfed, he decided on the spot that he would sign up for AOL, too. After I loaded the software onto his computer and typed in his information to set up his account, he was off and running nowhere fast. On company time, he would constantly ask me to sign on (at the same time he was signed on) so that I could show him how to use the program; i.e., sending him e-mail so that he would know what it was like to receive e-mail. But the one thing he INSISTED I show him was Instant Messages. With him signed on in his office, and me signed on in mine, I sent him an Instant Message. Glancing over at my Buddy List, I saw a friend of mine had just signed on, which gave me a idea. I quickly sent my friend an IM asking her to send an Instant Message to my boss (without letting on that she knew ME) - and I mean, really NAIL him with IMs so that he couldn't keep up with the both of us. So, together, we started sending one IM after another. He got so flustered that he came out of his office YELLING, "How are you e-mailing me from two different names?????!!!!!!" I replied, "I'm NOT e-mailing you at ALL, I'm Instant Messaging you." He replied, "Whatever it is. How are you doing that to me from two different names?" I explained that to do that on AOL is impossible. I only had one name.

He refused to believe me and had me cancel his account immediately, saying, "If all you're going to do is harrass me with your two screen names, then I don't want to be on there anymore." Oh stop it, you're breaking my heart.

*******************************************************

A little side-question here: Don't you hate it when you spend a little extra time out of your day to buy, download or load that one special wallpaper for your computer that you really love and you feel it really says a lot about the person who uses the computer, only to have a bunch of nimrods say to you, "Gosh, I really love your screen-saver."??????

A new subscriber calls. He had wanted a certain e-mail (We'll call it 'A') and instead had been assigned the email 'A99' since 'A' was taken. Well, the subscriber had set up 2 accounts in his mail client, 'A99' and 'A',and had set the default password we use for all new account for the 'A' account.

What surprised me is that instead of getting a 'password refused' error... the subscriber was downloading someone elses e-mail! I got the sub to delete the mail account, and all was fine after that...

But it does raise a question: who's dumber? The one who put in the two mail accounts even though he knew what his was? Or the one who still had his password set as the default?

I am a solo tech support person for a non-profit agency, and support 80+ users at different buildings around the city. I try my best to resolve problems over the telephone, but some users just won't cooperate. You know the kind who just keep telling you that the computer "won't let me" do whatever it is they are trying to do. Anyway, I have one woman who should have retired years ago, who literally cried when we brought a computer in to her office and took her typewriter away. Every time she calls me for support, which is not infrequent, she just refuses to tell me what kind of problem she is having, and forces me to come over to her office to do the support in person. I finally had to speak to her supervisor, and he told her she had to cooperate with me and try to resolve problems over the phone first. The next time she called, one of my first questions to her was what application she was in, and honest to goodness, she said to me, "I'm in Microwave Soft." You can guess what a struggle the rest of the call was. Oh well, at least she was trying to cooperate...

A customer brought her monitor into me one day.I asked her what was wrong with it and she said all she new was there was filth on it and she wanted it off.I don't understand i replied.She said the screen is full fo filth and pornography and i want you to take it out.

Ive been working for a tech. support company in london for the past two years, and this week, it seems that they've all been comming out of the woodwork. A guy rang up on friday saying that most of the keys on his keyboard were not working. it went like this.....:

Cust: My keyboard isnt working

Me: Ok, could u just check that the keyboards plugged into the pc properly, and we'll go from there

Cust: Whats a pc?

Me: I'll Be right back..... (:click:)

and following that......

Me (Known as M): XXXXXXXXX suport, how can I help u?

Cust (known as C): Yeah, what time do you close?

M: About Six o'clock

C: Ah.. are you open late during the week at all, or are you just open till six monday to friday?

M: Just till six sir, whats the problem?

C: Ive got these new silver alloy wheels for my ford cortina, and wondered if it would be possable for me to fit them myself, or if not you could tell me how to do it........

It went on a bit after that, but thats it.. word for word.....

day, even had the Field

Service engineers come in several times and replace all the boards.

Still, it continued to be a problem.

One day, I was out sick, and a colleague was again called to service

that NIU. While she was looking at it, one of the engineers came in and

noticed what she was doing. He started to tell her of all the problems

that had been occurring with that unit, which she already knew. He than

stated that whenever he felt thEre were problems, he would take it upon

himself to come into the room, unplug and then reseat the network

connection.

SMACK!!!!

In the beginning there was the typewriter.

For those of you who have never seen a typewriter (God I feel like such a fogey), they originally had fabric ribbons. The ribbon advanced when a key struck it. It went all the way to one end and then a metal tab reversed the winding mechanism and it went in the other direction. It was used and reused until there wasn't sufficient ink to make a clear character when it was struck. Some typewriters used wide ribbons that were either black on top and red on the bottom (flip a switch to raise the ribbon cartridge to type in red for emphasis) or all black (flip a switch to use the bottom part of the ribbon so it lasts longer).

Some time I'll tell you how we changed fonts by changing type balls.

Anyway, about the time PCs were introduced, typewriter manufacturers developed plastic ribbons. At the time when most printers were 15-pin dot matrix that couldn't even print below the line for letters like 'g,' these plastic ribbon typewriters provided a new clarity of print that computers couldn't replicate until the introduction of reasonably priced laser printers.

There was one problem. Each impact of the keys against the plastic ribbon used up all the ink where the key struck. I mean you could pull out the ribbon, unwind it, and see clear plastic where the ink had been transferred to the paper. Needless to say, these ribbons were not reusable.

I will not forget the woman who called for typewriter service because her typewriter stopped working. She had reached the end of the ribbon, and the typewriter could not type because it could not advance the ribbon. It was still a $40/hr. tech call.

If this woman had not retired ten years ago, you would be getting calls from her because she had used her CD tray as a coffee cup holder, used her mouse like a trackball (or her trackball like a mouse), or was trying to run her computer after the power went out.

I work for a large paint company and I used to handle issues

for the field laptops. Well, we use Notes and a user happened

to call and say things were taking a really long time accessing

his database. So, I told him to compact the database and

reindex it as this has worked in the past.

I mentioned to to him this would take a while and after explaining

the procedure, told him to do this while he ran out for a while.

Anyway, the next day I get a call from the same user and he said it

did not work.

When I asked him what he did he proceeded to tell me that he did

everything I had told him (which worked and started compacting).

Then he went to add that we shut the laptop OFF and went out for

a while as I explained earlier.

A lot of us got a kick out of this one.

Hi

Working at the university I have a number of forign colleagues. This is nice, because you get a lot og new inputs talking with them and a number of them have become good friends. It is understandable that they cannot know all of the systems in the institute. One day one of the forign colleagues came to me and asked if I could help him, because his office was cold. One might think that it would be an easy fix, just turn up the thermostat. This was not to be the case (or this story wouldn't be here). The termostate appeared to be working, but the office remained cold. Then I asked him if something had changed resently? Something had, he got a new table for his computer. Then it struck me and I looked down. The warm air comming out of the back of the computer flowed over the thermostate and thus causing the termostate to close, nomatter how cold the rest of the office was. It was the case of the computer-heated office. If it had been a big work-station, it might have worked, but not with an ordinary PC.

Best Regards Rasmus

I was modifying a backup job that starts at 3 a.m. By accident, I put in 3 p.m.

instead. 30 users in the office get the Novell broadcast message telling them

to log out. Several users scolded at me by not notifying them

ahead of time while I was sitting there not knowing what I just did until I see

the broadcast message on my screen. I told users that it was a test to see

how quickly they respond when if such emergency does happen! hee, hee....

Back a few years ago, I was a trainer and part time tech support for a company that is no longer with us, and for all intents and purposes shall remian nameless, but it's not important as this could have been any entreprenueral turnkey system, and the end user could be from just about anywhere...but we'll say the user was from the deep South, just to add the extra obstacle of a very difficult drawl.

