Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

Sometimes it's everyone's fault....

My dad was trying to download his email a couple of days ago and well, Netscape just hung. It claimed to be downloading but it didn;t seem to be doing anything. So he called the ISP, specifically asking if there was some sort of large file or attachment in his mail file. The tech said no and proceeded to walk him through a fix that wound up hosing the browser entirely. He called me when I got home from work to see if I could fix it. Netscape was trashed (and all his saved email, his address book and all his bookmarks completely wiped out) so he decided he might as well do what he'd been threatening to and switch to IE. I got him up and running by copying the settings from my computer - only to have the same thing happen when we tried to download his email. I called tech support, again they insisted there were no large files on the server. I decided we should just wait and see what happened, since it looked like it was indeed trying to do something. Sure enough, some 30 minutes later, we found out what was going on - someone had sent him a file with close to a 12 meg attachment. Now granted, he did get impaitent - but I would think that would have qualified as a "large" attachment....The good news is that he had backed up all his bookmarks, his address book and his mail file not too long ago, so he was able to recover just about everything...

The other part of the story is that his mouse pointer decided to vanish this morning - it was there in safe mode, but not in regular. We finally had to reinstall Windows to fix it (did YOU ever try to install Windows without a functioning mouse? Not fun....but the CD-ROM drivers wouldn't load in safe mode....)

I provide phone support for a cable internet provider. One day, I got a call from a guy who gave me a rather typical vague description of his problem - "My computer has been acting funny, and now it won't work at all". In the course of troubleshooting, I found out that his computer came up with a black screen and mentioned that it cannot find command.com. I told him that he would need to see a technician to fix this. He was surprised that I could not help him out over the phone. I explained that this was a problem with his computer, and not with his internet. After hanging up, I realized that he thought that command.com was a website that he couldn't access, so it's obviously a problem with his internet provider....

Short and sweet:

I used to help out with computer troubleshooting and the like at a local primary school. Of course, it was generally populated with fairly ancient hardware, but it got the job done, slowly. (semi-important detail to story)

Was told that all the computers in one particular room could not detect their keyboard on startup. Turns out the teacher had plugged the AT-style keyboard connectors into the coax network cards. =)

Simple one, user knowledge.

Them: "It's got a tick next to it.... how do I get rid of the tick?"

Me: "Untick it."

Duh :)

I'm not in tech support. I'm actually an End User. I'm starting to question the intelligence of the tech support at the school I go to.

We have a campus-wide network, and all the campus computers and the student computers in on-campus housing are connected to said network. Back in September, IT Services decided to change the firewall, and suddenly FTP didn't work on campus at all. It's been three months, and I think they're still working on fixing out all the problems with that.

However, when this first happened, my roommate realized she couldn't get into her family's computer at home (halfway across the country) via her FTP program. Since the flyers handed out at the beginning of the semester for setting up computers with internet access said explicitly that we should be able to use FTP, she decided to call IT Services. I only heard half her call, but it sounded something like this:

"I'm calling because I can't use FTP to...FTP...FTP...File Transfer Protocol...it means I'm supposed to be able to connect to other computers to transfer files...I'm trying to get into my family's computer...it's to send files back and forth...."

The call continued from there along similar lines, with the tech finally telling her to call back later. She did, and actually got a tech who knew what FTP was, but didn't know what to do about it. She's part of a test group now for *somthing*...I'm not sure what. However, they eventually got at least *some* of FTP working.

Since we're on a network, a few friends and I, all living in the same dorm hall, decided to set up file sharing on our computers so we could send files back and forth quicker without having to burn cds (since some of our friends don't have a burner). When we first got it set up, we found out that the network had subnets; we couldn't access any computers outside our own dorm hall. ::shrug:: Oh well, it was mostly just for us anyhow.

Two or three days ago, my roommate couldn't get into the network suddenly, though she hadn't changed anything. After leaving the computer off for several hours, the problem seemed to fix itself. However, this morning, when we turned our computers on, neither of us could even *see* the network, much less get into it. My roommate called IT Services first. Her side of the conversation sounded something like this:

"I can't get into the network for file sharing...file sharing...in Network Neighborhood...in Windows Explorer, I click on Network Neighborhood...Windows Explorer...*Windows* Explorer...when I right-click on the Start button and hit "Explore"...not *Internet* Explorer, *Windows* Explorer...I click on Network Neighborhood, but not even my computer is showing up...there's no list of computers...for the network...." After a bit more of this, the tech gave her some brush-off answer, about subnets being sporadic and stuff.

