Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

This is an actual email from a customer having problems with his printer.

I have tried almost everything.......even downloading a new hard drive. The

paper is still comming out the same way crimped. The only way i find this

out is when i run a test. The printer still does not print,and on the screen

it pops up error ..... printer out of paper. The printer has paper in

it......and this message still comes up. Please tell me what to do. This is

very frustrating .I would like the printer repaired or replaced by *******...Please have someone contact me at this number......*******.

Thank

you.....

I've found that good writing skills pay off in the support field. They help you cover any mistakes made by yourself and fellow techs (and let's face it, we all make them from time to time).

Just yesterday I came up with a good one to cover for a co-worker. He'd been doing a copy to tape of a database backup directory. Background: Our system backs up to hard disk at midnight, then the backup directory can be copied to tape at any time, usually by scheduled job. It's done this way because the application has to take itself down and up briefly for the backup to run, there are no hot backups with this particular application.

Anyway, my co-worker started the backup to tape, only by accident he started it against the main database directory, instead of the backup one. This caused the application to encounter file-sharing issues (it doesn't like any other app having even read-only use on its files) and down it went.

I think he was pretty embarrassed by his goof, but we got the system restored to the exact point of failure, nothing lost, so no big deal.

The fun part was coming up with a good way to explain this to the people who used the application (pretty non-technical staff). I came up with this one, and the other support folks were in awe:

"At about 1:20pm today, the [system] encountered an unexpected user-input redirection error during a non-automatic database duplication procedure. This conflicted with the main server process and caused the application to abnormally terminate."

Definitions:

"non-automatic database duplication procedure": A backup started manually.

"unexpected user-input redirection error": The input to the backup program (the directory being backed up) was different than expected.

I'm sure those poor end-users had no clue about what *really* happened.

The best part is, we get paid for this.

I run the network for our company and its branch offices. Once day last week I got a call from a user who insists that she knows everything there is to know about computers, when, on a scale of 1-10, she might hit 3.

She told me that her HP printer wasn't printing. "It was printing like it was running low on ink, so I changed the black ink cartridge. Then only the color cartridge would print, so I changed it too so I would have 2 new cartridges in it. Now it won't print anything. It seems like it is trying to print, but no ink is going onto the paper.

I went down to her office to find the problem. I nearly broke into tears when this "expert" user (who has had that printer for years!) didn't realize that you have to pull the piece of tape off the bottom of the cartridge.

It seems to be working fine now.

I do technical support for a very large software company. One day another support engineer posted this question on one of our internal discussion lists:

Q: "One of my customers has accidently deleted his entire database from his server. This database is critical to his business. How can he restore it?"

A: "He can try ---- or --- or --- (emergency restore utilities).

Q: "He tried that, but they don't work. When he realized his error, he formatted his drives and completely reinstalled NT server and SQL server."

A: "He's hosed. He'll need to restore from his backups."

Q: "He has no backups."

[The discussion kind of went downhill from there, but it more or less centered on why a company wouldn't keep backups of data "critical" to its operation.]

Hi,

I used to work as a LAN admin for the automation-engineering department of a very large aeronautical instrumentation company in Montreal.

Anyways one day one of my engineers calls me.

Me: Hello.

Eng: Hi can you come fix my CRT (he actually used CRT to sound knowledgable.)

Me: Okay, whats wrong with it?

Eng: Well everything comes out green.

Me: Okay, Im going to change a tape and Ill pass by.

5 minutes later.

Me: So this is the defective screen.

Eng: YEah I cant get it to work. Ive been fiddling with it.

Me: What did you change?

Eng: Nothing, I went into the control panel, looked at the monitor settings, tried different ones, nothing works.

A wicked smile crossed my lips. I had originally (against my will) gave this guy permission to back up some work on one of our servers. Three weeks later I had to revoke his permissions as almost 1.5 gigs was being transfered from his computer to our server every night. So with everyone listnening I said

Me: You want the engineers solution?

Eng: Okay.

I hit the monitor at the top of the screen. It flashed back to normal colours. It was a loose video cable, problem didnt come back again.

A while back (I won't say how long, but this story is about the first IBM XT we sold!), we had a client who kept "losing" data from her daily Lotus Spreadsheets. "I am sure I save them to the floppy at the end of the day, but when I try to load them the next morning, they are gone." This went on for a few days, with her having to use a backup copy and re-enter some data every day. I finally decided to spend the day with her and watch what was happening. I helped her key some data, sat around reading manuals (there was no Internet to surf around back then), made some phone calls, got generally bored, and noticed nothing unusual. Quitting time came and she correctly copied her files to the 5 1/4 floppy, took them to the break room for safe keeping overnight and stuck them to the refrigerator with a magnet. Gotta love 'em.

My husband, whom I consider a very computer-competent person, has finally provided me with a story worthy of this site. Enjoy..

Hubby decided that the computer needed dusted out. Well, he used can air to get out all of the dust, took out each individual card (!) and made sure that was clean, and put them back in. Lo and behold, when he was finished, it didn't boot up. I was furious and stormed out of the apartment. It took 3 hours to get the blasted thing up and running again; unfortunately, without sound. And when it was running, it would lock up every 45 minutes or so.

A friend of mine, who was working for Intel at the time, came to visit and I explained what was going on. We opened the case and noticed that parts of the sound card were bent, apparently from when he shoved it back into the computer. We began taking out the cards when we heard a *thump*. On the floor was the heatsink to the video card. In my friend's hand was the sound card. And on the back of the sound card was.. scotch tape. Apparently, the heat sink had fallen off, and he taped it to the back of the sound card so the little fan would blow on the video card.

*sigh*

This isn't so much a techtale as an mIRCTale.

I was on mIRC chat the other day, when I got a message from someone who needed help with something.

On mIRC, you can have voice status (+v), or Op status (+o). The +o status means you can kick people from the chat, etc. Voice means you can... well I'm really not sure except it's better than not having any status. anyway:

This person writes me, saying, "I can't do anything in my chat!"

You know what they had done? they had set -O +V and then tried to set +O on themselves. That means, they removed Op status, set Voice status, and then tried to re-Op themselves, which only an Op could do. This is pretty basic knowledge for mIRC, and the writer claimed they had been using it for several years, so.....

Scary.

When I first started doing Tech Support, it was for an up and coming company. Everyone who worked there was told that it was very very important that we all handled ourselves professionally while on the phone with customers. We went through a boring 2 week training course on "Customer Care" and I figured I would be set when I got on the phones. Well, my first job was to tell Beta Testers that they were being upgraded to the final version for free as well as answer any questions the Beta Testers had. Being my first call, I wanted to impress my co-workers and supervisors with my professionalism. I called, and I said, "Hi, This is Sandra from Myturn.com, may I please speak to Lucy?" A gruff sounding man strenly asked, "What do you want?" I brightly responded, "I'm calling to inform Lucy that her GlobalPC is being upgraded to the final version." The "was quiet for a moment, then told me, "Lucy died a week ago of a heart attack." Well, no amount of training or professionalism could have prepared me for that, after giving my condolences, I was forced to explain to everyone that Lucy was dead and not to call. Needless to say, everyone laughed at me for quite some time.

Recently, my mother asked me to help her in installing and configuring software for taking and printing screenshots onto her computer, which she uses almost exclusively for the family geneology work (and email.)

After ten minutes of answering all of her questions by reading the text in the dialog boxes FOR her (she reads just fine when it's on paper, but apparently putting it on a computer screen makes it incomprehensible), we finished configuring the key-commands to activate all of the possible screen capturing and printing options.

At which point, she asked "Now how can I get a printout of that?"

I suppose it COULD be a short-term memory problem...

We all know how much trouble the "super users" can get themselves into. But it's worse when they're in positions of power...like the manager of the Server Team.

A certain large brand-name manufacturer of computers and printers (ahem) in So. Cal. had outsourced their server team. The outsourcer had brought on a new manager who was the type who likes to play with "cool" tech toys, but didn't really have any foundation in computers.

The server team was testing a new remote shut-down utility. The manager came over and looked over their shoulder for a while, then asked them to send him a copy. He played with the settings for a while, then thought it'd be a chuckle to reboot one of his employee's PC remotely. To make it even funnier, he disabled the "User can cancel reboot" feature. He clicked OK.

And every PC on the 8000+ user WAN rebooted. Immediately. And not a single user got to save their work.

Wrong IP settings.

I spent 12 years working for a large public institution in England and know for a fact that we all make mistakes.

One of my bosses was a real techno ace, what he didn't know wasn't worth knowing about. That was that he very, very rarely listened to me or my collegue.

We installed a Unix box as our e-mail server and needed to set up a message store on one of our NetWare servers. The problem was that we had set the SYS: volume to be the only volume on the hard disk and had no room left for the message store.

Okay simnple enough, take a backup, decrease the volume size of SYS: create a new volume for the message store and then restore the backup.

However the boss had thought, that because the SYS volume was nowhere near full, we could just decrease it and the new volume would quite happily sit on the end of that, no need to spend hours backing up and restoring.

My collegue and I were mortified! Don't do it we cried it doesn't work like that. Okay says the boss I'll do it your way.

Five minutes later the whole network went down, users ringing and screaming, the whole works.

Boss appears from the computer room very bright in the face.

He didn't listen to us and did it his way, thus deleting the whole SYS volume in a second flat.

He had to be extra special nice to us to stop us telling his boss

I'm not a computer professional, or even an expert -- but I am the most technology-savvy in my small department, so am often called on for help with basic applications like Word/Excel, internet problems, basic office equipment like copiers and fax machines, and more sophisticated electronics like our PalmPilots.

Since I work with pretty intelligent people, I never thought I'd be writing to TechTales....

A fellow coworker -- 23, another member of the "digital generation" -- popped over to my desk yesterday and said, "The fax machine is giving a 'Check Paper' error. Would you know anything about it?"

I just looked at him and said "You're kidding, right?"

I had to walk him over to the machine and explain that the top-loading machine was having problems grabbing the slightly misaligned single sheet of 8 1/2"x11" paper that remained in the tray, and drop in a stack of paper. A total 1/2-second operation.

A shocked expression, and "Oh....I thought it came off a roll somewhere!" Never mind the fact that he'd been getting plain paper faxes for over 5 months now!