Now this system we built was a credit based system, with a royalty security feature, and it was designed to run on a per credit basis, with the end user ordering a single use, cryptic floppy to add additional credits, which would load automatically from the A: drive when the disk was installed.

This user called us on the day of their scheduled event(even though the disk had been sent two weeks prior), and the user was frantic...now I hadn't taken the call, our senior engineer in tech support had, but we all shared the call as this one was one for the books, and every employee in the office was in the support room by the end of it.

The problem was the user couldn't seem to get the floppy into the A: drive slot, and didn't have enough credits without the new disk.(Hate it when they get down to 4 credits remaining before loading the new disk!!)

"I've tried and tried and the disk just won't fit into the slot!!" the user shouted and shouted over and over..."I even got out the user's manual for the computer and I know I did it in training but I just can't get it to go in...it seems to bend when I try to put it in..."

After about 10 mins. of trying to figure out why the user couldn't get it to fit, the exasperated Tech asked the user to describe the disk in detail, and the user replied,"it's round and has a little silver center the size of a quarter or so...," to which all in the room gasped and then started hysterical laughter, so the tech said "You've got the wrong part!!" To which the client replied,"I've got to hand it to you guys, though...your protective casing was so strong I had to use a screwdriver to get it out!!!"""

I was buying a new computer one day. As I was finalising

the deal the mans phone rang. A fter about 30 seconds of

Apologies he turned to me and said," Do you know anything

about the internet?" I said yes and took the phone from

him. I spoke to the man on the other end who was

complaining that he didn't know the phone number for the

internet. I explained to him that there in no actual

phone number...and that all appropraite numbers etc, were

installed on the computer with the software from his ISP

I asked had he any softwae from an ISP. He said that he did

not know that he had to do that. He thought he simply had to

turn on his modem and he would be in business. I could

sympathise with him here, but then he asked if the computer

had to be turned on to get on the internet. Well, Dur!!!!

Oh I love our customers...

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

Cust: My fax won't answer any incoming faxes!!!

Me: There's a light next to the button that says "Auto Answer" - is it on?

Cust: No...

Me: Thats why it doesn't answer.

Cust: Oh. Now it says "Off Hook"... what does that mean.

Me: Are we talking on the same line?

Cust: No... I'm on my computer looking at this AOL screen though.

Me: Is the computer on the same line as the fax?

Cust: Yeah... what does that mean?

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

I love customers!! Our customers=job security :)

Last week, one of my co-workers, Brenden was performing some Y2K testing in the lan test area setup outside my office.

He had just completed making a time change on the server and was waiting for the time change to synchronize the client PCs.

About 10 seconds after he hit the enter key for the time change everything shutdown. I mean EVERYTHING.

All the client PCs, the servers, the lights, EVERYTHING.

He had his back to us, but you can imagine the look of total horror on his face. Oh, to have been outside the window with a camera.

Of course it was nothing he did in this small isolated test setup. The building just happened to suffer a complete power outage on a sunny clear day.

The timing was absolutely priceless.

We're still asking him if he's going to do any more time resets.

Okay, I'm not a tech support professional (and from the

sounds of it, I wouldn't last an hour without telling some

twit to climb on the nearest chair and stick his/her head in

the ceiling fan) but as Office Flunky, I frequently have to

help my boss out with anything computer-related. We have

Windows95 PCs. We've had them for nearly two years.

One day last month...

Her: How do I send this board report as an email attachment?

Me: Wait, don't do that. Just copy-n-paste it into the

message. (Not all of the board members can read Word files.)

Her: What do I do?

Me: Open up the report, hit "select all", then "copy", then

paste it into the email.

Her: How can I save the email without sending it?

Me: What? (I go over to her desk, grab the mouse and open

the report on her Recently Used Documents thingy.)

Her: (panicking) But now I lost my email!

Me: (inwardly groaning) No, it's right here. (click taskbar

to switch back to the email window)

Her: Oh.

She NEVER KNEW you could have more than one application

running at once on Windows! I mean, isn't that the whole

freaking POINT?! Otherwise it would be called "WINDOW"!

I keep a webpage of all the really dumb tech support calls we deal with so here are a bunch of original tales from our ISP tech support dept.

True Story:

A woman signs up for internet service with an unnamed provider,

they give her the software to connect to the internet. She calls and says

she is having trouble getting the disks out because

she cant get the metal peice off, after some trouble shooting

the tech realizes she is trying to pry the 3.5" disks out of the plastic

case. The tech tells her to go ahead and tear off the metal part and put

the disk in to install and not to do the same to the other disks. A

short time later she calls back and says now she cant get the disk

out of the drive, the tech asks if she took the metal peice off,

she asks "you mean all the way off", obviously she didnt. The tech

tells her to take the computer to a local repair center, where it turns

out she had put the floppy disk in the CD-ROM drive still with the

bent metal cover on it.

A woman complains that she bought a UPS(uninterruptable power supply)

backup but everytime the power goes out her computer goes out, after

a tech took a look, she had the UPS plugged into the wall outlet,

then she also had her computer plugged in the wall outlet, of course

it was going down when the power went off.

A woman calls tech support, she is having trouble connecting, the

tech tells her to re-install the software CD, she puts in the CD but

says it does not auto-start, so the tech tells her how to run the

setup program:

Tech: Click on Start.

Customer: Where is that.

Tech: On your desktop at the bottom.

Customer: Where is the desktop.

...finally she gets start/run going

Tech: Now type d:setup

Customer: How do you spell colon

Tech: No, the punctuation mark colon.

Customer: What's that

Tech support: the 2 dots, one over the other.

The tech finally has to tell the woman to bring her computer in.

A man calls tech support, he cant get his internet connection to connect.

The tech asks if he has the company's CD and has installed the software,

the guy says "Yes, my wife installed it last night", After about half

an hour of trouble shooting, the tech tells the man he will have to

re-install the software from the installation CD. The man then says "What

CD, we never got a CD." Of course this left the tech wondering how his wife

installed the software without a CD!

A kid brings his computer in to have internet software installed. Everything

is installed and it works fine..in the office.. The next day he calls tech

support and complains that everything was working fine but now he has no

sound from his sound card and when he tries to connect to the internet it

says no answer. After troubleshooting for half an hour tech support tells

him to bring his computer in. It turns out that he plugged his speakers into

the microphone jack, that is why he had no sound. Then he changed the

dialer settings to connect ONLY at 115kbaud, how he expected to connect at

115k with only a 56k modem no one knows but when the computer couldnt establish

a 115k connection it hungup and said no answer.(BR)

(menu)

The same kid brings his computer in for a hard drive upgrade and 56k modem,

he has an old 486 so a 3gig drive is installed and partitioned to 2/1gigs, the

partitioning seems to be beyond his comprehension but it is pased over, he

gets a special price since he is trading in his old 1gig hard drive. A couple

of months later his service is cut off for non-payment,

his bills are returned marked moved-no-forwarding-address and he

still owes money for the hard drive.(BR)

Now, 4 months later he comes back to the shop, it seems he wiped

out his hard drive and wanted the computer shop to re-install it at 7pm,

the kid is given a boot disk and written instructions on how

to install win95. He then asks if he can get his money back on the modem,

after not paying for the hard drive and 6 months later he wants a refund,

he is refused of course, he takes his computer back with the disk and

instructions. The next day he calls the office and asks if his computer

is ready, can you imagine the brain cells working overtime for that one.

Of course the techs realize this kid is the same one that never paid for

the 3gig hard drive now so they are waiting for him to

bring it back *evil grin*.

(/menu)

A man calls an isp and complains that he has been on their service

for 3 days and has received busy signals every time at all hours

of the day and he wants to cancel if service is this bad. The isp checks

its lines and has had no busy signals whatsoever. After a few minutes

of troubleshooting it turns out that when the man installed his

software he changed the dialup number to be his own phone number, he was

dialing his own phone number so of course it was busy!