I tried a reboot to see if that would "get my computer to hit the right subnet", which of course didn't work. So *I* called IT Services. I got the same tech my roomie had. By the way, my computer is running Windows ME, my roommate's is running Win98.

Me: Hi, my name is [name], and I can't get on the network for file sharing.

Tech: Yeah, we've had some questions about that, and the subnets are really sporadic. It's kinda' hit-and-miss whether you get the right one or not.

Me: Yeah, well I can't even see the network. I double-click My Network Places and then Entire Network, but nothing shows up.

Tech: Hang on a second.

[hold music]

Tech: I don't know what to say about that. Resident computers aren't really set up for networking and stuff like that.

Me: Well, I'm just calling because when I go to My Network Places, usually I see the network there, and then I double-click on [the network my computer is in] to see computers I can connect to. It's not there. This is the *first time* this semester that this has happened.

Tech: Yeah, well, the network is really sporadic like that, because resident housing isn't set up to network like the computers on campus, so it's really sporadic like that.

Me: (getting ticked because he keeps giving the same answer) Okay, thanks, bye.

The only problem with his explanation is that the networking hadn't shown any signs of "sporadic" behavior at all during the first three months of the semester, and the same computers were on the network every time. It's sad when the end user knows more than the Tech. I wonder if I can get a job at their IT department.

This is yet another example of how techs themselves can do some pretty idiotic things.

I am a systems and network tech for a major chemical company (and normally I'm pretty sharp, mind you...). One of our users had been having network connection problems, and we had traced the problem to corrupted drivers for his PCMCIA NIC card. Having determined that the drivers were bad, we proceeded to try to reinstall the drivers. Normally, all the needed drivers are in a CAB file on the user's hard drive.

Not in this case.

I checked the user's CAB file against a 'standard' copy on his local server (from my machine). He was missing a great deal (I didn't even WANT to know how these files had gone missing...), so I decided to have him search for the drivers from...

The CAB file on ther server...

On the network...

Which he could not connect to...

Because his NIC card drivers were corrupted.

Duh.

After I stopped laughing at myself, I had a Field Circus tech go out and manually install the drivers (and bring the system back up to spec). Problem solved, albeit by sneakernet...

"No users were harmed in the making of this story."

I was working at a graphic-agency and one day we bought a new quite expensive color-printer at my recommendation.

It arrived late afternoon, short before I left, and our IT-guy started setting it up with the assistance of our boss.

Next morning I found an IT-guy and a boss both with rings around their eyes. With a supportive nodding of our boss the IT-guy started barking at me: "I set up a print-server for your lousy color printer and then I tried the whole night to get your damn Macintosh's to access the print server. It still doesn't work. Wo don't you do your f*** graphics on PC's?"

I mumbled something like "Mac's don't need print server" booted my Mac, chose the printer form the chooser and printed a page.

>From that day on the badly hated me.

I'm not actually in tech support, I'm a programmer by trade. I recently got to play support to an application that I had designed for several of the company's workers.

The first thing the user had to do upon running the application was to enter their worker ID. This was to be entered into a box underneath the words "WORKER ID". We had held several training classes on the app and the (l)users had been instructed to use their SSN for their ID.

One morning, a worker calls me saying that my app is broken and thit won't allow her to enter her ID. My first thought is that I'm going to have to spend all day fixing and repackaging the app for send out the next day.

However, I have sudden streak of brilliance and ask her what exactly she's entering. She then tells me that she's entering her name as her worker ID. It told her that it won't allow her to enter her name, just her SSN.

You can probably guess her response....

"Oh, that's probably why I keep getting that message box that says 'Must Enter Numeric Values Only'......

Silly (l)users.......