Some people don't put 2 and 2 together. I'm going to haunt him about this for a long time. :)

Our office needed us tech's to install a color scanner onto one guys computer. We installed it and showed him how to use it, and a color picture appeared on his screen after we scanned one in.

Him: So, uh, is this going to be a color scanner?

Me: (disbelieving what I was just asked, the answer was on the screen!!) Yes, but you have to keep the ink cartridges filled. (haha)

Him: You're gonna have to show me how to do that then.

OK, I only witnessed this...but

A new guy continually comes in our office with stupid questions and concerns. The other day he came in asking if we could give him his password again, he had forgotten it. One girl explaind the password was so nobody could access his account and we did not know them. She instructed him to go to the password screen, so he went to his Hotmail account, and tried to enter it (unsuccessfully) and said "See?"

I am a computer operator for a very large government company, but that's not where I ran into idiots. It was my home computer and my ISP. I use a free ISP, given only to customers of a certain company. So there should be SOME QA going on.

I get home from work one night and decide to check my e-mail. I try and logon from the web-site(I never could get my Outlook Express to work properly)but am told my user name is not authorized. I try several times and it's a no go. Not to mention, each page takes about 5 minutes to load. Being a computer operator myself, I think it may be a server problem and leave it alone for a while. During which time I go back to working on my Outlook Express. I notice that under Accounts my e-mail addy has been changed from xxxxxxx@xxxxxx.co.uk to xxxxxxx@xxxxxx.net. Thinking I made a mistake at one point, changed it back, and it still didn't work. So for S&G I tried to retrieve my mail with the new addy. Lo and behold it worked. By this time enough time had gone by and I went back to check my old mail, because Outlook express had not downloaded anything sent to the original addy(I know I sent some of it)Again, no success so I went to the help section. Or more appropriately the NO help section. I was looking for a number to call to see what the problem may be. There was no number to call, but there was an e-mail address for the Admin and the Webmaster. I took my time and let them know how I felt(as politely as I could) and that it was ridiculous to change my e-mail without notification, not to mention not downloading my mail from my original address. I left the new address and went back to my mail to send some test messages. And this is the Icing On the Cake. I got two messages back, one for the Admin and one for the Webmaster, USER UNKNOWN. ???????????? I am still puzzling over these.

Last night I recieved a call from a lady who was having trouble conencting. She said that it has been going on for days. She had spoken to 4 techs before me and I figured this would be an impossible problem and to get ready to escalate at the drop of a thumb.

We started to go through things and within the first 30 seconds I realised why she has spoken to so many people, She had NO idea what she was doing. I noticed a voice in the background after the call ran on for over 45 minutes.

I asked her "Ma`am, do you have any children?" she replied "Yes, I have a 16 year old daughter." I asked if I could speak with her daughter, and she put her on the phone.

(She sounded really cute too and only a year younger than me lol) Anyways I just told her exactly this:

"We need to check the network components and DUN connection."

Girl-"Yeah alright, BOY! She does have things F$^ked up in here!"

Me-"Uhhhh she does?"

Girl-"Yeah, she has IPX, NetBEUI and 4 instances of AOL adapters and protocols... There this should work..."

*Sounds of dialing*

Girl-"Alright its working, have a good one cutie..."

*click"

Since her daughter came on the phone the call only lasted 45 seconds. And she called me cute ontop of that. Well goes to show that old people shouldn't have computers.

This one just totally blew my mind. I work at Ibm's Help Desk and this call came in to me as follows:

User: The cup holder attached to my computer broke and I need someone to come out and fix it.

Me: Cup Holder?

User: Yes, the drink holder. You'd think with the price I paid for this machine it would hold up better. I've only had it for two months and I KNOW that it still under warranty.

Me: Sir, IBM doesn't make a cup holder for their computers. You must be refering the the CD-ROM drive.

User: I don't have a CD-ROM, I specifically purchased a DVD drive and if you guys configured my machine incorrectly I'll sent it back immediteately.

Me: (trying not to lol in his face) Sir, they look similar, but DVD drives are capable of more functionality.

User: I don't want functionality, I want my cup holder fixed.

Me: LOL (couldn't contain myself any longer)

User: [click]

This was the funniest incident in my 35 years with the Help Desk. Well, I guess you never know...

This is the best trick to play on customers, doesn't do them any harm, its just damn funny. I used to do tech support for an ISP, and when customers were experiencing authentication problems when connecting. They usually hear the modem handshaking and then they get an internal authentication error.

WELL this is how a script usually goes.

ME: So, what happens when you try to connect?

C: Well, I the computer starts dialing the phone number.

ME: And then what happens?

C: Then it makes that 'connecting' sound, you know what I mean?

******THIS IS WHERE THE FUN STARTS**********

ME: (knowing fully well what sound he/she means) What sound would that be sir/ma'am?

If you're lucky, the customer will make a pathetic attempt to imitate the sound of modem breath. It's funny as all hell. Just imagine a customer going, "well, it goes Kheeeeeeekhhooooowisssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhdeeedoodeedoooo!

." Thank god for the mute button.

I used to work the phones doing tech support, so I know the pain you all go through... :) Now I teach an introductory computer lab (Intro to Computers 101) at a large university. The stories I have from the students are plenty, but this particular story deals with one of the help desk people that a co-worker (who is also a former tech) had to deal with.

One day my co-worker, Joe, notices that one of the printers in the lab is not printing correctly, and checks it and finds that it just needs a toner cartridge. He calls the help desk and asks them to send a tech with a toner cartridge. A "tech" comes down, looks at the printer, and disappears.

Half an hour later, the tech returns, with another printer in his arms.

Joe: What is that for?

Tech: I'm replacing the printer.

Joe: It's not broken, it just needs a cartridge.

Tech: Well, I looked at it and it's not working, so I'm replacing it.

Joe: No, it works, look....(proceeds to print a page. The printout comes out and everything, just all fuzzy.)

It needs a cartridge, see?

Tech: I don't know, I'm taking it with me.

Joe: I'm not letting you take it, it's fine....

The tech proceeds to hook up the other printer and leaves the other one there on the floor.

Two days later, another printer (there are 4 in the lab) needs a toner cartridge. Joe calls about it, and says now we need TWO toner cartridges. So guess what the tech does? Brings ANOTHER printer to the lab! He tells Joe that he can take both the printers and "look" at them. Joe still insists they are fine, they just need cartridges. So now we have 2 perfectly working printers that just need cartridges sitting in the corner of our lab. I don't think this so-called "tech" knows how to change a darn toner cartridge...and the worst part is he doesn't really have to, I said I'd be happy to change it if he would just bring one to the lab....

If this is this clueless idiot's (quite expensive) solution to the problem, our university will be wasting LOTS of money!!!

I work as phone tech support for a large computer supply/ISP. I work in a part of it where most of the Eu's have at least worked on a computer before buying one, but sometimes we still get the '12 o'clock flasher' types.

This gentlemen calls in, says that his email is still not working, it keeps disconnecting him. I asked what it was saying when it did this, but he said he could not remember. Checked his case notes. The previous techs made sure the outgoing and incoming mail servers were correct, but I noticed the tech before me had to have the Eu re-type the address because a . was not in the correct place. So I think, it happened once, it could have happened again. We spend several minutes going through the settings, me asking him to spell what he has exactly. Everything looked fine, no problems. Again, I asked if he could remember what the error message said when it disconnected him. He said it flashed by so fast, he could not see it. Bingo! The email was working fine. He had no mail in the outbox to send, and there was no incoming email for him to recieve, so the email program would connect to the server, check for mail, and then disconnect from the server. I informed the Eu that it sounded like the email was working fine, and I had a way to test it for sure. I had the Eu send himself an email, told him how to make sure it was working, asked him to try that. Have not heard from him since.

I work for an filtered ISP. Because we provide such a service our clients sometimes think that we sre the answer to all problems and the protector from all evil. Here's an example. This Lady called in with a strange problem.

"Is this Tech support?," she said in a whisper. "Yes ma'am it is, how my I help you?" "I have a Hacker in my computer," she told me in a muffled voice. "Excuse me ma'am!?" "I have a Hacker in my computer!" "How do you know?" "I can see him hacking." "Ok, ma'am are you connect to the internet now?" "No, am not. I haven't had the internet for over a year now." So you do not have a phone line attached to the back of your computer? Are you sure you are not on the net?" " I am sure. I don't have internet access, but I do have a hacker..... Oh my God... I can see him....(small scream).... Help oh my God...(banging noises)...I can see him!!!" "Ma'am what can you see?" "I can see the hacker!"

About this time I'm getting worried. "Where is the hacker?" "He's sitting on my CD-rom drive...oh my God...can you see him...get him...get him....!!!" "Please calm down ma'am." "Ok, ok, What do i need to do." "Well, I can't get rid of your hacker, but you can buy software that will." "I don't want software! I want him dead!! Oh no he's hacking again." Once again banging ensues. I hear her screaming and the phone goes dead. I can only hope that she didn't get hacked.

me: good morning, may i help you?

cust: you bastards sold me a broken computer! i want my money back!

me: what's the trouble?

cust: i keep putting diskettes in the floppy drive, and none come back out!!

realizing there was some lack of understanding here, i had him bring it in.

the customer had been slipping the disks through a slight gap between the

floppy drive and the housing. when i opened it up, there were 15 or 20 disks

piled up on the vga card.

me: here's the problem, sir.

i never saw him again.

I work for a b-to-b start-up. I am a programmer, but unfortunatly we have to handle problems like this one....

Recieve email:

HELP!

I send email back:

Please send more information regarding your problem and I will be more than happy to help you.

Recieve email:

I don't know your company or what they do please give me more information.

I think "They just are a little confused, I will be nice and give them a call. (They included their number on the email)"

Me: Hi, I heard from your email you were having some problems. Can I help you?

Her: Well, I don't know who you are.

Me: I am from ********** *******.

Her: I don't know your companies name.

Me: (Mabey she talks to alot of people and has lots of problems I think) Well, are you having some problems with you online publication service?

Her: Yes.

Me: Ok, Well what is happening?

Her: I can't tell you anything unless you tell me what you are calling in regards to.

Me: You sent me a email saying "HELP!". Do you remember that?

Her: Yes, but I don't know your companies name.

Me: (Getting a little tired of this) I work for ********* ******* and we are a company that does online publications. Are you having problems with an online publication?

Her: Yes, (with anger) BUT I DON"T KNOW YOUR COMPANIES NAME!!!