A man sends email to say he has had great service but for the past two

days he has gotten busy signals all day and if the ISP does not fix

the problem immediately he is changing providers. The ISP checks,

again, no busy signal problems at all. The customer is advised that

if he is constantly getting busy signals there must be a problem with

his settings or modem, of course he refuses to believe that is possible,

after being told to pick up the phone next time he gets a busy signal

message from his computer

and manually dial the data number to see if it is 'really' busy he

is never heard from again. Just because your computer

says the line is busy does not mean it is really busy unless

you hear the busy signal.

A lady brings in a computer for a processor upgrade, new processor is

dropped in, it runs great, no problems. She picks the computer up,

a couple of days later she calls and says it is running slower than

it did before..she brings it back. Turns out she had the Turbo button

turned off so of course it was running slower, the tech pushed the button

and like magic it was fast again.

A lady brings in a computer, she is running out of drive space but doesnt

want to spend much money on the old computer, so the tech adds a 200meg

hard drive. Now she has C: 200megs, D: 200megs, and a cd on E:, a couple

of MONTHS later she says she cant access the cdrom and hasnt been able to

since it was worked on so she brings it in, of course CD is working fine,

the computer is picked up, she calls back, still cant access the cd, turns

out she was trying to run D:Setup.exe to install a cd, of course the setup

program was on the CD not on D: drive, actually there was nothing on D: drive

and only 5 megs free space on C:, she paid to have another drive installed

and never bothered to use the space, instead just kept filling the

already full drive.

(b)Clueless(/b) The below email was from a lady that couldnt figure out that

when she was sending email she (i)was(/i) on the Internet

so she complained, by email, that she couldnt access the Internet.

Then she tried to access Ebay and got a Connection Reset By Peer

so instead of realizing that it was an error from Ebay, since that

was the only site she had problems with, she accused her ISP of playing games,

She asks why they didnt notify her about a problem, but the problem only

existed in her mind, there were no problems, her account was working

fine. Then she demands(on a sunday evening) that they return her

email by 10am the next day(opening time for the ISP), and finally

when she calls and leaves a message(before opening) and after the ISP

returns her call, she is not available, she calls a few hours

later and cancels her service because of, of all things, bad tech support.

(i)(menu)

I have been trying to access ebay, I sent a message to you about 10minutes

ago, I now know it is you that is aborting my connection (connection reset

by peer) if it is because I have used more time than I had signed up for

this is not the way to tell me.

As I said in earlier email please respond by May 3, 1999 by 10:00 am.

My relationship with you has been very difficult the entire time. eg. I

could not access

you but by long distance and you replied a local number was on your home

page. Get a clue I was telling you I could not reach the home page and why

you didn't just give me the phone number was just stupid and now you are

doing this without any notification to me. Don't you care about your

customer? Do you want to keep them?

I am very unhappy about this current event. Why in the world would you not

email me if there was a problem?????????? I do not understand you at all.

Are you business

people or just playing a game that is only fun for you???????

Waiting your reply, or I will be at your office in the am.

(/menu)

(/i)

An actual email from someone wanting to know how to read email..

do they actually expect an email response??

(menu)

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 21:25:51 -0700

From: someone@clueless.com

Subject: (no subject)

Help! How do I access my e-mail account?

Please respond as soon as possible.

(/menu)

This one I had to add

(menu)

(i)From: newcustomer

To: ispstaff

Subject:

how do i send e-mail to others?

(/i)(/menu)

This one was interesting, can you figure out what (i)IT(/i) is.

(menu)

From: Jean

Subject:

Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 19:48:42 -0700

How do I get into it? It keeps telling me that there are restrictions.

(/menU)

Here is a real genius, they put their message in the subject line

and nothing in the body of the message.

They give no details about what page they are having problems

with or any other information, not that that matters because

the error page they are talking about answers the question

they are trying to ask anyway... yet they expect someone to read

their mind and answer a question they already have the answer to:

(menu)(i)

From: "Joanna" (joanna@dumbuser.net)

To: (webmaster@someisp.com)

Subject: forbidden error for "URL" Why?

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 06:50:36 -0700

(/i)

(/menu)

Here is real good english.

(i)

(menu)

I won't another E-mail address, for my son and I won't to keep this one...

(/menu)

(/i)

Can you imaging responding to this kind of email, this is no joke, this

is an actual message from a real customer:

First Message

(menu)(i)if i sine up with you do you sail comuters and can i make the payments

while im useing the net but a reasonal price

you got me emailing i cant quit

(/i)

Second Message(and the question marks were in the original)

(i)

im ??????? sick and tired of webtv it caust to

?????? much to tell you caustes me $40?00 a month i rather

20 for the internet and 20 for the computer i ???????

rather invest in somthing than invest in a peace of ???? if you

know what i mean

you got me emailing i cant quit

(/i)

(/menu)

This idiot sent a poorly worded email telling a number of

people his new email address and threatening them if they did not

use it, BUT the email address he sent was WRONG and one of

the addresses he sent it to was WRONG which is why I received it

and I received the bounced message telling me his address was non-existant.

(i)

(menu)

From: "Richard"

subject: New email address

Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 23:55:58 -0500

Hello everyone. I have just attained a new email account. Please change your

+address books accordingly. I will expect all mail from you to come to this

+address only. If this request is not abided by I will deal with it harshly and

+quickly. Good day.

(/menu)

(/i)

(BR)(BR)

A lady walks into an ISP to complain that she cant get her email,

the tech asks what error message she is getting,

she replies, (i)I just cant get any email, (/i)

the tech then asks what happens when she selects

Send & Receive, she replies (i)it just doesnt work.(/i)

The tech then tells her she can bring in her computer and

he will take a look, but she refuses, he explains

that all he needs it the main box, but she still refuses because it is

too much trouble and

says if the problem is not fixed she will just cancel her service.

So basically she wants to get email but will not allow anyone

to fix the problem and is not intelligent enough to explain

what the problem is so the tech can offer suggestions.

(BR)(BR)

A man calls his new ISP and says he cant connect and he

tried (i)both(/i) numbers, the tech knew there was only one number

in the city to call and asks the man what numbers he is calling,

he was DIALING the DNS numbers.

(BR)(BR)

A woman calls an ISP for more information

Woman: How much does it cost?

Tech: 19.95 per month for unlimited access.

Woman: Do you have anything cheaper per month?

Tech: We also have 9.95 for 15hours.

Woman: Is that unlimited?

(BR)(BR)

A woman calls tech support and announces that she wants to know how

to "download the internet" The tech cant determine what she actually wants

so he explains that it would take several terrabytes and several hundered years

as the internet is constantly changing. I doubt she ever downloaded 'the internet'

(BR)

(BR)

A lady calls tech support, she can't access the internet with her

new account. The tech asks if she installed their software from the

CD she was given, she said yes. The tech starts checking

settings and it becomes obvious that the software was never installed.

The tech asks her to describe how she installed the software.

She says she opened the drawer and put the cd in and closed it again.

That was all she did and she thought she 'installed' the software.

(BR)

A company signs up for Internet Service, when their first payment is due

they send a check, made out to a company name similar to

the ISP but totally wrong, and in the comment field the check is

"FOR ENTERNET SERVICE".(BR)

A tech makes a service call to work on a secretaries computer,

he sees the drive space is low so clicks to Empty Recycle Bin,

the secretary jumps up, (I)Dont do that(/i) Tech asks why not,

(i) Thats where I keep my important files(/i).

I work for a major OEM. My last call of the day.

I pick up the call, get all pertinent information, Name, address (Isreal), etc.

"I accidentally plug my computer into 220 watts, instead of 115 watts. It go boom. What am I to do?"

The first thought is you now have a very expensive paper weight or door stop.

Well, as I am pausing and trying to regain my composure, the user pops up with "What could possibly be the problem?"