Some years ago I was sys admin for a (now defunct) company. We had just received a new server machine and I set to work installing Netware onto it. Well I did pretty much what it said in the manual... and then I talked to the tech support guy at Novell. It didn't take him long to size me up. "You need to low-level format your hard drive." We both knew that I didn't, but with the edict issued it had to be done. This time I followed the instructions carefully and to the letter and, of course, it worked fine. I have always been impressed by that instruction, which decodes from tech.sup. speak into "Clear out the disk, start again from scratch, and this time RTFM."

THIS MESSAGE SENT FROM I.T.

If you receive an email with the subject title "Hi" and a message about a sceen saver with an attachment named "gone.scr" don't open it. It is a virus. Thank you.

THIS FOLLOWUP MESSAGE ALSO SENT FROM I.T.

Note that this virus is also coming "from" infected users from Corporate, via their address books!

Not only should you not open it, delete the email, and delete it from your trash bin.

NEXT MESSAGE RECIEVED FROM A DEPARTMENT MANAGER

I think my printer has the virus. I opened the attachment from Corporate before I got your warning. Everything seems to be working except my printer. Help!

As a computer support technician for a college in a major university, a phone call was relayed to me by the faculty support staff, who said the problem was too technical (I think they were laughing too hard to handle it.) The professor came on the phone and told me he had brought in a radio from home. I immediately thought he wanted advice about inputing audio from the radio into his computer, but his problem was much more basic than that:

Professor: I brought a radio from home, and I need to plug the electric cord into the wall, but the plug won't fit. The wall outlet has 3 holes, but my plug only has 2 prongs, and even though I pushed on it, it wouldn't fit.

Me: (Trying to sound professional and not laugh out loud) Take a look at the plug ... is one of the prongs a little wider or thicker than the other?

Professor: Yes, I think so...

Me: And of the two straight openings in the outlet (ignore the round one), is one of them a little longer than the other?

Professor: It's hard to tell, but it looks like it might be.

Me: OK, line up the thicker/wider prong of the plug with the longer opening of the outlet, and the thinner prong with the shorter opening, and see if it will plug in that way.

Professor: OK ... yes, it fits. Let me turn on the radio to test it. Yes, now it works! Thank you!

True story.

Hello,

Let me start off by saying I've just discovered this site and so far absolutely love it. I am a Sr. Network Tech for a major bank and work on everything from PCs to routers in my position, and have held various positions along the way. I've seen some stupid, and funny things, but the one that takes the cake for me concerns a couple of hard drives I sold via Haggle Online a couple of years ago.

I had some old hard drives laying around that weren't doing me any good, and were pretty small anyway and decided to see if anyone wanted to buy them before I tossed them out. They were identical Maxtor 80 meg IDE drives in perfect condition (tested and formatted before I put them out for auction). I sold them for about $10 or $15 each to the same guy and shipped them out. No problem until a few days later when I got an e-mail from him saying his drive diagnostics program (some program he was using, I don't know the name), couldn't manage to format the drives so they just had to be bad.

I suggested that he try them in a different PC to see if the PC had trouble recognizing the drives. A couple of days later I got another e-mail that he tried that and his little diagnostics program still couldn't format them. I know both of them couldn't have been damaged in shipping so I knew this program of his must have been something screwy that he didn't need to be using. I sent another reply asking him to look at the BIOS settings and see if the PC recognized the drives. He said yes, but the BIOS reported them incorectly as 80 meg drives when his "fancy" program said they were 120 meg, so he wanted them formatted as 120 meg.

At this point I knew for certain that I was dealing with an idiot so I reminded him that in the auction, I had stated they were 80 meg drives... his computer reported them as 80 meg drives in the BIOS... and if he looked up the model number on Maxtor's web site (and I sent him the exact link for it), even Maxtor say's they are 80 meg drives. His little program was the problem and he needed to forget about it and just use a DOS disk to FDISK and format the drives. I got a flame e-mail back telling me I had no clue what I was talking about and that his little hard drive diagnostics program was perfect and couldn't make mistakes so I must have sold him bad drives and he wanted his money back.

I offered to give him the money back on one condition only... that he forget about his fancy little program (never did find out what it was) and use a regular old DOS disk to prepare the drives for use. He refused to do it, so I told him that until he did, he would get no more replies from me and I would not refund his money if he were going to refuse to format the drives with something I knew would work for him.