Me: I work for ******** ****** and we .....

HER: I CAN SEE WE ARE GOING NO WHERE WITH THIS CONVERSATION! I AM GOING TO DISCONTINUE YOUR SERVICE!!

Me: Ok, I am glad I could be of help. CLICK!

I guess she was having a bad life.

I worked for a unnamed College. For example SJSU.

One of the professors in the PHYSICS Dept. told me that he

was having problems with the website. This guy is

the most computer illiterate person I have ever met. I was

told that I needed to talk to him because he was having

problems with the way we had the site designed. I went to

talk to him and figure out what the problem was. I went

into his office and he started showing me all these pages

of the web site that he had printed out! He then told me

that he would appreciate it if I COULD REDESIGN THE

WEB SITE SO WHEN HE PRINTED THE WEBSITE OUT EACH PAGE ON THE

SITE WOULD FIT ON ONE PIECE OF PAPER!! That way when he

wanted to look at the site when he wasn't at a computer

he wouldn't have to lay sheets of paper end to end. I held

my breath and told him I would see what I could do. This

was the same place that they wanted some one to redesign

the website to make it more, and I quote, "WEBBISH"???.

When the internet explosion was just starting i started an

isp well one day we set this new customer all up with

a dialup account at the shop on his home computer.

after we show him how to connect, he says ok takes his computer home.

25 mins later he calls us....

Cust: "My internet does not work"

Tech: "whats the symptoms, it was fine when it left here"

Cust: "well a box comes up and says 'conneced 24800' is

that all the internet does?"

I guess we made it too easy for some people to get online!

I have learnt that when Windows opens the DOS shell in

C:\WINDOWS, and you have taught the user how to

A:

DEL *.*

Y

EXIT

that is most important to stress the need to do the first

line - A:

:)

Ok, granted, it's long after the Great Y2K Panic, but I just now found this site and have a tale to tell.

I was working tech support for a large (primarily) laptop computer company, and volunteered to work on January 1, 2000 (I wanted to be around when the lights went out).

We received only a few calls that day, however, the first truly panicked call I got was from a woman who had purchased one of our high-end laptop systems only a month or so before (so it was obviously Y2K compliant).

Me: Thank you for calling XXX, my name is Bob, may I get your serial number please?

Her: It's a Y2K issue, I know it is, my computer is locked up, it won't boot, nothing is working!!

After calming her down and getting her serial number and finding her in the system, I realized that more than likely it wasn't a "true" Y2K issue. I asked her what happened.

Her: It locked up on me yesterday, it wouldn't shut down, it wouldn't do anything. It didn't respond to the reset button or anything. I know it's a Y2K issue.

Me: Ma'am, yesterday it was still 1999, so it can't be a Y2K issue. After it locked up and failed to respond, what did you do?

Her: I unplugged it and took the battery out.

Me: And today it won't start?

Her: No!

Me: Is the battery in it?

Her: No!

Me: Is it plugged in?

Her: No!

Me: So, it's unplugged and has no battery and it won't start, and you're convinced it's a Y2K issue?

Her: Yes, what else could it be?

By this time, I'm biting my tongue trying not to laugh at this woman.

Me: Let's plug it in to the wall real quick and see what happens. (she plugs in AC power and hits the switch)

Her: It's booting...OHMIGOD IT'S SCANNING FOR VIRUSES!

I explain quickly that that is simply her virus checker running. The machine boots normally and is up and running. She then asks "What could have caused this?"

I begin to explain that I couldn't tell her what caused it to lock up yesterday as she had shut the system down...when she interupts me and says "No, no, no...why wouldn't it boot up this morning?"

I politely try to explain that the machine has to have AC power or the battery in order to boot up, that without power, it won't do anything. At this point, she hangs up on me, without giving me the chance to transfer her to our customer satisfaction survey. Ah well....

I have a short one for you.

I work as a tier2 tech agent for an ISP. Our standard greeting asks the user for his or her email address (we are supposed to ask for user id but I have long since given up on that). One caller replied "yes, it is jim1a...thats j-i-m-1-a...'a' as in the letter not the number". Having no idea what number 'a' is, i just ignored and moved forward asking him to click on 'my computer'. He said "your computer?!"

I promise this is for real though i could not beleive it myself:

I received a hardware/operating system call that goes as follows:

m:me

c:caller

M: Go through verifying info.

C: I am upgrading from windows 98 to windows ME and it says press the install now button and I do not have an install now button on my keyboard.

M:(unbeleiving) Are you sure mam?

C: yes, can you help me?

M: We only support the original operating system so I cannot but microsoft can. Would you like their number?

C:yes.

M: they charge per call mam.

C: It's ok.

gave her the number and died laughing afterwords.

I work for a Video Game Company. I got the most intresting call I have ever got working there.

Me: Hi can I help you.

Him: Yeah I just bought Your game ______ and I can't find the characters.

Me: Well sir they should be on the CD.

Him: Well I looked at the CD and they wern't there.

Me: I asked him if he put the CD in his computer.

Him: Oh I need a computer.

Me: Ummmmmm.... Yes you need a computer to play our game.

Him: When well you be sending me a computer them?

Me: ............

When my bookkeeper spilled Coke in the keyboard of a calculater, I immediately purchased a new one. A few days later I figured that I couldn't hurt the old one, so I dis-assembled it and removed the circuit board. taking it to the restroom, I filled the lavatory with water and proceeded to give the board a good washing. Dried it off and assembled the calculater and it worked! Great

My son was working for Radio Shack and a customer spilled Coke into a demo keyboard on display. Jeff(my son) told his boss, the store manager, that I had washed a circuit board with water and it worked.

Of course, he poo-pooed the idea and refused to consider it. A couple hours later Jeff went to the back warehouse. He heard a strange noise coming from the restroom so he went to look. There was his boss sloshing the entire keyboard, still assembled, up and down in the water.

It still didn't work.

Bill K.

I got a question from the lecturing staff here, who

really should have known better.

Her: Do the data projectors have remote controls?

Me: I don't think so. Why?

Her: My students are doing a powerpoint presentation

and they want to stand at the front of the room and

click, rather than walk to the computer.

Me: So they want to turn the data projector off and on?

Her: No, they want to move through the show.

Me: I'm sorry, but a data projector can't control the

powerpoint presentation. [jokingly] What you want is

a remote control for the computer (big grin at shared

joke)

Her: Oh. Do we have any of those?

Me: ????

I had to help a client over the phone set up a computer for dialup access, and it turned out they had a Mac 5260 with OS 7.5.5. I asked if they had any newer machines with a modem, and he stated he didn't, just "a mac 5200 also running 7.5, an old LC 575, and we've just received a 2nd hand computer that looks like it was made in the 1940's, it says 'iMac' on the front..."

I had a sweet little cackle to myself, and set up the iMac succesfully.

I don't know what's worse; an end luser that has no clue or a tech that has his head up his @$$. My buddy has an old 200mhz system with about 128m of RAM that I personally installed. Naturally, he wanted to get on the net so I bought him a USR 56k Sportster and set up the modem for him. He selected Compu-Nerd as his ISP, against my wishes because he said "It looks easy to use". (Danger Will Robinson!)One day I get a call at work (I do support for a large company) from my buddy and he claims the modem is bad.

I thought "huh?" I asked him what happens when he dials and he says "Nothing. I get a messege saying there is no dial tone." He went on to say that he called Compu-Nerds support and they said his modem was bad and he needed another one.

I asked him to check to make sure his connection from the modem to the phone jack was secure and to try it again. He agrees and hangs up. When he calls me back, he says in a small voice "You were right. I must have kicked the wire out or something."

I received e-mail from a user asking for the following upgrade. If you’re a tech, you may get a kick out of this:

Please replace (can’t use name) current Dell Optiplex GXa processor with a new one (upgraded to the highest capability). The processor will need to have a CD-ROM drive, 3.5 diskette drive and a soundcard. Speakers are also requested. Please also make upgrades to Windows 2000 and any software upgrades that you currently have. Please make sure that her browser capabilities are maximized also.

My tale begins with one of the managers calling a younger agent over to fix her printer.

I was already there and started a little troubleshooting.

The printer seemed fine so i figured it was the cable.

The younger agent came over. Tried printing. It would'nt print. Uninstalled the software and reinstalled it.

Tried printing again and it still wouldn't print.

Finally ran the communication test for the printer.

It said it had a communication error.

He fiddles with the cable a litle bit and the printer starts working again.

I left snickering.

Experience does have its advantages.

Okay, this is fairly recent.

The CEO of our company brought his son for the annual "Bring your kids to work day". Talked to the other tech I work with, went away. All normal.

Couple of weeks later, his laptop is couriered to us to fix (free of charge, of course...). As it's an older one, we figure (correctly) that it's a hand-me-down to his son (how many 50+ yr-olds listen to Ol' Dirty Bastard MP3s?)

Trying to figure out what happened with it, we come across the following:

One of those 1-900 X-rated connection software packages installed, some porn mpegs, and various other related pics.

(Thank the gods, none extremely deviant).

Now... *what* do you do with this information? Blackmail the CEO, or just quietly let him know... ?

Or, keep your job, fix it, and shut up. :)

Okay, another one recently.

After going through all available phone support, this guy has no recourse but to drop it off for some of our hands-on work. In the process of recovering his connection to the 'net, I see some strange behaviour.

As a matter of course, we install and update a virus scanner, and do a full scan.

Bingo! Several instances of subseven show up. In several key areas. Takes a while to remove fully, as the scanner deletes the virus, and this particular adds itself to the registry so that it loads when you open any file with an exe extension. Great fun.

In an un-related search through his HD for other pieces later, I come across his newsgroup selection (through a paid-for third party server) and...

It's all porn. Not normal, big-breasted cheerleader type, but either beastiality, S&M, or severe bondage. Ouch.

So, when he comes to pick it up and I explain about the virus, he, of course, asks how one would get something like that.

I had to think very hard about the proper terms for downloading such "questionable" material...

I'am working as a technican for Getronics in Holland.

I was send to a Bank because they installed a PC for a new employe and that thing did't work at all.

It was a 1 oure drive to get there.

Site down push the switch and nothing happend.

Two people from the IT helpdesk of the bank where watching me walking behind the PC take the power cable and putting it in the wall push the switch and Walaa the PC works.

When I left the two guys where still looking at the screen saying nothing at all.