At this point in time I can no longer control my laughter and I ask to put hte person on hold. I needed to get our international number, and to bust up.

I think the funniest portion of this call was the accent and the fact that all power suppies have a switch.

I was sitting at my desk when the gentleman who wants to drive and type approached me and said the handheld/laptop thing was not working after I fixed it. I thought he must have somehow lost his files, which isn't my problem. He was quick to add that when he was using the Windows Explorer

program he couldn't see any of the Windows Configuration files, he then proceeded to tell me that they must have been deleted, and this was the cause of all of his computer problems. I then proceeded to ask him if he deleted these files, he said all he did was boot up and go into explorer.

He then proceeded to tell me how he looked into the system files and didnot see any files listed for the windows configuration. I thought for a second and asked him a simple question, did you get any errors at start up. He

said "No, it booted fine.", he then proceeded to tell me that he formated his harddrive and everything works fine now. I asked him my second question of "How were you able to get into Windows if you didn't have any of the configuration files?" He looked at me stunned. He then proceeded to tell me that he couldn't see the configuration files but now he can. My thoughts are that he suddenly realized that he could view hidden files after looking

at the folder options tab and selecting view.

I work doing software support for a small company. Here are two of my worst moments:

M: I need to delete some files from your ******* directory. Now highlight the file by clicking on it once.

C: It's highlighted.

M: Now hit the delete key.

C: (and in all seriousness) You mean the one on the keyboard?

No I mean the one on your forehead.....

M: Okay, I want you to bring up your computer's properties. Could you right click on the My Computer icon and select properties from the menu?

C: I don't see any properties or a menu.

M: What do you see?

C: I see the A Drive, C drive, and the D drive ---

M: you doubled clicked I need you to right click.

C: oh, sorry.

(after four repeated failures of this)

M: Here's what you do, move your pointer on the screen to the My Computer icon and then press the right mouse button once.

C: I don't understand.

(put customer on hold to bang head against desk)

M: Move your mouse pointer to the My Computer icon. There are TWO buttons on your mouse, press the button on the right side of the mouse.

C: What do you mean?

(put customer on hold and started to cry)

After 45 minutes of explaining and re-explaining the concept of left and right mouse buttons, I finally found out that her computer was 32MB under our minimum memory requirement and had a tech sent to her site.

Now, I'm not a tech support worker, but I am fairly good with computers for an untrained amatuer. I'm a college student at a midwestern college. Anyway, I'm in the computer lab, typing a paper, and this guy next to me breaks out a 5.25 floppy disk. He's looking all over the fron of the computer, trying to find the drive. These particlar computers don't have a 5.25 drive for what ever reason. Like I said I'm not a computer genius, but even this is beyond my scope. HE decides to put the 5.25 disk into the 3.5 drive by folding the disk a couple of times and forcing it into the drive. Need I say more?

Being a Tech on the phones, can lead to some funny stories, I thought I had heard all of the really strange questions, until this one.

Beep

Me: Thank you for calling Tech support how can i help you

Caller: I need a key

Me: I'm sorry a product key?

Caller: No I need a key to put more memory in my system

Me:Ok, lets start over, are you talking about a key for opening something?

Caller: (big sigh) YES...I need a key so I can OPEN my case and put in more memory, it is on the front of the case it is a little round key hole like the old alarm keys

Me: (trying not to laugh) I'm sorry, you don't need a key to open your system that key hole locks the keyboard and prevents it from being used, you open the case by taking off the screw in the back....

Caller Oh.......click

id10t day.... :o)

I'm in systems in a medium size organization (50 pcs). We have all the users connected to the Network Server and there are shortcuts on the desktop for the programs which are run from the server.

Since last six months I get aprox. 5-6 calls a week from a user A... who says her programs won't start. After checking out on 5-6 instances the problem always was that she pressed 'Esc' when the logon screen came and did'nt log in.

After a month I stopped going to her desk and just started saying 'Please Reboot and Log on to network' and every time she said after two minutes 'ya its started working'.

Still after aprox. more than 50 times in last six months the user has not got it. I guess some just don't get it.

Hi, I work as a Lan Support Engineer at a company X.

me : Hello, Lan support.

user : Hi there, I can't get into my boss' computer.

me : Do you have his password ?

user : yes, it's "compaq" (We all work on compaq material, so some users are really being creative with passwords ;-)

me : well, click on advanced and see what's in the tab NDS

user : does it and reads me all the specs of the Novell Client Login screen, all correct.

me : well, enter the password again, makeig sure you spell it right, i.e. no caps or num lock, etc

user : doesn't work

me : ok, I'll come on over.

Colleague walks in and we get talking.

5 minutes later user calls back saying it's very urgent, so I terminate our little talk and hurry up there.

Sit down, type c o m p a q in the password box, computer logs on.

me: What is the problem, it seems to work fine.

user's face reddens with embarresment and starts to mumbling:

Well ... uhm.. I think I misspelled it??

me : Euuh, it's right here on the monitor (pointing to the

red Compaq label on the monitor)

user (even more red) : i thought it was c o m p a c q

me (trying hard not to burst into tears and laughter) : and on the pc - and the keyboard - and the mouse ...

Later that day I encountered her in the refectory, her face reddening again when she confessed her error to her boss in front of a full dining table. A classic !

One day an elderly lady placed a call claiming that a printer worked too fast,after observation .....it was fine she insisted it was still fast, I then knotted the line cord explaining that it would add inductance to the cord slowing the unit down after 2nd obsdervation lady agreed it was now slower & thanked me.

just a quick one from one of my collegues who had a customer that wanted an engineer out cause the hard drive light would come on every time she sent a job to spool.....

I work in a college computing center. One very odd night, one guy is standing at the printers crumpling up sheet after sheet of paper.

After about 3 minutes of this, he comes over to me and says

"I need some help. Netscape is only printing page 2 of my 2 page document!"

Having no evidence to the contrary, I go over to take a look at his machine. Everything looks just fine, so I print out a page to see what happens.

He points to the printer tray and exclaims, "See!"

I calmly flip the paper over and there is the first page!

It seems he printed double sided and didn't know it...

"I am needing drivers for my printer"

"Ok, please type ftp.lexmark.com and let me know when you are there"

After about a min..

"Are you in the pub directory now?"

"I cant do it yet. It says I'm user 7 out of 50"

"I'm sorry?"

"Don't I have to wait in line before I am able to d/l?"

I work for the big ISP who's now "The Enemy" with 20 million members. I read this site to keep myself intertained as I get the "what's a start button" calls, but tonite, I had a real good one.

An older gentleman called in tonite, asking for help in deleting trash out of his browser files. He'd "accidentally" gone to a couple porn sites trying to find "squawkbox" and wanted to "get that stuff off" his computer.

So to be sure I did a thorough job, I took him into Windows explorer, had him double click on windows, then asked him to double click on cookies folder.

His response: "The quickies folder??!!"

~~

::head bang on keyboard:: My stock can't mature a moment too soon.

I work at company that operates 24 hours/365 days. About 2:00AM one night about 4 years ago I get a call about a dead PC. This PC is on our production line critical list and as such immediately escalated the call to a Priority 1.

I start off with the usual questions - What's on the screen, reboot, etc. The customer says the screen is black after cycling power. I tell the user to turn the computer on and then have her feel behind the computer for the fan to see if it is running. After answering no, I "assume" a dead power supply and drive into the office to replace the equipment.

I stop in our repair room and pick up our hot standby PC and take it over to the production line. The customer is there waiting for me to come by. I asked the user to reboot the PC one more time while I watched.

She proceeded to power off the monitor and power on the computer. After waiting about 10 seconds she finished the reboot by powering off the computer and powering on the monitor!