I don't know what ever came of him. He eventually stopped bugging me. Either he got tired of it, or he tried to format them with a DOS disk and got them to work.

(apologies in advance for a few long posts... :-))

In the course of several years of system and network support for a large multi-national company, I've come across some frighteningly common types of users. Here are a few examples (which I swear I am NOT making up). I'm sure all you I.T. folks out there have run across at least some of these yourselves. Almost enough to make you wish you had gone into piano repair, underwater basket-weaving, or bullet-proof vest test subject instead, isn't it?

Example 1 - Total memory loss, with higher brain functions summarily disconnected as well. I know a lot of you folks who do consumer support see this sort of thing waaaaay too much, and I feel for you:

User: It won't let me in to (some in-shop slang for an application - in no way resembling the actual name, even remotely).

Me: Do you know the proper name of the application?

User: We just call it (name). I don't know what it's really called.

Me: What system (e.g. mainframe, VAX, Unix box, NT server, etc.) are you accessing this through?

User: I don't know.

Me: What steps do you take to get to this application?

User: I don't know. (At this point, I'd have been thrilled if they had responded "First, I turn on the workstation, then...")

Me: Do you use a terminal emulator to access it, like (names withheld to protect the reputation of the software)? (everything else is either a Win32 app or telnets to a Unix box. On the other hand, I once had a person accessing a mainframe image *through* a VAX gateway that he was connecting to - via Telnet - from a *Unix* box that he was using our VMS emulator to get to(ow. He must have spent hours guesstimating the correct settings to put in - I was quite impressed despite myself that he got it to work). He was so thrilled when I showed him how to use the mainframe emulator to get right to the mainframe...)

User: I don't know. I don't think so.

Me: Are you logging on through a workstation or a dumb terminal?

User: I don't know.

Me: Do you have a desktop with icons and a taskbar at the bottom, or are you looking at what looks like a green(or amber)-screen monitor with a keyboard attached?

User: I don't know.

Me: (thinking that this person has *got* to be an idiot if he can't even tell if it's a workstation) Are you at the machine now?

User: Yeah.

Me: (head in hands) Describe what you see on the screen.

User: I don't know what it is! Aren't you the help desk? Shouldn't you know all this stuff?

And so on, and so on, and so on, ad nausaeum. What's even more frightening is when the person calling is a plant production supervisor or an aircraft maintenance person and I have to go through this with them.

More to come in part 2!

Cheers!

Tim

(Here is part 2 of my little story...)

Continuing my woeful tale of scary users encountered as a system and network tech in a multi-national corporation...

Example 2: I don't speak English, and I don't even live in an English-speaking country, but I'm going to make an international call (bypassing my local/regional, native-language support number) to the North American help desk and choose the English option so I can flatter my own ego by thinking I can communicate.

Please realize, I am most emphatically NOT bashing non-English speakers. I've lived in various parts of the world, and I know what it's like to be in the position of not understanding the native tongue.

I'm also not bashing the poor folks who are genuinely trying to get help for an application that isn't able to be supported by any other help desk (it happens) when the one guy/gal in the office who speaks English is off on holiday (you may have noticed in your own lives that things break at the worst possible time).

I'm just bashing the ones that seem bent on costing the company a lot of money (international calls are NOT cheap, even at corporate rates) and wasting a lot of time through their own idiocy... :-)

Keep in mind that we (like most multi-national companies) have several support centres globally to provide support in the major languages of their areas. Of course the North American help desk provides primarily English support, though we do have a smattering of French and a good deal of Spanish (those being the main languages on this continent...). But that doesn't stop people whose only grasp of English is on the level of "Hello!" and "I calling from (country)" calling us. On an international toll line. Despite the fact that they have speed-dial numbers for the proper help desk PRE-PROGRAMMED into their phones, or a toll-free number posted in most common areas.

You haven't lived until you've spent 25 minutes trying to get a user ID from someone who doesn't understand a word you're saying (and with you trying to avoid just talking louder and slower as if that will make them understand).

I won't give an example of a typical call or where they tended to come from because I don't want to be accused of stereotyping or just plain bias, but let's just say it was bad.