I used to work tech support for a SCSI card company, and I got a call that I'll never forget

m=me

c=customer

m: thanks for calling ********* tech support, how can I help you?

c: I got your package, what do I do with this green thing?

m: ummmm...the only green thing I can think of that is in that package would be the SCSI card. Is that what you mean?

c: I don't know. I know nothing about computers. (duh..)

m: well, does it look electrical?

c: I don't know anything about electronics either. (i could have guessed...)

m: ok, does it look like there's a miniature city on top of it?

c: yes.

m: well, that's the SCSI card then...have you installed the software?

c: yes, I ran that and everything went fine. (this surprised me, considering her competence)

m: ok, then all you have to do is put the card in the computer.

c: how do I do that?

m: well, you need to remove the case, and find a slot that it will fit into.

c: What's a case?

----------

I had a knack for patience, and a wonderful ability to restrain my laughter...so I start explaining what a case is, as my coworkers overhear and laugh at me....she gave up, and decided to wait till her husband comes home to help her.

A particulr user had called in several times with about an hour complaing that her computer wasn't working and wanted it fixed NOW.

I was asked to put or VP's problem on hold and attend to this user. I reached the users desk and had them demonstarte the problem to me. Their problem was that no matter what application they opened they received a Dr. Watson (NT 4.0). Conserned that the user mat not have rebooted recently and leaky apps may have hosed her virtual memory, I asked the user when was the last time they had rebooted. The user said that they rebooted just before they called us and then went on to explain that they were very computer savy and was only 1 test away from acheiving their MCSE (also went on suggesting that their IP address must be corupted and I chould change it on the hub). Giving the user the benifit of the dought about rebooting(mistake), I asked them to logoff and reboot for me while I quickly tended to a printer and when I return I would check the machine. I went to the printer (just behind the user), and watch the user reboot.

They locked the workstation. Then powered off the MONITOR, waited a few seconds and powered the monitor back on! They then unlocked the workstation and came to get me.

I kindly said thank you, asked them to work at a different workstation and told them I would let them know when I was done...

NOTE: the pagefile.sys create date was 46 days old!

Of a USER:

Reported Problem: My tube is broken!

Resolution: powered workstation on.

Reported Problem: My harddrive says "Invalid Sync"?

Resolution: powered workstation on.

Reported Problem: My Modem will turn on but nothing comes up.

Resoltion: powered monitor on.

Of a Developer who shouldn't be:

Reported Problem: My batch file flips out every time I run it.

Resolution: Beat Developer with club.

NOTE: 1st line of batch file - FTP [IP ADDRESS]

NOTE: name of batch file - ftp.bat

Reported Problem: I was cleaning up my harddrive for space when my machine suddenly rebooted.

Resolution: Don't delete "*.sys"

Reported Problem: Everytime I compile and run something in C++ I get a memeory error, Dr. Watson and it dies. It seems to only happen on my machine.

Resolution: Had user compile his code to an EXE file. Executed EXE file. Machine BSODed! Intructed Developer to write better code!

Being a rather competant computer user, programmer, network admin, and so forth, it's rather rare that I have to deal with technical support. This is good, because I have discovered that technical support for me normally falls into one or more of the following categories:

1. Clueless.

2. Demeaning: "If you were a technician, you wouldn't need to call me."

3. Demeaning: "I don't care if you've checked that setting, you must not know what you're doing, let's check it again."

And so on.

Well, so far, the three worst calls to technical support I've yet made are as follows.

The first was to an ISP that I still use as a backup account. Why? Because they fired this guy when I talked to his supervisor. Reason I called: ISP wouldn't accept my password. Reason for that? My account was cancelled. When I finally get to talk to the tech that did it, I discovered that, apparently, I'd been spamming and harassing another ISP where someone who didn't like me worked. Here's the stupid points:

1. Their mailserver logs didn't show me as having used their server to send those messages, yet, the "bounced e-mails" were tagged as having been from that server.

2. They claimed that they were getting dozens of calls from angry users about the vile messages I had been sending- conveniently, they in their complaint mail stated they'd had my address blocked for weeks, and were complaining about users complaining about messages sent "the day before."

3. The ISP's logs showed I wasn't logged in at the time the messages were "sent."

4. I had 8 notes on my account saying IGNORE COMPLAINTS FROM THIS ISP! That tech was clueless.

Then, though, was a call to Microsoft tech support. I got stuck working for a place that decided to upgrade to 95 the day it came out. I'd warned them when they hired me that I hated Windows, avoided it at ALL COSTS, and didn't have much experience in troubleshooting anything past 2.11... They hired me anyway, so, it wasn't long before I had to boot this one to Microsoft. The problem itself is irrelevant- this is what happened.

"Hello? Yes, I'm having a..." "What is your problem?" "I'm trying to..." "Don't tell me what you're trying to do, tell me what doesn't work." "There's a graphics tablet attached..." "TELL ME WHAT DOESN'T WORK! Not what your hardware is!" "THE GRAPHICS TABLET DOESN'T WORK!" "Hold." *music* *scream* "Ok, I'm back." "May I speak to your..." "What isn't working?" "Give me your supervisor." "Tell me what isn't working." "Your brain." "Excuse me?" "You won't listen" "No, YOU'RE the one who won't listen. You're not answering my questions. You won't tell me what error message you get." "I don't GET an error message." "Then you're not having a problem." He then hung up on me.

I call back. And get the same guy. Changing my voice, I said, "Hi, I've called twice today already, and I've been speaking to Bob." Bob's a common name, so I figure, this guy won't give me his supervisor, I'll just get him to transfer me, then explain I need a supervisor because the other guy is being uncooperative. He finds several Bobs, and asks what I was being helped with. I say, "Config.sys", figuring, that's common. I get a Bob, then I get the manager. Who proceeds to inform me that if I have a problem with a tech, it must be my attitude, and I was then hung up on...

The manager had the nerve to call my boss and complain I was swearing at their techs. The manager at their tech support department didn't get very far with my boss, since the whole discussion had taken place on speakerphone with my boss 2 feet away...

The worst tech support call of my life, however, was to (insert a drumroll here) IBM, regarding an OS/2 problem. Somehow, I got the AIX department.

Well, after I repeat 15 times that I'm not using AIX, and swearing that _I_ can't have misdialed because it was one of their operators who transferred me there (me having a rotary phone next to the computer), I get transferred back to an operator.

And then back to AIX support.

And then back to the operator.

And then to typewriter support.

And then back to the operator.

And then to typewriter support again.

Operator. Windows. Operator. Parts. Operator. ThinkPad. Operator. Parts. Operator. PC-DOS. Operator. Corporate sales. Operator. Operator's supervisor. Corporate sales. Operator. Operator's supervisor. Supervisor's supervisor. Hangs up while trying to transfer me.

It took me 3 hours to get to OS/2 support. Who misunderstands my question and transfers me back to the operator immediately.

At this point I gave up, and put BSD on that computer.

While working for a third party vender as a tech for Compaq computer (THE ANSWER GROUP), this guy called complaining that he did not have any sound when he played his music CD. He went on to explain that he just received the unit that day. Once the customer was done ranting how bad Compaq is (Compaqsucks.com), I said to him that we need to check the connections from the speakers to the computer. There was a pause from the customer, then he finally said "Oh, I need speakers".

NUFF SAID

I work for a small(ish) company that provides outsource

support for a certain notebook PC manufacturer (Among other

companies). After a few years in support you think you've

heard everything. Then somebody hits you with something

completely unexpected... like this call I answered on the

weekend shift. The customer was an older lady that seemed

somewhat panicked.

Me (M): Thank you for calling ... how may I help you?

Customer (C): I want to know how to contact your antiterrorist

department.

M: (Incredulous) Excuse me?

C: I want your antiterrorist department to check out my

computer to see if terrorists have modify it in any way.

M: And what makes you think that they have?

C: After I sit in front of the PC for a while, my pituatary

gland starts acting up.

M: What do you mean by that?

C: I have an incredible urge to use the bathroom. My hands

start shaking uncontrollably. I begin to feel sick to my

stomach... (She carries on for 2 minutes, getting more

graphic all the time)

M: (Epilepsy maybe?) And you don't feel this way when away

from the computer? When did you buy the computer?

C: 3 years ago, but I haven't used it yet, because of this

problem.

M: And what computer is it?

C: It's a... (the model is a 486/33 that was state-of-the-

art in 1993)

M: You bought this used?

C: That is why I'm worried. I had a Dell before this and

had the same problem, and after a while I began noticing

burns on my hands and face from it's gamma and delta wave

induced output. I know terrorists caused this, but Dell

could not help me, so I sent it back.

M: (What? Somebody has watched too much Star Trek )))

LCD displays on these PC's do not work that way, ma'am, and

I have no idea haw such a modification may have taken place.

However, I will forward your concerns to one of our engineers.

C: Thank you... (Click)

I immediately took down a case file and forwarded it to my

supervisor. After forwarding the file, the other weekend

techs and I had a good laugh.

I also found she had a previous case for the same issue...

The case was 2 years old, and had been deactivated because

she had not called back if the problem persisted, as we

asked.

Monday... I knew when my supervisor saw thw case because he

immediately broke out into a HUGE grin. He then asked me

"Is she for real?" He forwarded the file to the client

(The actual manufacturer) and then printed her case out and

passed it around the office. We all got a good laugh.

My supervisor called the engineer who got the case to notify

him, and the engineer fell out of his chair laughing when he

read it. Nonetheless, he called her back saying she could

send the PC in for evaluation.

After seeing the PC, and finding nothing wromg with it,

the engineer sent it back, noting in the file "If she calls

back, tell her to contact a doctor or psychologist as the

problem is either in her head or she has epileptic seizures."

I had a user that called and said he was unable to login:

Me: Okay - are you at the login screen?

Him: No, I'm in my office.

...the call went pretty much downhill from there...

I provide user support for a hospital system on a number of

midrange servers, mostly AIX and WinNT. Most of these are

vendor-written apps, so we rely on the vendors at times for

issues that are outside our own knowledge scope.

We've had problems dealing with one vendor on more than one

occasion -- long response time, staff who didn't seem to know

the application very well, etc. Well this weekend I got

called in to troubleshoot, and after trying everything I

could think of and still coming up empty, I decided to give

[vendor] a call -- the company has 24/7 support with them,

or at least, they're *supposed* to.