Being the only computer geek in the family, I have to do everything for everyone.One day I upgraded my brother's modem from 14.4 to 56k. After loading all of the original ISP settings back in, I can't connect to the internet.At this point I call tech support. The first question he asks me is what type of modem I installed.The response I got floored me. " Oh...Our hardware will not talk to that type of hardware...You can't use any type of modem that has the word WIN in front of it...they are junk"

I then asked if I could get the answer to one more question.

HOW DO I CANCEL THIS ACCOUNT? 15 minutes later we were running at 49.3 on another ISP. I actually got out a road map to see how far i would have to drive to strangle this guy.

first pardon my english as I excuse your french.

I was not a tech but a seller in a big supermarket that has every

peripherics you could dream of (printers,scanners and so on...)

One day a women watched the scanners during at least 20 minutes

and then she came to me and asked:

"where the f**k can I see my weight on your high-tech balances?"

I just laughed to tears.

A co-worker had to excuse me to "the Madame" as I shared the story (still

in tears) with two other co-workers.

The good laugh we had thanks to her.

I am not a tech but I'm regarded as an expert by friends and colleagues since I have been around PC's long enough to know the difference between CD drive and a coffee cup holder.

Anyway, I was regaling my friends at work with tales from this excellent site and some interesting stories emerged :

One friend knows of a guy who's a tech for a London-based ISP. When he was new to the job, he noticed that a large number of caller logs were categorised as "VDU". Thinking this was odd for an ISP helpline, he asked another tech why people called in to report problems with their monitors. Turns out the techs use the term VDU to describe the type of caller - Very Dumb User.

The best one I heard (and possibly an Urban Legend) was of a guy who complained that his phone bill was very high because he spent alot of time reading the text of web pages online. When someone told him he could load in the complete webpage until IE told him it was "done", then close his connection and read offline, he was horrified. After further questioning, it turns out this guy thought that if he closed his connection the entire webpage was actually pulled off the server onto his own computer and he had no idea how to put it back once he'd finished with it !!!

I work for IS at a local college. There is one very difficult to deal with faculty member who insists that IS stands for "Idiot Services". He thinks he knows more about computers than anyone else around. This same professor decided that the instructor computers in the classrooms were being tampered with. So we decided to install power-on-passwords to shut this professor up.

On the first day that the passwords were in effect, this same professor hunted me down like a dog. He was absolutely furious with me! According to him - @#$%ing password didn't work, I was an idiot and I'd better fix it right now!

I went with him back to the classroom in question, typed in the password and computer booted right up. He didn't believe me so he typed in the password - he misspelled it and it didn't work. I had him do it again, thought the first time was just a mistake on his part. He misspelled it again. Same happened on the third attempt. Finally, I pulled him down to my level (he is 6.5' tall and I am 5' tall) and whispered into his ear - "this is how you spell the password" and spelled it out for him. I had him type in the correct password, computer booted up just fine, I looked up at him with my most angelic smile said "I work for Idiot Services" and left. So much for that fancy Ph.D. of his (LOL).

I recently got a job working as tech support for a large (free) isp (think net + a number between -1 and 1). I had been on desk for about a month When I got this call:

M - Me, I - idiot:

M: hello, thank you for calling tech support , how may I help you.

I: I just dsigned up with your service, and I was wondering if you could help me.

M: Well, I'll certainly try, what seems to be the problem.

I: Well, I recently rtead this article about people using their computers and the internet to hack into banks and change accounty balances.

M: Uh huh

I: I was wondering if you could walk me through it

M: (several seconds of dumb struck silence). You want me to help you hack into your bank?

I: Yeah, can't you do that.

M: Um , well sir, that's strictly illegal, and we don't do that here.

I: But I want to, it's the only reason I got your service!

M: Sir! we can't do that. It's illegal...

I: If you don't know how, I want to speak to someone who can! I want to talk to your supervisor!

M: I'm sorry, there is no one here who can do that for you, you'll have to call your bank (long shot but...)

I: Okay, I'll call them, but i'm gonna fill out a complaint about how crappy your service is!

Click!

Got a few good laughs around the office with this one.

PS - if anyone can find me an mp3 of this idiot calling his bank, I would pay good money for it.

My dad's new girlfriend recently started taking a computer use course. I don't know what they're teaching her but, these are a few of the things I've had to help her on.

1 - I'm watching TV. She comes running in telling me my computer doesn't work - get up, go downstairs, turn computer and monitor on (not just subwoofer and speakers)

2 - Calls me one night, insists I come over and fix her modem. Hour and a half on bus later I get to her house. Go to computer, plug modem phone cable bacvk into wall jack, as opposed to being pluuged into just fax machine.

3 - Calls me over because CD rom doesn't work. Try tyo help over phone, but she insits I go down. Get there, take CD out of jewel case and put in caddy, works fine.

(she has an old CD rom with a caddy cartridge to put CD in, and then put cartridge in drive. She was ramming whole jewel case in because she was using caddy to store other CD.)

I have also had to spend almost 2 hours with her trying to convince her that just turning monitor off isn't sufficient, and that she really needs all program files if she wants to run a program. Ie if you have a directory or the program, you have the program. You can now go in and delete all those useless files in the directory and get upset when program stops working.

- Do I need a computer to get on the internet?

- I bought the modem but I still can't connect. What kind of computer do you have?

I don't have a computer, nowhere on your service or this modem does it say you need one, so I want you to get me online NOW!

- So let me get this straight sir; you sawed the back off your computer, cut all the wires to your motherboard and then used a crowbar to take out your motherboard and ductaped the RAM to it.

- I'm not using internet explorer or netscape! I'm using (isp name)!

- Are you calling on a cell phone sir? - I don't know, how do I tell?

One day not to long ago my numeric-only pager went off. I checked to who had paged me and got an incredibly long string of numbers. Extensions on campus are 3 digits and we don't use "codes" to identify a situation (such as 911 for an emergency). I couldn't make heads or tails of this page so I ignored it.

A little while later when I was in my office, one of my difficult faculty people pops in. He reported a problem in one of the "Smart" classrooms. He then demanded to know why I didn't respond to his page. I took my pager off and tossed it to him and said I only received one page today and it was some long string of numbers that made no sense whatsoever.

He looked at the pager screen and decided it must be defective because he sent me a message on it and all that was there was numbers. He said it took forever for him to find the letters on the phone dial to enter the message...

I looked at this professor and said I only had a numeric pager. He looked at me and said "yeah...and...." I told him a numeric pager meant I could only receive numbers...not numbers and letters.

and people wonder why I keep a giant bottle of Pepto-Bismol in my desk....

In the mid-80's I was a mainframe analyst with no PC experience whatever, no PC at home. Our company started up a branch office ("The Clinic"), and my boss was certain I could support their stand-alone applications without any training. I was young and in over my head, but I laboured on without complaint. Things were going reasonably well, and then, out of the blue, their month-end batch runs stopped balancing. I spent countless hours over several month-ends attempting to sort out the discrepancies and determine the cause of the problem, to no avail. The Clinic's office supervisor had been quite competent from the start; no problems there. And she always ran the month-end, or so I thought. The software developer was at a loss to explain it, and the techies I got to know at the hardware store (buying countless 5 1/4 floppies - it took 15-20 to back up the data) had no nuggets of wisdom to offer. One afternoon at The Clinic, as I was struggling to sort out yet another mess, the temp who, unbeknownst to me, had been filling in afternoons arrived for work. After discovering that it was SHE who had actually been running the month-ends (!!!), I grilled her on the procedure as it had been documented by the supervisor. I could find no fault with the instructions, and was back to square one, it seemed. Then, as an afterthought, she offered that sometimes after she started the month-end it "went away", and she had to "bring it back". I (barely under control) quietly shouted for details on "went away". "Well, it won't let me make any new appointments" (at this point I realize that neither her nor the PC can multi-task). "So how do you 'bring it back'?" "Oh, my boyfriend has a PC at home, and he showed me how to do it", as she reached for the Control/Break keys...