More Tales of Terror from the Tech Support Trenches..

Example 3: I don't know how to read the manual or press F1.

Let's face it, we've all had moments where our brains just completely shut down and we have to get help for really simple things. It happens, it's part of life.

But some users (and I understand that the folks that support consumer products get a lot of these callers, too) just can't seem to get the idea that there is, amazingly enough, documentation and help available either in the manual or (more and more commonly) by pressing F1, or going to that menu item labeled 'Help,' or by going to the web...

Our help desk is rather small considering the size of the company (about 80 of us total worldwide, compared to many thousands of employees), in that we are geared to providing support for actual PROBLEMS. There are always classes for MS Office (the bane of any help desk) apps going on, there is an amazing array of help and training resources on the company Intranet, and there are local focal points whose SOLE function is to provide immediate, in-person help for functionality questions.

Apparently, though, most users seem to think that it's easier to call us than it is to press F1, RTFM (many, many wonderful Dilbert comics were written on THAT subject), or walk over to their local focal point.

Now, if a user has made an effort, tried all other resources and can't figure something out, then by all means they can call us. Of course, usually what they want to do is so esoteric or requires so much extra work that we send them off to the internal consultants (we DON'T write macros or plug-ins, thanks), but at least they tried. One nice thing about being an internal help desk is that we can pass the buck if we need to. :-)

Let's listen in...

Caller: I need to know how to make Word do (x).

Me: Have you checked the help file?

Caller: Help file? What's that?

Me: I'll show you. OK, follow along with me on your workstation. Press F1, and then (have the USER take the steps to find the "problem").

Caller: Oh. Thanks! I never knew that was there!

Me: (muting phone) THEN WHAT DID YOU THINK THAT OBNOXIOUS PAPER CLIP (dog, Einstein, robot, etc.) THING WAS FOR??!!!! YOU KNOW, THE ONE THAT ALWAYS POPS UP WITH "It looks like you're trying to (x). Would you like some help?"(unmute, head in hands) It's no problem. In the future, we recommend that you check the online help files first to save yourself some time. (muting phone) And keep the queue free for people with REAL problems...

More to come!

Tim

Time for another (ahem) exciting chapter!

Example 4 - My secretary (Office Professonal or OP for the politically correct) is away, so the Help Desk can fill in... -OR- I don't feel like working today. I'll have the Help Desk do my job for me!

A wonderful part of our "tool kit" is remote administration software, like PC Anywhere, Timbuktu, Carbon Copy, etc. For the uninitiated, this allows a remote user to see the desktop of and work with a workstation, server, etc. It's really neat (and it's pretty cool on the receiving end, too, in a Count Floyd kind of way, watching the mouse pointer move and stuff happen seemingly by itself) and a very, very useful tool for helping scared (and/or incompetent) users. As most experienced techs will tell you, it's a blessing when you get a caller who a) sincerely admits blistering ignorance and/or abject terror, b) asks (begs?) nicely for help, and c) has the remote admin software ready to roll. Heck, this makes it almost pleasant to provide basic functionality support (the sympathy factor plays a large part here).

But there's a flip side. Sometimes, you'll get execs (or just plain lazy people) who call, feign a problem, ask you to remote in, then effectively ask you to do their work for them. Sometimes, they can be subtle, but often it's pretty blatant.

We've actually had users BANNED (even some executives and VPs) from help desk services for pulling stuff like this (another perk to working in an internal help desk! The bar is a lot lower than on a consumer desk).

We had one lady who would call in, say she was getting errors when transcribing things between applications, then have us remote in. We'd check the first 1 or 2 items (and, not surprisingly, get NO errors of any kind), and then she'd then excuse herself "for just a moment," then put us on hold (unfortunately, this was before the 3 minute hold rule was established, letting us hang up if we're on hold for ANYONE - we don't care if you're the CEO - for more than 3 minutes). When she came back, she always asked us why we hadn't done all the rest of them. It got to where her name was known at one time by *ALL* the English techs on *3* continents - she'd call North America desk *AND* the Europe desk AND the Pacific desk to try to pull her tricks. She was banned - more than once. Some people never learn, it seems.