So I get one of those "For X, press 1; For Y, press 2" phone

systems, with the options being emergency after-hours support

(since it was the weekend, they were closed) and an option

to leave a "general message". Press 1 for emergency support,

you get another menu, with an option to connect to a switchboard

and page the vendor's on-call person. Choose that option, and

it takes you... back to the FIRST menu again! Whoever set up

their phone system didn't quite get it correct.

Well, after a couple of hours of troubleshooting with the end

user, frustration setting in, unable to resolve the problem,

and getting no help from this vendor because I couldn't reach

them through their stupid phone system... I DID IT:

I pressed "2" to leave a "general message", and I said: "Yeah,

here's a general message for you: Your emergency after-hours

support totally licks dog @$$, how's *that* for a general message?"

Then I hung up.

Come in Monday, problem turns out to be an issue with the

network card, the people in charge of the end users are

raising holy hell with the vendor over the unavailability

of the 24/7 support they're paying for, vendor promises it

will never happen again. No one ever says anything to me

about the nasty message I left in anger -- no caller ID,

they didn't know my voice, way to trace it.

Ah, the joys of pi$$ing people off and getting away with it.

B-)

One afternoon at the local _____ ____ store where I worked I got a frantic call from a young lady who said she could not get the 3.5" floppy diskette drive to accept disks. I told the customer that if she brought the system in, I would look it over and fix it if the problem was not severe. I told her that if we could not fix it in house we would send the machine to a regional repair facility to take care of the problem.

A few minutes later, she arrives carrying the computer. She puts it on the counter, and I tell her to shop a bit and give me a chance to look it over.

While she shops in other stores, I disassemble the system and look. The floppy drive looked OK, except it would not let a disk in. What I had suspected was true. There were:

A sewing needle

A toothpick

Some thread

A tiny plastic "Army Man" figure

and

Several coins, totalling about 37 cents

I laughed so hard I could barely contain myself.

When she arrived, I handed her the computer and asked "Do you have any children?"

She replied, "Why yes, how did you know?"

I replied, "Well the plastic 'Army Man' was a dead giveaway."

I handed he the 37 cents, and told her to keep the change. I could not bring myself to charge her. Besides I knew she would be back and would be spending more on this one.

I tried to write this once, and wouldn't you know, my computer messed up! Anyone out there who can help me? *wink* Anyway, I'm not a tech, but my dad is, and he takes home a few funny stories. For example, his workplace is trying hard to get all their systems up to date, but the going is slow. There's one local area network system that's so outdated, they call it... You guessed it - the LAN Before Time!

This one isn't me. I'm retelling it, and no, it's not that #@$% coffee cup holder one.

Tech: Hello, this is Joe, blah, blah, blah...

Customer: Yes, whenever I try to dial into the Internet it says "The line is busy". Does this really mean the line is busy?

Tech: Uh...uh...yeah!

Customer: (Surprised) Oh! Well, thanks then.

Tech: ?????

PS. I took an old CD ROM that was broken and now I use it for holding anything I might require to drink when I'm near the computer. Now I only have to remember to use the old CD ROM and not my $500 CD RW drive.

I own my computer repair company and this person came in asking me to fix this computer that wasn't running. Apparently the computer just gave this blank screen. So I tried it for myself and just like the user said nothing was happening. So I removed the case to look around, suspecting a faulty power supply connection. Everything seemed fine until I noticed that some of those black cylinder like things that are connected to the motherboard were bent in a variety of ways. I also noticed that the computer was very very clean, so I asked the user what was the last thing that she had done to it before it stoped working. Well it turns out she watched a show on computers that was talking about how dirty they can get on the inside, so she told me that she had taken appart the computer herself and used a presure washer to clean the inside. Needless to say the computer was completly destroyed.

I'm standing near the break room and I hear beep-beep-beep %$@*#$, beep-beep-beep %$*%@#$, over and over. I check it out and the other _engineer_ is trying to cook his lunch in the microwave. He keeps pressing "2:00 Start" but when nothing happens he swears, presses "Clear" and starts over. I watch him do this a few times, then I open the oven door, close it again to re-engage the safety lock, press "Start"; of course, the microwave works now.

Sometime ago I was the network administrator for a medium size company.

I received a phone call one day from a user complaining that all her

Lotus spreadsheet files were gone. "They were there yesterday", she exclaimed.

I checked through the network and determined that they were indeed gone.

When I arrived at her workstation I asked if she had done anything different recently.

She told me that when she had done a 'list files' in WordPerfect she had seen all her Lotus files,

thinking that they should not be there she deleted them! Yikes!

I restored the files and all was well.

I'm not in tech support anymore, but I'm the techie in my redneck family, and I'm always on the alert for problems and potential disasters. Last night, I got several e-mails from my parents (they have separate e-mail addresses) with funny election-related attachments. I noticed that my stepfather had sent me two e-mails with the same subject line and attachment name. I opened the first one, laughed, and deleted it. Then I opened the second one, and noticed that the attachment had renamed itself NAVIDAD.EXE.

Okay, so Dad has the worm. That means Mom has it too, because they take turns working off the same PC. It was too late to call them, and I knew they'd get online first thing in the morning, so I e-mailed both their addresses along the lines of, "I think y'all might be sending out the Navidad virus. When you get this e-mail, shut down your PC and call me so I can get out there tomorrow and fix it. Don't e-mail anyone else anything, not even a plain message, and I wouldn't recommend trying to use Quicken or Quickbooks." Then I went to bed, figuring those directions were explicit enough for anyone to follow. Read this, turn off the PC and call your daughter in the morning.

Today, I turned on the PC to get my e-mail before work, and found a worried reply from my mother: "What should I do?"

(Um, how 'bout reading the rest of the message, for a start?)

We all received this memo from I.T. support:

1) When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't have a life and find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

2) Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from here.

3) When an I.T. person says he's coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us to remember 300 screen saver passwords.

4) When you call the helpdesk, state what you want, not what's keeping you from getting it. We don't need to know that you can't get into your mail because your computer won't power on at all.

5) When I.T. support sends you e-mail with high importance delete it at once. We're just testing.

6) When an I.T.person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.

7) Send urgent mail all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

8) When the photocopier doesn't work, call computer support. There's electronics in it.

9) When you are getting a NO DAIL TONE message at home, call computer support. We can fix your telephone line from here.

10) When you have a dozen old computer screens to get rid of, call computer support. We are collectors.

11) When something is wrong with your home PC, dump it on an I.T. person's chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle.

12) When an I.T. person tells you that computer screens don't have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

13)When an I.T. person tells you that he'll be there shortly, reply in a scathing tone of voice:"And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?"That motivates us.

14) When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

15) When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to al sixty eight printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

16) Don't learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by "my thingy blew up".

17) Don't use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.

18) If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 20 kg of computer sitting on top of them.

19) If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the mail upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of muffin crumbs and nail clippings in them.

20) When you get a message saying"are you sure?" click on that yes button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren't sure, you wouldn't be doing it, would you?

21)When you find an I.T. person on the phone with his bank, sit uninvited on the corner of his desk and stare at him until he hangs up. We don't have money to speak of anyway.

22) Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about that computer crap". We don't mind at all hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.

23) When you need to change the toner cartridge in a printer, call I.T. support. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a master's degree in nuclear physics.

24)When you can't find someone in the government directory, call I.T. support.

25) When you have a lock to pick on an old file cabinet, call I.T. support. We love to hack.

26) When something's the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn't know anything about the problem.

27) When you receive a 30mb (huge) movie file, send it to everyone as a mail attachment. We've got lots of disk space on the mail server.

28) Don't even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller chunks. Somebody else might get a change to squeeze a memo into the queue.

29) When an I.T. person gets on the elevator pushing $100.000 worth of computer equipment on a cart, ask in a very loud voice:"Good grief, you take the elevator to go DOWN one floor?!?" That's another one that cracks up no end.

30) When you lose your car keys, send an email to the entire company. People in the executive area like to keep abreast of what's going on.

31) When you bump into an I.T. person at the grocery store on a Saturday, ask a computer question. We do weekends.

32) Don't bother to tell us when you move computers around on your own. Computer names are just a cosmetic feature.

33) When you bring your own personal home PC for repair at the office, leave the documentation at home. We'll find all the setting and drivers somewhere.

34) We do not really believe you are a bunch of ungrateful twats. It hurts our feelings that you could even think such a thing. We wish to express our deepest gratitude to the hundreds of clueless loser company staff portrayed herein, without whom none of this would have been remotely possible.

35) Keep it crashing!

Hi,

We had a lot of problems with our file server. Sure, its really old and only has 16Megs memory and ran win95 on a mostly Windows 98 network, and it should have worked.

Every day we would come in and find that it had crashed, or rebooted, or it wasnt speakign to the hub.

One day I started an hour earlier - to find the cleaning lady with a vacuum cleaner. Seh had pulled the plug on a power board which held, you guessed it - the file server and hub, printer and monitor. No wonder everything went down!

We bought a UPS, and a roll of gaffa tape and secured every power point in the room, including signs that said "DONT UNPLUG THIS CORD! I think she finally got the message that she wasnt supposed to use it any more!

I am not a tech but I do have a degree in PC support and I did tech work for a while before I got promoted into a supervisory position with my company.This story relates to a call I placed to my ISP support.I went to log on one night,got connected no problem,but IE wouldn't work.I just kept getting error messages.After 2 days of calling ISP support we found that the problem was that my winsock.dll file was corrupted.We tried to restore it in DOS but it could not find the file.So the tech told me that this was an OS issue that they normally didn't handle but he was willing to find my file and E-mail it to me so that I could restore it.Great idea,but how can I retrieve it from my inbox if I can't get into explorer?

heh this is funny :)now remember we are an isp not the oem!

c = caller

m = me

c: hi, i am just wondering when your technician will be here to take a look at the equipment.

m: Er... are you having problems getting online??

c: well yes but your automated message said that *city* is down and that the technicians are working on the problem

m: Uh.. yes our technicians are working on the situation right now.

c: But they havent arrived yet.

m: Um.. what do you mean they havent arrived yet? You have a dialup account with us right...? And you are unable to connect to *city* right now right?

c: Yes that is correct. But your technicians havent showed up to fix that problem yet.

m: Excuse me sir? What do you mean?

c: I mean your pop is down right?

m: Yes it is.

c: I live on a farm and the pop is in my barn.

m: ... in your barn?

c: Yeah and your technician hasnt showed up yet. Do you know when they are suppose to get here by?

m: ....