I recieved a call one day from a man who was trying to install his software and he said that it could not read the CD. I asked him to put the cd in the cd-rom drive and click on my computer and then the d: drive which was his cd-rom drive. Nothing happened. Confused I asked him to try another cd and it worked. Then I told him to try his the software cd again, nothing happened. He then asked me if it was suppose to be shiny side up or down. I told him that the shiny side went down. He said OOh and turned the cd over. It worked great.

Greetings,

I recieved a call today for support on our company's Y2K update. This being Flu season and all, I should have expected something like this. The customer starts off by explaining that he has the flu and cannot follow the instructions. He then tells me that he cannot find the model number on his CPU due to the amount of flu medication he's on. Without laughing, I instucted him to look straight ahead and helped him find this elusive information. My fellow agents and I had quite a laugh. I hope I do not get the Flu as bad as he did and it turns me stupid. Happy Holidays!!

ME: Hello and thank you for calling Greywolf this is Erik how may I help you?

Caller: How do you clean a hard drive?

ME: Pardon?

Caller: A hard drive, how do you clean it?

ME: How do you delete files, or dow do you defrag?

Caller: (annoyed with my ignorance): NO, my hard drive was running kind of slow so I thought that if I opened it up to clean out the dust it would run faster. But when I did I got this green sealent all over the plate things.

ME: Are you serious?

Caller: (really upset now): Of course, can you think of a better way to keep a computer running?

ME: (trying not to laugh too loud): um sir I'm affraid that you have destroyed your hard drive, you're going to have to replace--

Caller: ALL I DID WAS OPEN IT!

ME: yes well hard drive are not to be opened and if they are, they are ruined. the best I can offer you is that I can order you a new one and we can replace it.

Caller: I guess.

ME: What kind of computer do you have sir?

Caller: a laptop

ME: What kind of laptop sir?

Caller: A Powerbook

ME: Nevermind

A couple of years ago I worked as the ONLY tech for a 500+ person office. One of our senior managers was a total bonehead. She would constantly keep me from my more important duties (ya know, the servers down kinda thing) for her crappy little LUser problems.

After months of having to change her wallpaper, find her documents (in c:\Mydocuments), I decided to nail her.

While she was out for the day I wrote a batch file that would ask her if she wanted to delete all of her files on the C:\ drive with the Y/N prompt that both pointed to the same place. It would DIR the c:\windows drive 7 times and then ECHO that all files were now deleted. I then put it in the startup folder.

The next morning when she came in I went into her office to wait for her to turn on the computer. When she did, you know what happened, she hit the N key and when the batch went to work and I freaked. I stood up and yelled WHAT DID YOU DO! she responded, with tears in her eyes, that she in fact hit the N key. I told her to turn off her computer and that I would have to take the rest of the day to restore her info and she should no longer mess with it. I got her out of the office, had a good laugh, and she never called me again....SWEEEEET!

Older gentleman calls & wants to know why he cannot get his HP 722c printer to work. He says that he's trying to install it but can't. I ask him how he's trying to install it. He tells me he's using the add new printer wizard but its not listed. He continues to add that he's tried other HP printers & it didn't work (duh). He selected another printer from the list, once the icon appeared, he simply changed its name to "HP 722." *bangs head on desk many times*

As an internet support tech for the past two years I've had some

doosies, and had come to appreciate the level of intelligence

that some users have. I've dealt with people who called me frantic that

their documents had disappeared only to discover after a lot

of painful troubleshooting that their monitor was indeed turned

off (and they couldn't figure out if there was a power button...), dealt

with people with suffer from the usual right click/left click

problems, who can't read their computer screens, who think my computer

is *MY* computer, and on and on...

However, until this call a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't realized

just how low people who might possibly be considered colleagues could

sink.

The webdesigner for a local company (whose

webpage we host) called in complaining that

people couldn't submit one of the forms on her page

-- she insisted that we had written the cgi

script for it, that it wasn't working and that

we had *better* fix it right now because the company

was paying us a lot of money for this webspace.

Now, it's important to note that this woman was being

contracted by the company in question to DESIGN the

website and that it is the responsibility of the designer

to upload the site to the space we provide.

Going back to the question of us writing the

cgi script for her, this seemed very odd since

the only webpages we ever write are those our

company designs top to bottom and that get paid to do.

She vehemently insisted that this was the case though

so I just gave up and decided to see if I could figure

out what the problem with the page was.

After some investigating I discovered

that it was actually polyform script and that

the files in question had been altered a couple of

months ago.

When she first called, she noted that the problem had

to be our problem since she had done nothing to the

files and that they had worked for the last "two years"

until the company paying her called and complained that

people hadn't been able to submit orders for the past two

months.

After some intense searching, I discovered that the files

in question had been been altered about two months ago on

our system. The only way this could happen would be for

someone who has the upload information to upload the pages.

When I called her back with this information, it suddenly occured

to her that she *may have* indeed accidently uploaded the pages

one night. She said she had done it absentmindedly and didn't

think it cause any problems.

However, the program she used to upload the files the second

time around had altered some of the script, thus causing the

page to not work.

At this point she took her anger and went a new direction,

insisting that because the company was paying for webspace,

it was my responsibility to go in and rewrite the script to

make it work. Now, this seemed rather absurd to me, since

she was the webdesigner, she had made the mistake and she

was being payed by the company to write the script.

Well, I can only say that we argued over this for quite a while

- with me being really unclear why someone who *obviously* must

know this stuff way better than I do (since she's being contracted

to design wwebpages for large companies) would want me to

ever try doing this.

Well - I finally asked her...

If you wrote the html and cgi, etc.. script, why would

you even want me to try this, especially considering the fact

that YOU are being paid to do it?

She told me that she needed help to write it and that

someone had guided her through it all before, step by step. (and

that I should do the same)

I told her that it seemed kind of odd she would need that

kind of help since she was a webdesigner and had been for at least

two years.

I asked her if she knew HTML...

She told me the following:

"I DON'T NEED TO KNOW HTML, I'M A WEBDESIGNER!"

I queuried her and was told:

"That's why they have web design programs."

Good Lord is all I can say.

A customer rang in one day to say she couldn't get her CD out of her computer. After asking her to try and eject the CD-ROM tray she admits the CD wasn't in there. She'd managed to shove the CD between the CD-ROM and a gap in the bezel straight into the system. Considering the size of the gap, that must've been an effort.

I was helping a guy load a machine he had just purchased from me into his car when he spied the side of the box I was carrying. It stated "Colour Monitor". He was concerned about this as he was very conscious of his decor and demanded to know if it was going to be the same colour as the rest of the package....

P.S The UK English spelling of colour contains a "U". (Just in case you thought I was some sort of illeterate or something.)

I don't know if this is applicable as a tech tale, but it was about computers... ;-)

I'm a cashier in a grocery store, and I hear a LOT of strange things from people while I'm behind that cash register. One that I happen to remember from way, way back in my first month or so of being a cashier seems to fit here. I was just doing my job, checking out customers, the usual, when 2 interesing men got in my line. One looked to be in his mid to late 30's, and the other was an older man who looked to be in his 60's. They were next in line after the lady I was checking out. In a very loud tone of voice, they were discussing a CDROM game. The younger man, I don't know who he was, but I'll just call him Mike, was trying to explain to the older man, I'll just call him Bob, what a CDROM game is. I didn't start hearing what they were saying until the conversation got VERY loud, and the part I heard went something like this:

Mike: (slightly frustrated) Yeah, it's a game, but it's on a CD.

Bob: So then you need a CD player for it, right? Cuz I got one of those.

Mike: (a little more frustrated) No!! You can't put it in a CD player!!

Bob: Well then, how the @#$% are you supposed to play it?

Mike: (getting louder) You put it in the CDROM drive!! You know, that little tray that comes out in the front. You do have a CDROM drive, don't you?

Bob: (scratches head) Well, I dunno, I don't have a tray on mine. Just a little door that comes up and down when you push on the corner.