There was also a VP who would call, insist that the tech remote in, then tell them "Open Word and take this letter for me," and start dictating. He, too, had been banned for a while, but was eventually allowed to call back. He was a lot nicer after that. I sometimes wonder if it would have been a better punishment to just let him keep going and figure out the error of his ways on his own - techs are generally not known for their spelling and grammar skills (myself included). :-)

Almost got all this stuff out of my system, promise.

Cheers!

Tim

This isn't really an IT support story but i think you'll agree that shows the intelligence of some people.

i received a telephone call a few years back by a woman who had recently purchased a product from dixons. As some people do she took out the Cover Plan insurance scheme. The question she had was

"Can i take out cover plan insurance for my dog".

I answered

" I'm afraid not madam, unfortunately it's only applicable to electrical appliences".

"oh" she said "but it's a pedigree,does that make a difference"

Our final chapter... (whew!)

Thus our saga comes to a close, with the last few examples of the inanities we see at our help desk.

Example 5 - The restroom on the 3rd floor is out of toilet paper!

Come on, people, we're the COMPUTER help desk! 'Nuff sed.

Example 6 - The network is down, but I still have to get to my data!

These poor, poor users. I've lost track of the number of times I've heard "Well, if my server is down, can't you just move my stuff to a different server?" Ahem. Let's think about this, shall we? Assuming, for a moment, that we will migrate data on your whim (which we won't - just like increasing your mailbox size), if the server that the data is on is down, HOW DO YOU EXPECT US TO MOVE STUFF OFF OF IT?

I especially love hearing this when a major mail server has died.

Another great question is "Well, can't you fix it any sooner?" Apparently, these folks think that while they are having a "Code Red, DefCon 1, nukes incoming" level emergency, the Operations staff is sitting around eating donuts, watching the Simpsons, and warming their coffee on the smoking remains of the server(of course, I wonder myself sometimes. But they wonder about us, too, so it all balances out). Never mind that the server just had a head crash on half the drives *and* the RAID controller blinked out when the roof right above the server room got hit by lightning, thus overwhelming the UPS and the power system in general (it actually happened, once. I recall the room had not been designed as a computer room and thus was not as well-protected from the universe as it should have been). Never mind that at least HALF the drives will have to be replaced (if not all of 'em), the RAID controller will have to be replaced, the server will need to be reformatted, have all the apps reinstalled, have all the data restored from backups, and have all the services restarted. And you need it to be back up by 4:30. Not bloody likely. A certain quote from Wayne's World, involving monkeys shooting out of a personal orifice comes to mind.

Example 7 - I need more space on my email!

Like a previous person said - just don't. It won't happen.

Example 8 - I'm calling to have my friend's password reset. I've got his security code.

Hoo boy. People must think we're stupid here. Never mind that everyone signs a piece of paper when they start that says, in effect, that what they're trying to do could get both them and the other user fired for a blatant violation of security policy, it also goes against common sense. NEVER give anyone else your password! Duh! It's like giving a stranger your ATM card and PIN code!

Example 9 - Dial-in users.

Just like working for an ISP, except maybe a little lighter on the idiocy. But not by much. We still get a lot of "Why can't I see my network drive? You mean I have to plug the laptop into the phone?" and "Well, it's a 56k modem. Why can't I open the 400 meg database over the dialup connection. I thought it was fast."

Well, I hope that everyone got a kick out of some of this stuff. It's funny in hindsight, but at the time, it's just maddening. Enjoy!

Cheers!

Tim

When working as Microsoft personal level tech support, we sometimes had callers who had ISP problems. In order to prove to these people that the problem was their ISP and not their computer, we would have them call in a server that Microsoft kept up to make test connections, called the Simulated Internet Service Provider, or SISP for short.

One time I was testing a network problem for this guy, a very nice sounding elderly gentleman, and gave him the phone number after doing some tweaking on his network components. He had two lines, so I was able to stay on the phone with him through the whole thing. I was making small talk with the customer, and could hear the computer dialing in the background. All of sudden, the customer paused in the conversation, and the following exchange occured:

I asked "Do you hear the crashing airplane sound?" (Ie, the modem handshake).

He replies, "No... There's talking coming out of the computer."