It was fixed later that day but... I still dont know if it was in his barn or if he was joking with me. :P

I just saw a Usenet post like this and I thought I would share it:

"I can receive e-mails for the past two days!"

A reply to that was,

"That's a problem?"

I myself once received an e-mail that goes:

"Graham, I can send any e-mail. Can you help me?"

I'm working at the Corporate Helpdesk when I get a call from one of our small stores in CA. User is having problems turning on the store's PC-based cash registers. After a few minutes of trying to figure out how the equipment is dis-arranged, I ask if the store manager is nearby and can help. "No. Neither the manager nor assistant manager are in and the only other salesperson quit yesterday. Today's my second day on the job and I don't know what to do!" Turned out that both her superiors were wanted on felony counts and had skipped town after robbing the store during the night.

Funny coworkers can make a bad job bearable, but there is the occasional downside.

I'd been working helpdesk for my company's stores and kiosks for about 12 months. As the company was struggling, I was the only person then working helpdesk with the occasional help of our server guys. One of them, Z., had a great sense of humor and a knack for mimacry.

One day I get a call from a guy with a heavy stereotypical German accent.

User:Hello, I'm Uder from the Hannover store and I need help with our IBM.

Me:Sorry, could you repeat that? (Totally unable to penetrate his accent).

User repeats his statement.

I knew we had stores across the US with some in Canada and plans to expand into Mexico, but Europe, no way! Also, all our stores used Compaq PCs. None used IBM.

Struggling for understanding, it occured to me that it must be my coworker having fun. Just as I start launching into the guy for wasting my time during a hectic day, who sits down next to me but Z! I pause, about to hang up, so I can yell at him in person when I hear Uder start explaining his problem again!

Dumbfounded I check with the rest of MIS for help. Turned out that several stores had been opened in Germany 5 years prior, but noone in MIS had dealt with them since. The only person still around from then was our Director. Took us 3 weeks to get Uder working again as noone knew either the hardware or software he was running.

One of my friends has been working with computers for nearly 7 years, and is quite young, with therefore a lot of learning power. I proved him wrong several times, and here is the best one I ever got:

Me: (after sending something to him) oh wait, I have something even better.

Him: No, wait. My DSL line is saturated.

Me: Ummm... Isn't it cable you have?

Him: Oh, that's what it's called!

The thing that did astonish me was that he always knew it was a cable modem he had; he even mentionned those two words several times the day before this conversation! I can't believe he simply forgot that...

I work with some good people, but everyone has their bad days.

Our Director made a policy change that we wouldn't work on server configuration or hardware during the business day. This was in response to when one of us plugged the signal line in from the servers to the UPS around lunch. The network promptly crashed. The UPS batteries were totally dead, so it sent the servers a shutdown signal!

The Director was looking at some cabling in the server room a couple days later when he noticed one wasn't attached properly. As soon as he attached the cable, half the builing lost their network connection! Several hours later they found the cause. The cable connected a router or switch that was configured incorrectly. With the cable loose, the network rerouted around it without anyone noticing. Once plugged in however...

Just goes to show that sometimes two wrongs do make a right.

The Director, being a fair man, proceeded to reprimand himself during the next department meeting for not following his own policy.

This story shows that even a computer-knowledgable person (me) can be ignorant when it comes to other kinds of equipment...

I got a new cell phone (only about the 2nd one I'd ever touched), but had to take it in to be looked at because it wasn't charging when I plugged it in.

Turned out I was plugging the charger into the HEADPHONE JACK! (What's really sad is that I looked to see if there was any other hole that the charger could go into besides the one I tried to use, and didn't find one. What's even sadder is that I had charged the phone successfully once before!)

I work for the tech support of a large ISP, and was just laid off (along with the rest of my departement). As an extra added bonus, we where given 2 weeks notice, during which everything was supposed to go on as normal. I work graveyards with few other people and at around 4 a.m. I received a call from a new client. This client had obviously no idea what they where doing and after explaining that her account was not ready to be used yet she started questioning me about high speed access which my company does not offer (but they have been babbling about getting for about 2 years now). After explaning that this option was not available from us, she asked where it was available. Ignoring the preformatted spiel about staying with us until we get high speed, I transferred her a company that does provide high speed (and is our leading competitor). Serves everyone right. =)

While doing tech support for a largish ISP in the Northwest, I had the following exchange with one of our customers. Mind you, it was very hard not to fall over laughing at this one...

Me: What kind of computer do you have, sir?

Customer: It is a Presario

Me: So, it is a Compaq?

Customer: No, it is full sized...

I've been having fun reading the tales, especially those where folks power off their computer by turning the monitor off. Why? Because my own tale puts a twist on that.

I started using computers with a Vic-20, then upgraded to a beastly C-64. At the same time a friend bought an Amstrad CPC-464. That's the one with the built in tape drive. At this time the four player, multilevel arcade game 'Gauntlet' was doing the rounds and had just been converted to both the C-64 and Amstrad formats. We decided to used the 'continue' feature of the port to just keep playing and see how many dungeon levels we could get through. We tossed a coin and ended up at his place for this 'marathon'. We started at 8pm and at 4am we were just a little tired.

So we threw the game on 'pause' and prepared to crash on the floor for a few hours sleep. I, being the good person I was, decided to 'save the monitor' and switch it off.

Oh, except the main power switch for the Amstrad /is/ the monitor switch....

4am is a really good time for a run around the block, down the street...

This is a true story that happened in a tech support chat room tonight for a major broadband company. The wonderful thing about tech chat is, a complete record of the instance of tech support is kept, and this is the actual transcript of the chat. Only the names have been removed to protect the ignorant...

You say, Hi my name is xxxxxxxxx. How may I help you?

roy says, hello

Roy says, do you have a address for a news server???

Roy says, that is available for (major broadband company name) customers

You say, yes we have one actually. it is simply "news"

Roy says, so i set up my news reader for what address???

You say, the news server address is news actually

You say, just plain old news

You say, is this Roy xxxxxxxx?

You say, if that does not work, you can put the longer one in. That one is news.(major broadband company name).com

Roy says, yes

Roy says, so its new.(major broadband company name).com?????

You say, when setting it up Roy you do not want to set the preferences to log in

You say, no it is either news or news.(major broadband company name).com

You say, NNTP SERVER: news is what you put in

You say, or NNTP SERVER: news.(major broadband company name).com

You say, either one should work

Roy says, I'll give it a try 1 sec

Roy says, cool it's working know any good porno sites???

You say, not really but I am sure there are some on there actually

Roy says, thanks for the help you the man!!!!

Roy LEFT SESSION

One morning I come into my office to the sound of a screaching UPS, downed servers, and a confused janitor. The janitor came in to clean the carpet with one of those big carpet shampooers and just happened to choose my desk as where to plug it into. Well, the onlyoutlet she could see was right on the back of the UPS. Can you say overload? Spent the next 5 minutes bringing up servers again and another 10 minutes explaining why they cannot use that plug and what plugs they can use.

I work for a large company at the computer support desk. I had a customer call up with a question about Front Page.

C: I have Front Page being installed need to contact the webmaster to use it.

M: Ok... what do you need the webmaster for?

C: Well I was reading the help for updating pages and

it says to contact your webmaster or administrator for permission. I don't know who that is.

M: Oh ok. The webmaster is the person who owns the web page. You need to have their permission to make any changes to the site.

C: Well, he left the company in February. I am replacing him.

M: So you're in charge of the pages now?

C: Yes, I'm doing his job now.

M: SO, you have access to changing the pages...

C: Yes

M: OK... *smiling* You're the webmaster then.

C: OH I am? Oh... ok.

M: Yup, you have a new title now!

C: Alright. Bye.

We need to have better job descriptions and keywords!

I work for a large ISP and sometimes have to take overflow calls from for our Lan2Internet service. Here are three examples of calls from stupid customers.

A customer calls, angry as hell, and needs help to get back on-line. He claims that their routers and servers are working perfectly all right, and that the fault must be ours. I tell him that I can check our transmission to see if anything is wrong, and that I need the customers order number so I can find the transmission path to their site. Naturally he does not know their order number.

This is were one could tell the customer that we can not do anything without the order number, and that he has to get hold of someone at his own company that could help him find it, and then call us again. Unfortunately for me, I try to help him anyway, searching for his company name in our database. Oddly enough I can not find this particular customer, so I tries some spellings which sounds alike when pronounced. Still, I do not find anything. I therefore ask the customer if the company that he works for used to have another name, but he rudely explains that they have always used their current name.

Luckily the customer knows the geographical address of the company and I manage to find that address in my database. The problem is that this appears to be another customer. When I tell the angry caller that I found the address, but that our only customer at that address is called /---/, he answers me in a surprised voice:

"Well that is the name we used before changing it to our current one."

Compared to getting a straight answer out of the customer, solving his connection problems was easy.

Another customer calls in. Fortunately this one is polite. He tells me that he has problem accessing the Internet, and that his company is depending on that very access. When I ask him if he could think of something that could have caused their connection to go down, he answers no. After checking transmission from our backbone to the customer, all of it looking OK, I ask him again: could they have done something in their end that could have caused the connection to go down?

"All we did", they customer answers, "was to install a new firewall, and now we can not access the Internet. There must be something wrong at your end."

Quick summary: it worked, customer made changes, and now it does not work equals our fault? Not very likely, so I politely ask him to wait while I transfer his call to one of our experts in these matters. Case closed.

I get this type of call at least once a week.

My third example has only happened to me once.

About 20:00 an angry customer calls me, telling me that his Internet connection is down. He is very upset since he runs a web hotel and has over 150 customers whose sites now are down. This is costing him about $ 10,000 an hour, he angrily yells in my ear. He is rude, but at least he knows his order number, which makes it easy for me to find his connection.

Expecting this to be at least a 2 Mbps, but most likely way bigger, I am quite surprised when I find out that he is running on a 64 kbps. When checking the transmission I find an error that can not be dealt with on remote, so I have to send a technician to the customer.