Mike: (confused) Door?? What are you... (light bulb goes on) Ain't you listenin' ta me? I told you, you can't play this game on a CD player!!

Bob: It's a CD, but it doesn't go in the CD player?

Mike: No!! It's a CDROM. You have to put it in the CDROM drive on the computer!!

Bob: Computer? You have to have a computer?

Mike: Yes!!

Bob: Ok, well, I'll just have to buy one then.

Mike: (starting to giggle) You??? You're gonna buy a computer?? Cheap-a** you that won't give up a nickel??

Bob: Well, yeah... how else am I gonna play my game?

Mike: (starting to LOL) You're gonna buy a computer just to play a game?

Bob: Well, yeah...

Mike: (laughing) If YOU actually spend $3000 to buy a computer, I will get down on my knees and kiss your a**!!

Bob: (stands there with a dumbfounded look on his face)

Mike: You ain't gonna spend no $3000 on no computer... and if you do, like I said, I'll get down on my knees and kiss your a**!! (laughs some more)

By that time, both men were pretty much shouting, and a woman who I'm guessing was "Mike's" wife (she called him Honey), came running over and quieted them down. I didn't quite hear what she said because I was laughing too hard... ;-)

This actually happened to a friend with his father.

My friend Aleks re-builds an XT a couple of years ago for his father who wanted to learn more about the computer.

Great, He sets up the XT, DOS, Modem, (pcAnywhere for remote support) the whole deal.

He delivers it and sets if up for his father and leaves.

Well his Dad gets home and trys to use it -- nothing happens.

He calls

Dad: The computer doesn't work

Aleks: Did you turn it on using the big black switch

Dad: Yes

Aleks: What happened?

Dad: Nothing

Aleks: Is the light on for the monitor?

Dad: Yes

Aleks: What's on the screen?

Dad: Nothing

Aleks: Turn the switch and tell me what happens.

Dad: Nothing.

Aleks: Ok I'm on my way

No at this point in the story when related to me I knew the punch line

which annoyed Aleks to no end (years of dealing with tech support and

knowing exactly the machine he built for Dad)

Aleks arrives at his father house, sits down and throws the big black

switch and on comes the machine. Ok what we you doing?

Dad: Shows him how he was turning the 5 1/4 drive handle like a switch

on the front of the machine.

Here's a good one for you. Afriend of mine rang me the other day, he'd had problems with IE5 (his installation of it was knackered)so I said, just reistall it over the top and it'll keep all your old sattings. He says, I can't, when I click on an icon it doesn't do anything, and all my icons have changed, they are now all windows flags....

err.."What did you do?" I asked him as calmly as I could...

2well, as I had all these problems I went through my hard drive and deleted explorer", he said proudly, "and I even had to go into dos mode to do it all...)"

Oh GOD!!!!

"right, What you need to do is go over to your daughters pc", luckily I knew his daughter also ran win98 on her pc, "then insert a blank, formatted floppy and copy explorer.exe from c:\windows, then call me back and we'll go from there...."

about 15 mins later, he calls me back..."Right", he says, "I

've got ie.exe on the disk where do I put it..."

resisting temptation of how best to answer that I said..."no Mock, weren't you listening?..I said Explorer.exe..now go do that and call me back"

After all that I managed to get him up and running until the next time he trashed his system, but that is another story and my fingers are tired....

I am a help desk technician, and on one of the accounts that we had we also supported the on-site technicians. We always dreaded thses calls because the on-site techs were not very well trained and all of these computers were proprietary; Compaqs, Aptivas, Packard Bells, and the such.

This one was a Compaq...

Me: Tech support, can I help you?

Tech: I'm out here swapping out a motherboard, and I can't get it out.

Me: Okay, did you unscrew it?

Tech: Yes! (the tech sounded offended) That's not the problem. I can't get it past the floppy drive.

Me: Well, try taking the drive out.

Tech: Oh. (pauses) I'll worry about that later. I have another problem. I can't get the processor off of the board. I lifted the little lever thing, but it didn't come up.

Me: Okay, do you have any guesses as to why it won't come up?

Tech: There's this big metal thing in the way. It's kind of wierd looking, with all of these ridges.

At this point I look up the model of computer. It is a Presario 7222, the same model as my parents have. This computer had the biggest, heviest heat sync you have ever seen. I still use the thing for a paper weight, but it's so big I should keep it in my car to use for self defence.

Me: This big metal thing, is it the heat sync?

Tech: (surprised) Yes, I think it is!

Me: Do you see some sort of strap going across it?

Tech: Yes.

Me: Well, push in on both ends and it should pop out.

Tech: That didn't work.

Me: (loosing my patience) Well mess with it for a while!

Tech: Fine. I'll figure it out myself. (click)

I still think back on this call, 6 months later, and ask myself... Should I have been more patient? ... Should I have looked for some documentation for him?.... Mostly I ask, How did this guy ever become a tech?

In my experience, there are three kinds of computer users. First, are the computer literate. TS never hears from these people because they usually handle their own problems and don't need TS. Next, you have the Computer illiterate. These are the people who make this wonderful website possible. Finally, there are those who are somewhere in-between, those who know just enough about computers to be destructive. What follows is the story of one such individual.

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

Customer: Hi, This is (Bahb), I'm having some problems...

Me: Okay, what kind of problems are you having?

Customer: The computer doesn't work anymore.

Me: Why not?

Customer: That's what I was hoping you'd tell me.

Me: I need a little more information.

Customer: Oh. Okay. Well, I bought this LAN card at a yard sale (YELLOW ALERT), and I installed it in my PC. It's an 16 bit ISA card, but I had plenty of slots free.

(At this point, I get hopeful that the guy knows a little about computers, so I may not have to explain everything to him in one syllable words)

Customer: I put the cover and all that back on, and suddenly my sound card didn't work. I went to the Control Panel and the Device Manager said that the LAN card was conflicting with the sound card's IRQ.

Me: Okay, that's no problem. Do you have the driver and configuration software for the LAN card?

Customer: Nope. All I got was the card.

(At this point, I really wanted to chastise him for not buying a brand new ISA LAN card for $10. at the local PC shop, but I held my tongue)

Me: Okay, there are some websites where you can download those things, but you'll have to identify the exact make and model of the LAN card to make sure you get the correct software.

Customer: Well, that would be fine, except that the computer doesn't work at all now.

Me: Pardon me?

Customer: It won't boot. It won't get any further than the video card's BIOS, then it locks up tight.

Me: The LAN card may be defective. Have you tried removing it?

Customer: Yes, I thought of that. It's not in there right now.

Me: I see. Did you change any of your sound card's settings while you were in the Device Manager?

Customer: No. Well I tried to, but it didn't solve the IRQ problem. I figured I was going to have to resolve the IRQ conflict by changing the hardware's settings (RED ALERT).

Me: Hardware Settings?

Customer: Yeah. Y'know, the IRQ jumpers on the motherboard (BATTLE STATIONS! BATTLE STATIONS!)? I tried to change the sound card's IRQ so it wouldn't conflict with the LAN card.

Me: And you did this by moving jumpers on the motherboard?

Customer: Uh huh.

Me: How did you determine which jumpers to change?

Customer: I downloaded some info on the motherboard from the internet.

(I know this can't be right, because we don't have that kind of information in the online tech support web page)

Me: I see. And which jumpers exactly did you move?

Customer: That's where it gets fuzzy. See, I couldn't find the exact motherboard information (Aha! See? I was right!), so I downloaded the stats for the closest thing I could find. The diagram showed a block of 8 jumpers near the CPU and another block of 4 near the Cache stick. The motherboard has a block of six jumpers next to the power supply connection, and a block of 4 by the PCI slots. It was kind of guesswork there.

(I paused for a long time, jaw agape. I sat there thinking he would be damn fortunate if he hadn't fried something)

Me: I see. Would it be possible to put all the jumpers back where they were originally?