I was thinking it might be a phone company message stating his lines were down or something, "Well, what does it say?"

I got the reply, "Well, you don't want to know what it's saying..."

Understandably, I was shocked. "What? Are you sure? What's it saying."

Sounding embarrassed, the customer replied, "Well, I'll just hold the phone down there and you can hear it for yourself."

There were some thumps and clicks on the line (at one point I thought he'd hung up), and then another voice came over the line. The Donald Duck quality of the voice made it clear it was coming from the speaker on the modem rather than the computer speakers. The Donald Duck, but nevertheless female sounding, voice was saying, "For hot, busty babes, please be ready to enter your credit card number on your touch tone telephone..." I had to put the cusomer on hold while I shrieked with laughter. He had mistyped the phone number, and instead of dialing the SISP, it had dialed a phone sex line! After rechecking the number, we were finally able to get him connected and send him to his ISP.

Years ago my internship was as a help desk tech for a university hospital - I am glad I am now a programmer and not on that phone any more! While there I was told of the two greatest calls ever received by the support staff.

The first was of the user who wondered why her notebook beeped for half an hour, shut off, and wouldn't turn back on. She was asked to check her plugs, and amazingly the power supply for the notebook was plugged into the computer and power strip. Must be a real issue, so a tech was sent up to check...and came back down in 5 minutes. The plug for the power strip was plugged in right next to the plug for the power supply.

The second was from a user who said that every time her phone rang a bunch of misc. characters appeared on her screen. After the usual checklists and a few more questions it was determined that her computer wasn't even connected to her phone line. Weird. A tech was sent up, and a call was placed to her phone (she didn't answer it since it was the tech). The user and the tech stared at her screen, but no miscellaneous characters appeared. After more tries, nothing, so the tech came back. Later that day, same call from the user. The tech went up again. While there an unexpected call came through on her phone so she answered it, and the tech saw the characters appear on her screen - finally. The tech checked all over and there definitely was no connection from her phone or phone line to her computer. They placed another call to her phone and the tech told her to answer it this time, even though it was him calling. Problem solved! The user had recently moved her phone to the far edge of her desk, on the other side of her keyboard. Since it was a far reach, she had to lean way over to answer it. The user was unusually well-endowed...and each time she answered her phone her "endowments" pushed just about every key on the keyboard.

While I was selling computers over the phone for the company with cow spots on the box I heard many funny things from other sales people. But the funniest had to be one customer that I sold a computer to. This lady bought the best computer that we had to offer at the time, DVD, CDRW, everything. One week after she recieved the system she called me back steamming and using foul language claiming that we had ripped her off and took advantage of her. I then attemped to calm her down. I finally got out of her why she felt this way. She said that she did not recieve the DVD and CDRW. She was at the computer at the time and I had her explain what she saw. I went over the tower and told her that everything was there. She said that that was impossible because she had seen DVD player and CDRW before and they were big and looked like a VCR. I told her did she see where she could put CD's in and she said no. At this point I had my manager start to listen because I couldn't belive how uneducated this woman was. I told her to push the button on the top CD drive. She then proceeded to tell me that this is going to spill her can of soda. At this point my Manager is literally rolling around on the floor laughing. This lady thought that the CD drives were cup holders. I then had to explain to her what everything was and she still felt that she was "jipped" becuase she didn't have something that she could hook up to her TV.

By the time I got the user he had already talked to 5 agents in three days about this problem. He is trying to view streaming files over the net. If he hooked up another computer to his internet connection he could view the files, all the techs he talked to could view the files. If he burned the files to cd at school (medical student) he could view the files on his system.

He had been escalated to a senior technician who was researching his problem. I advised him to wait for the senior tech to call back with a solution. He called back 14 more times in two days(including a call to the corporate office who had less understanding of the processes necessary to resolve the problem then we did).

I explained, my available senior tech also explained it was in the best interest of the user to let the one senior tech handle the situation or his case may become lost in the confusion. NOTE: What part of wait don't you understand.

By the time I got him again he was fuming because he constantly had to explain the situation to every technician he talked to and the entire situation became confused to him and to us. He said, she said, we said,yada yada, yada. Again I explained, my available senior tech also explained it was in the best interest of the user to let the one senior tech handle the situation or his case may become lost in the confusion. NOTE: What part of wait don't you understand.