My database tells me that this customer has our cheapest form of support, which means that we do not have to do anything but register his complaint between 18:00-07:30. I tell him that a field technician can visit him first thing in the morning, but if the he wants to pay a $ 500 emergency fee, he can get one right away, solving his problem within an hour. Realizing that he has to pay extra if he wants his problem to be solved right now, he tells me that it can wait until tomorrow.

Two things strike me as odd. 150 companies share a 64 kbps Internet connection? That must be extremely slow. I myself would not even consider using such a web hotel. In addition, if he looses $ 10,000 an hour, why does he wait over eleven hours, costing him at least $ 110,000 instead of paying $ 500? Some persons really like to think that they are the most important ones in the world, and that they always can have their ways. I say that this particular customer was nothing but a very bad liar, and a rude one as well.

I once worked for an IT department at the Department of Internal Affairs. It was in 1996 and a lot of PC's had to be replaced by state-of-the-art pc's including CD-ROM players and all.

A month later, as the project was nearly finished and I was working on my final progress-reports, a colleague of mine jumped into my office laughing out loud.

He told me that he just came back from a call, originated from a back-office. They said they had problems with their coffee-cup holder. My colleague answered that they had to call Housing dept. for a new one. The back-office insisted that it was an IT related issue, since the holder was part of the PC.... when my colleague went down to inspect the problem, he saw that they were actually using the CD-ROM holder as a coffee-cup holder, and because of exact matched dimensions, they never found out it's main purpose was to hold CD-ROM's rather than plastic coffee-cups..

Extensive use and an occasional (eject) / (insert) caused the device to break down.....

I then sent a message for all new users that there was a CD-ROM player on their PC's rather than a coffecup holder.

Sometimes people are too practical....

Just received this from one of our clients:

"I've attached a .htm file - can you read it?"

I do HTML development for a *living*.

I work for a cable-modem ISP (and I'm still trying to figure out why a company providing cable modems would keep

"Telegraph" in its name, or for that matter why a company with "Telephone" in the name would have as a mascot a

cartoon character that doesn't speak), and part of the package we provide is free technical support for our modems.

I'm reading TechTales tonight when a call comes in. We do the usual greeting, getting account information, etc., and

the caller says "I remember you, you helped me with my computer last month." This strikes me as odd, since I'm sure

I haven't seen his name anytime recently, so I open his call history as I ask him to tell me what the problem is.

He says he's getting a "Registry Configuration Error" when Windows 98 starts, and it takes him back to the C: prompt.

About this time the call history is up, and I see why he thinks he talked to me before... he's had at least twenty

calls in the past couple of months, and that's only the ones that were logged! He must've been calling every time

he had any kind of problem related to his computer. My answer to him is that we don't support the Windows Registry;

we only support the cable modem. I add that even if I knew how to work the Registry from DOS, which I don't, I wouldn't

be allowed to. (Now why do you suppose that might be?)

I'm just glad it wasn't me that had to figure out what he'd broken. Some people will try anything if it's free, even

tech support that can't possibly help. Remember, if we say "Editing the Registry can cause Windows not to start", we

mean it!

Ok, I do tech support fot huge Cable ISP. Every so often we get the inevitable call from irate or cluless TV customers of the same company of cable internet. Anyway, one night at around 11:00pm I got a call from a old woman who was having problems with her cable TV service. At the point of the call that I realize that it is a TV problem, the old woman has gone on and on (and won't shut up) about how her remote control had fallen off the coffee table and no longer works. Yes, she called for tech support for that. Anyhow, I realized from the way she was talking that I would not be able to make her understant that I am at the "Internet" part of the cable company. So, I decided to try and help. First of all, I'll tell you all that one of trouble shooting techniques for a cable modem is power cycling it: unplug the power-cord for 30 seconds and plug it back in. So......what do I ask her to do to her TV remote control? "Ok, ma-am, can you take all the batteries out of your remote and then put them all back in the same way?" She did just that and it bloody well worked! I wasn't to surprised though. I used to have to that all the time to my own TV remote.

Jay, Tech Support (for INTERNET connection only)

I work as a level 2 technician in the tech support department of a major computer manufacturer. We get all sorts of calls from customers who don't know anything and they are easy to laugh about. However, what I came across today made me stop and think about the (low) standards of some of our outsourcing companies.

This one customer has had numerous issues with his modem not working. He called the customer service department and explained his predicament with his modem (it didn't have the winME drivers). The customer service representative called the tech support department and got a technician from one of the outsource companies. She asked about the modem and what could be causing a problem. The technician said, "The problem is his modem. It is a 3Com modem and isn't compatible with Windows Millenium. The customer needs a 1com modem." Needless to say it's not always the idiot customer, sometimes it's the idiot technician.

This one I just got.

Someone just dragged their computer into our offices one day, asked if we could take a look at it. Been doing some strange stuff recently, they thought something in it might be fried.

Well, as I work on it later, I find - it won't boot. And, it becomes clearer, no POST error beeps, even. Strange.

I open it up. Re-seat anything I can. Power's all right.

But something about the setup inside the case is bugging me...

I finally realize that, as I'm looking down at the motherboard, that the case speaker is looking at me.

It wouldn't have been so bad, but it was stuck, via the magnets on its back, to the case. Right *next* to the motherboard. And, on this particular model, that lower-right corner was *right* where the BIOS was.

I don't know how long it'd been like that, but I saw no other explanation.

Finally looked for any sort of mounting point for the damned thing - couldn't find *any*.

I'm not a techie by trade, but I know enough about computers that I often do tech support for family. Recently, I introduced my mother-in-law to the internet (which is hilarious all in itself). Well, I set her up with a free ISP that every so often asks you to click a banner in order to stay online. I explain this to her and even show her how to do it.

A few days later she calls me and says that her internet doesn't work, it keeps logging off. She says she has to type her emails quickly to be able to send them before she gets logged off. My wife decides she needs to write the emails in Word, and then attach them. Yeah! Right! I explain to her again what she needs to do and she seems fine.

A couple days ago, she visited and decided to check her email on my laptop (I use the same ISP). Well, she gets the screen that says "Please click a banner" and freaks out. I gently show her where to click and then the light dawns on her. The reason she kept getting logged off is because she was click the picture of the banner on the pop-up screen, and not the actual banner!

This took place in the late 80's.

I was working as a PC Tech for a Dealer who's main product line was Apple at the time and had just started to get into custom white boxes the year before I started with them.

One day a customer calls me up and told me the system we sold him a few days before wasn't working and after a few minutes I decided that the system couldn't be fixed over the phone and for him to bring it in.

After I open the box and doing a little checking I found the problem. His Multi I/O card had smoked. At that point here is how the conversion went:

Me: What happened?

Customer: I turned it on and I heard a popping sound.

Me: Did you see smoke?

Customer: Yes!

Me: I thought so. See that big chip in the middle of the card? See how it has sagged in the middle?

Customer: Yea!?

Me: Well, you let the smoke out. Now I'm going to have to pump the smoke back in.

Customer: You can do that?

Me: Sure!

Customer: Can I watch?

Me: No. It' will take all night. I'll just give you a new card to get you up and running.

Customer: Oh, okay. Thanks.

My boss was behind this guy listening to all of this biting his hand and almost wetting himself.

This isn't from me, but my wife.

My wife, who works in a call centre for the financial industry, is also the most computer-literate in her area.

So, she's often asked before they phone tech support (which support their department pays for).

So, one day, a co-worker, from home, was having problems with attachments. She had e-mailed herself several files the previous day that she needed at home. Problem was, it gave her errors about finding it when she tried to open the link in her e-mail.

They called me, I gave a few tips, generic stuff.

My wife called me to say they'd figured it out.

All of the files she needed were on one of their shared network drives, in a specific folder. She figured she'd save some time and e-mail herself the *folder*...

Obviously, when she opened it up at home, it was just a file link that it knew nothing about.

There's gotta be some informal tech support like that in every company, every department - else, how would they get anything done?

I when I was working for Olde(now known as H&R Block). Each morning we would receive 3 calls from our CIO, asking for a password word reset. She would enter the wrong password 15 times! As the new person on the shift, I made the mistake of asking what my shift leader what she was doing wrong. He started choking and left me standing there wondering what I said.

I found out a week later, when I got call from her. Her screen was unreadable.

I was about to try log in until look at her screen. Written in marker was her all the passwords I had reset her to for the past four weeks. What had been going on is that after declaring us idiots because we could not reset her password. She would get "computer expert"(the kid in the mailroom) and he would log her in "fixing" the problem with our systems. I did a bit of hunting around and found out that a one point the networking fops had showed her a touch screen computer. And told her that what all computers would be like it. So when she got her new computer she assumed that it was a touch screen.

We have a world wide company and most of it's presence is in the good ol' USA so we don't hear

much from our overseas ops. In fact we rarely have anything to do with them, most sites contract local consultants to do a majority of the "grunt" work.

One day last March (2000) I did get a call from our German site. Seems the backup software thought it was the day after the actual day - and ONLY the day, the date was right *Only* the backup software was affected - the system time was fine - all other apps reported the right day. Oddly enough the dates were right on the backup's catalogs and all the internal data dates were right - just the scheduler and date on the app's screen was wrong. Obviously given the timing it was a leap year problem - and a quick check on the software's web site confirmed it.

This guy started in crabbing about it and was about ready to pop a vein, he demanded that we fly someone over there right away to fix this error. After I started to try and calm him down and suggest a quick fix he started ranting and raving - again demanding we send someone over there RIGHT NOW! Well, I don't know German very well but I do usually know when I'm being cussed at. He let me know in no uncertain terms that they could NOT put up with this and HAD to have the right days scheduled - Monday through Friday just like before - he didn't care that the dates were right on the files, etc. etc. etc. I let this guy fly off the handle for maybe a full 5 minutes, he stopped practically panting from yelling so much.

I asked "Are you done yet?", "Yah" was his breathless answer. I calmly told him that all he had to do was to reset the schedule to run from Sunday to Thursday and he would get the same results as before.

(silence)

"Yah", he said meekly, "I suppose we could do zat". I could practically see his red face over the phone - from yelling AND embarrassment.

I provide desktop support for a group of trainers and writers at a large corporation. One of the managers got a new laptop with NT 4, and I imaged and configured the PC for her. She works in a different location, so I had the laptop shipped to her after I got done with it.

She called right after it arrived and said that she couldn't log on, and that every time she booted the machine she got the Blue Screen Of Death. Every time it appeared, she hit the power switch and shut it down, then tried to boot again. She tried this 12 times before she finally got in; the last time she left to get a cup of coffee and when she came back the logon screen was waiting.