Customer: In theory, yes. Except that I changed them so many times trying to get it to boot up before I called you that I've forgotten where they originally were.

(You can almost imagine me hitting my forehead repeated ly with the heel of my hand...)

Me: You're going to have to bring the system in.

Customer: Are you sure? Can't you just tell me where to put them? Or better yet, send me the stats and diagrams that belong to this motherboard and I can fix it myself.

Me: Ummmm, no. I don't have that information available and the hardware technicians don't like to give it out to everyone.

Customer: Sure, I understand. You really don't want that information getting out to people who don't know what they are doing and might screw things up, do you?

(It is significant to note that that last statement was made in the context of one tech talking to another. The guy really didn't catch the bitter irony of the fact that he was describing himself)

He brought the system in, and thankfully hadn't fried anything on the motherboard in his mad alteration of CPU clock speed and voltage settings and whatnot else. Here's the capper; we sold him a much nicer and newer LAN card, with software included, and we installed it for him, all for less that half what he paid for a 10 year old 3Com Ethernet piece of junk at a yard sale.

END

and they'll build a better idiot.

I have been doing ISP (Internet Service Provider) support for longer than most people would think possible considering most tech support people only last 18 months before reaching the "burnout" point and finding another job.

In my time as a support person, I have learned to word everything I say very carefully so as to avoid any chance of confusion. Point in case is below (this is a very common occourance BTW).

Me: ok, double click on My Computer with the left mouse button

C: OK

Me: Double click Dial-Up Networking with the left mouse button

C: OK

Me: with the right hand mouse buton single click on the (name of ISP) icon and it will bring up a pull down menu, in that menu single click create shortcut with the left mouse button. It will bring up a dialogue box that says, "windows cannot create a shortcut here would you like to make on to the desktop instead". You should click yes

C: Hold on a sec, I have this thing on the scren that says, "windows cannot create a shortcut here would you like to make on to the desktop instead". what should I do?

Don't worry, there's no need to listen to us techs, we like to hear ourselves talk.

The software we support is a DOS program. It was installed but not behaving on a caller's computer, so I checked the Config.sys. I asked if the statements for FILES and BUFFERS were there and correct. She read them to me and it all sounded OK, but the application was still misbehaving. I asked her to fax the Config.sys, This is what it said:

FILESEQUALS255

BUFFERSEQUALS40,0

And, this was setup by a paid consultant!

I work at a local ISP in my state. One day a lady called in and was having trouble with her dial-up connection. After trying to get the error message it was getting out of her I finally got her to call me back with it.

ME : What was the error it was giving you Mrs._____?

HER : Unable to connect to the remote computer. I didn't

even realize my computer was a remote. Is there some

way that I can do the TV and radio with it?

ME : No mam. The remote computer is our network.

HER : Well if your thr remote why don't you just fix

my computer from where you are and call me when

you get it done.

ME : Mam...I cannot do that (then explain to her why)

HER : Well I can't beleive this Sh**. I pay you people

monthly and now I am put in a bind because you

want to make me do your job and fix it myself

over the phone.

I hung up on her.

This happened a long time ago...back in the days of Lantastic networks..

I was working as a quasi network administrator and secretary for a local accounting firm. They only reason I became the netadmin was because I was caught, by one of the partners, reading a tech magazine during a break. He handed me the company's old Lantastic 5.0 network.

Well, I was doing ok until the main server decided to crash. I wound up working on it for two days, reconfiguring, reinstalling, checking system files, calling Lantastic support (non-existant)..you name it. A few of the accountants had seen me working on this. When a gaggle of them came back from lunch, one said, "Just try that computer voodoo you tell us to do all the time." He laughed with the other accountants and walked off. The accountants not happy that I send out emails with instructions to fix things instead of always doing them myself. But when you are trying fix multiple issues and put together tax forms, time runs short. Anyway, I had enough of this server so I went home. On my way home, I had an idea...

The next day I arrived, I set up next to the server. When I knew the accountants would be around, I pulled a gag rubber chicken out of my backpack and starting chanting and thwacking the server with it. The accountants came in to see this craziness, figuring I had finally flipped. When I was done with my performance, I turned on the server. IT WORKED PERFECTLY.

The accountants never questioned what I did again. :)

PS- The real fix was that there was a heat sink problem and I needed to add an extra cooling fan to the server, which I had done early that morning.

Hello, Tech support.

Yes, I bought this new computer and I can't get my mouse to

work.

(10 minutes pass while I explain to her what windows and the windows desktop is)

Ok, ma'am, when you move your mouse, do you see anything on the screen.

I move it and nothing happens. You know, this mouse seems

wobbley and is not very comfortable.

Ma'am when you left or right click, do you see anything on the screen.

What do you mean left or right click? I only have this ball to click on.

Ma'am turn your mouse upside down.

Ok.

Now move it.

Hey it is working.

It was a nice night when I was working by myself taking calls...

One of the calls I took was to change my life forever,

An old asian fellow rang up with very broken english and had a problem trying to get websites,

I couldn't get a ping reply from himself so I asked to check his Network Configuration, so I asked him to goto My Computer then Control panel...

Then outta the blue he started screaming " CONTROL PANEL, INTERNET OPTIONS " it sounded like he though he knew what he was doing, but obviously he didn't.. I asked him to stop screaming and to let me finish, But he persistantly kept shouting " Control Panel, Internet Options " I then asked a fellow collegue over ICQ.. "What should I do with this caller? " She told me to ask him to get an Interpreter,

So I did then hung up.

This was just when the fun started.

Working by myself this same guy would constantly call back shouting " Control Panel, Internet Options "...

After I hung up the 8th time he didn't call back :)

Great site!

I work as a sys admin for a military installation. Several months ago we switched from Banyan to Outlook. In Banyan, to send mail outside the installation, "SMTP" had to preceed the recipient's address. Just got a call from a person:

Clueless: I'm having problems sending mail

Me: OK, what error message is it giving you?

Clueless: The mail gets returned as undeliverable

Me: Are you sure the address is correct?

Clueless: Yes, I am positive! I should know, it's my mother's address!

Me: What address are you typing?

Clueless: [SMTP]XXXX@XXX.com

Me: With Outlook, SMTP is no longer needed in the address

Clueless: Oh really? I thought you had to use it to tell the mail what to do. You know - SMTP - Send Mail To People!

Me: Click

I haeard this call from a coworker.

I work at an ISP tech support line and she got a call form a costumer

who did not have her computer set up yet bue tried to use the

install cd on her Sega Dreamecast. And sha did not know

why the install cd would not work.

Could it be that it is not desined for the Dreamcast. :-}

(/RING)(/RING)

Me: Hello. You've reached $ISP. This is $NAME.

Sub: How do you send attachments?

Me: Which email client are you using? I want to send some jokes.

Sub: I'm using $EMAIL.

Me: Ok. Do you see the paperclip at the top?

Sub: Yes.

Me: Click that then browse for the file you want to attach. Do you know

where the file is on your PC?

Sub: No.

Me: Look in "My Documents". Is it there?

Sub: No.

Me: We're going to have to know where the file is in order to attach

it to your email.

Sub: It's right here.

Me: Right where?

Sub: In my hand...I just photocopied it.

After fighting with Bell south telephone for over a year and hearing all the reasons why most poeple in my area can not connect, I was told the best one of all time.. Its your modem, why I asked I have had it tested and checked the drivers. The Bell South mamager said its because it is a ISA modem and not a PCI its not Y2k complaint!!

I work for a company that hosts a web site with some financial research content on it. We usually have users register and then use their user ID and password to log on.

Today we have received an e-mail from a user that was unable to log in. Here is the text:

"Your e-mail to me says that I should point my web browser to LOG-IN, but I only see something that says LOG-ON."

I was actually surprised about how this fellow found the POWER button on his computer.