I initially figured something probably got hosed in shipment, but I couldn't figure out why it finally worked when she walked away. I left a message for her to call me the next time she booted the machine or got the BSOD so she could tell me what the error message said.

Sure enough, the next morning I got a call. She read me the error message, "Windows NT Workstation version 4.0 (Build 1381) SP6..."

Yep, she was rebooting the machine every time the NT kernel tried to load, presumably because the screen was blue. She must have heard the expression Blue Screen Of Death somewhere and panicked when the (blue) NT kernel screen appeared. Thankfully I choked off my laughter until she hung up.

I too work on the hell desk , but this one came from a colleague who works with our clients in the field

This client was very, very upset...

She had pressed the F1 key (help file hotkey) three days ago , and she had STILL not received a call.

This one still makes me giggle

I called a major telecommunications company, asking why my DSL was so spotty.

The tech told me that my Ethernet card (purchased from a major computer retailer) was a "bad" card that had many "problems.

Turned out that it was the Gigantic company's bad phone lines, and this was confirmed when an executive of said company told me "We gave customers with old phone lines DSL, and as a result have had alot of problems and lost a lot of marketshare."

I now have DSL from another company which paid the major telecom to upgrade my phone lines, something the telecom was too cheap to do at first. Now my DSL works great. Same "bad" card.

I was working as support for a University Macintosh computer lab. This user approached me, stating that the floppy drive on one of the machines wasn't working properly. I followed the user to his machine and upon assessing the situation, I escorted him (swearing very loudly) out of the lab.

Problem: 5 1/4 floppy folded like origami and inserted into the 3 1/2 inch drive.

Solution: Pair of pliers and idiot-proof label for the drives.

I am tech support for a major networking company. Yes I've gotten some really dumb users. On 11/27/2000 I got a tech support call from three techs. These guys took the cake for Networking bloopers. This should be an example of how not to set up the companies network.

Me = Andrea

luser1 = tech one for company

luser2 = tech two for company

luser3 = tech three for company

Me: Good Morning and thank you for calling **** ethernet adapter support. My name is Andrea. May I have your first and last name please?

luser1: uuummm yeah my name is luser1. Me and a couple of other techs here are trying to set up your 5xxXX NIC under Windows NT 4.x server. It won't work properly. Do You support this card in Win NT? Oh and theres another of your cards that is working just fine in another computer with NT 4.x Workstation.

Me: Okay, is it the same card in the workstation, and the server? And what are you trying to get done?

luser1: Hold on let me get luser2. *he gets on the phone.*

luser2: We're trying to get the companies network setup. We just got a bunch of new Laptops in. Do you have a working confing for your card on this laptop under NT 4 server?

Me: Okay could you hold on for a minute, please? *pushes hold button and starts laughing*

This was the first that was not quite right setting up a server on a laptop.

Me: Hi luser2 thanks for holding.

luser2: sure no problem.

Me: Yes, we do have a working config for that card. It will have to be done at DOS level though. Would you like me to walk you through it?

luser2: sure.

Me: Have you got an NT DOS boot disk handy?

luser2: yeah sure.

Me: Okay have you got the driver disks hand as well?

luser2: yes.

Me: okay put the disk in the computer and reboot the system with the NT boot disk in the floppy drive.

We do this and he gets a DOS prompt. He tries to go to C:\ immediately to access the 3COM folder, but cannot because NTFS is isntalled on it.

Me: Put the driver disk in luser2, and type in DOSDIAG please.

luser2: okay. Where from here?

Me: configure NIC.

luser2: Oh no invalid IRQ error.

Me: okay. That's really weird.

luser2: Yeah it autodetects the card under NT, but it won't run.

Me: What do you mean it autodetects? Do you have third party card and socket services?

luser2: Hold on let me get luser3.

Me: okay

luser3: Hi, you were wondering if I had 3rd party card and socket services? What are those?

*shaking my head and thinking oh great!*

I explain that they are certain pieces of software to make parts of NT PnP.

Me: *a brilliant question pops into my mind* Was NT4.x the original OS on these computers?

luser3: no. They originally shipped with 2000 Pro.

*I mute now so I can laugh again*

Me: Did you do a low level format on the drive before putting NT on?

luser3: No what's that?

Me: What exactly did you do to get NT on your server?

luser3: I popped the CD in and did a setup in place.

*muting mic. Really laughing now*

Me: NT and 2000 are two different animals. 2000 is PnP, NT is not. So esentially what you have is a cross between NT and 2000 or a PnP NT that will never work no matter what. Because 2000's file system and some critical files are still there. You've got NT running with 2000's files.

luser3: That sounds a little far fetched. it should have over wrote everything.

Me: not with a setup in place. You need to get some partitioning software, and use that to totally wipe the drive and set it up for NT.

luser3: what's partitioning software?

I had to explain everything to these three supposed MCSE NT Admins. They were cluless. In the end I told them I could do nothign for them and they needed to call their OEM. I also had the urge to say why do you need a laptop server? Are you that masochistic?

Anyways, I've included the case notes, and an e-mail that I sent to the three lusers below:

This is the solution id number : 2.0.7026946.2339373

This the url is for the **** knowledgebase, and the solution ID should get you where you need to be. Other than that, I suggest getting ahold of MS

about their file system for 2000

and NT4.x Server. Call Microsoft Press, or go through the Microsoft que articles it should be there as I don't have a hold of Microsofts database. I

would suggest specifically check the Microsoft

2000 Premiere Certification Publication or I would suggest calling Toshiba about this particular issue. I will provide You with ways to contact these

companies:

Was Set to IRQ 11 but cannot share with PCI Bus. Going to try setting to 11 Event viewer says that DHCP failed to obtain a lease with the network

address 00660060080348C8, Going to try IRQ 10 Tecra 8100 working memory configuration was given from the 3COM Knowledge base. Tecra 8100 Laptop

Downgraded to Win NT Server 4.x It originally shipped with 2000 they want documentation from MS. I sent them a que Article with a working Config. I

also sent an e-mail. Am including a copy of it here in the notes, and am sending the customer the notes. 2000 Filee system stays in the computer

unless a clean wipe is done of the system. There Win NT 4.x uses NTFS. Both these file systems are not the same therefore one hindering the other.

Was Set to IRQ 11 but cannot share with PCI Bus. Going to try setting to 11 Event viewer says that DHCP failed to obtain a lease with the network

address 00660060080348C8, Going to try IRQ 10 ***** 81**

working memory configuration was given from the 3COM Knowledge base. Tecra 8100 Laptop

Downgraded to Win NT Server 4.x It originally shipped with 2000 they want documentation from MS. I sent them a que Article with a working Config. I

also sent an e-mail. Am including a copy of it here in the notes, and am sending the customer the notes. 2000 Filee system stays in the computer

unless a clean wipe is done of the system. There Win NT 4.x uses NTFS. Both these file systems are not the same therefore one hindering the other.

Thanks for reading:

Andrea

I just had a user call me and tell me that her UPS was going out. She knew this because it was beeping. Our UPS's here frequently do go out, keep in mind that there are 900 users in this home office alone. So I issued a problem report for one of our techinitians to go replace it/turn it off so that it wouldn't beep. She called me back 15 mins. later and told me that i could withdraw the problem because she was infact hearing her cell phone beep...

This is about my own limits. I have been working with computers (mainframes, mostly) for 30 years but I must admit that sometimes things slip past me.

Several years ago, my 15-year-old niece came up from the South to visit my wife and I for a couple of weeks. I had bought a new PC and my company had given me a new full featured line printer. I had been using both for several weeks.

My niece asks me if she can use the computer to print some banners for a party she was planning when she got back home. Of course, I told her to go ahead.

About an hour later, she came into the living room holding a large piece of styrofoam in one hand, her other hand on her hip, with her head cocked to one side and a "You are so totally out of it" look on her face.

"Uncle Bob, did you know that you have been using your printer with most of the packing materials still inside it?"

So this dude that worked for us in a northern city was tuning up a laptop for the plant manager - you know deleting temp files, scandisk defrag etc. This tech was a pain in the ass, a real know-it-all and not a team player.

Well to keep the temp files cleared we had started to set the temp variable in the autoexec.bat to c:\temp and then use this command in the autoexec.bat;

deltree /y c:\temp\*.*

to clear the directory at boot up - that way it boots cleared and the user doesn't run his poor 'puter out of disk space.

Things were going fine till he restarted it. "Hmmm this thing is really chattering the disk and taking forever to load." Eventyally it stopped and gave the dreaded "file not found" error. Suddenly it dawned on him what he had done.

Seems he typed into the autoexec.bat ;

deltree /y c:\ *.*

Notice the "backslash SPACE star dot star", in other words he told the thing to delete the entire contents of the c: drive :)

He spent 6 hours trying to resurect the thing using Norton Utils and unerase.

To make matters *worse* the REASON he added the teensy weensy space was to show the plant manager what NOT to do - so as to not hose the hard drive. Seems that he "forgot" to delete the space before rebooting.

We all had a real laugh, especially since the doofus was such a pain.

Through the years I've had my share of good ones, but this

is my favorite!

I happened to be at a user's office (which was in the

middle of the building - no windows for these guys)

when the user asked me "What is this white box under my

desk, it's in the way." He was referring to a UPS box. I

said, "That's a UPS, an Uninterruptible Power Supply. It's

a battery backup - it allows your computer to keep running

for a few minutes if the power goes out, to give you a

chance to save your work and shut down your computer

properly."

He was still put out by the fact that he had to contend

with this box in his way. So he said, "Well, if my

computer stays on, how will I know that the power went

out?" I patiently went over to the light switch for his

office and said "Power on", flipped the switch off,

leaving us in darkness, and said "Power off". I did it a

couple more times just to make sure he understood the

concept.

Got this call one day at work. We were trouble shooting then I wanted to check his device manager.

me:please right click on the my computer icon

cust:right click?

me:can you see the my computer icon?

cust:yes

me:please drag your curser over the icon then click your right mouse button.

cust:so which button is the right button?

me:..... the one on the right hand side

cust:k I don't know much about computers so please don't use computer slang

He also said that again when I wanted him to hold the left ctrl key on boot up.

Didn't really think asking him to click on the right mouse button was computer slang but I guess it was =P