This case is still being worked on at this writing.

The result at this writing is that we can have the unit diagnosed for a hardware problem (refused by user) which is unlikely since he can view the files from cd and any other internet file he tries to access so sending it in for repair will only end up in no trouble found and me getting my wrists slapped.

HINT: if you are lucky enough to have your case handed to one person to handle and that person has given you his name and title... wait for the call because he knows the situation and is probably shaking all the trees available to find you a solution.

After 2 weeks of intensive training a new truck driver was finally let loose in the mine.

He performed his duties flawlessly all day.

But at the end of his shift he jumped out of his truck ran over to the workshop in a blind panic.

He looked at me like a lost child and asked

"How do you shut it OFF?

Well, I work for a suburban school district in Washington as a technician. I was dealing with one of those teachers-from-hell that pop up at every school, who had managed to trash the NT installation on her laptop. I had also been reading about debunking faith healers (yes, this is part of the tale).

I had her laptop at my office, trying to restore her data with a parallel install, and they kept failing for some reason or another. Finally, out of frustration, I closed the lid on the laptop, laid my hands on it, smacked it fairly hard and shouted 'In the name of the lord, be SAVED!!' in a nice southern accent.

I'll be damned if the thing didn't boot. I restored her data which was saved all over the drive, and the kicker was; one of the documents on her desktop was titled 'HOW TO BACK UP FILES TO THE SERVER'. Arggh...

After returning from a much needed single day holiday, the maintenance guy from our factory came up to me and tried to explain a little problem he'd been having...

He had been trying to copy a loose leaf manual for training purposes.

He had taken the sheets, put them in the copier and pressed start until the copier had finished. (sounds good so far?)

The problem was that he said he could only find the copied pages and the originals had disappeared (!?)

Sure enough, when I looked at my (only original) copy there were dirty great black bands running from left to right (I'm not a copier tech., so I won't make an idiot of myself by telling you what was wrong, but you know what I mean)

I also noticed some hand written notes I had made in the manual while I was at a training course and they were still in blue biro.

It took me 15 minutes to explain the difference between the document feeder on the top of the copier and the sheet feeder on the side of the copier, he'd been copying nothing ONTO my originals.

I still don't think he gets it, God knows what will happen over the christmas hols.

IAN

I'm not a tech, but I do know my way around a PC. And even though I'm not very familiar with Macs, one thing I am positive of is that you can't install a Mac OS on a PC.

But, trying to explain that to a friend was nearly impossible.

I thought she was just asking, being a newbie. But, she had actually gone out and bought Mac OSX.

I saw the box and remarked, "I didn't know you had a Mac, too."

Her reply: "I don't. I just want to use it on my PC."

Oh, boy....

I told her she couldn't and explained why. It was over her head. So, I basically had to force her to drive down to the computer store and return it. Their head tech agreed with all I said.

"You want to run a Mac OS, then you need to buy a Mac" he said.

"That's ridiculous. Why'd they make them like that?"

I really like her, but some people simply should not be allowed to own computers.

Ok, so I've got my cable modem set up, and I'm on the phone with tech support getting the extra email addresses turned on. I ask for the pop and smtp servers, and they give me the domain names. I ask for the IP addresses and they tell me they don't have them. Doh! All I had to do was open a cmd box (Windows 2K) and ping the domain name! Bam! There's the IP address.

*shakes head* if that's the caliber of Cox tech support I might have made the wrong decision to go with them.

I work on a tech support, and I know alot about PCs, and how to fix them. This little incident happened a about a year ago.

My buddy's friend was having problems with her computer. So she calls the tech support of the manufacturer, who happens to be with the commercials with Steve the D*LL dude. The peoblem was that it was not booting up properly. They told her right away that she needed to reload Windows (before she could fully explain the problem).

Well I told her not to do that yet, cause usually I can find a way to fix anything, so I go over there. All the problem was that the sytem was trying to load a system file, that in all actuality she did not need loaded up anymore. Within 5 minutes had her system booting up normally and everything working just fine.

The next day I called D*LL, and started to tell them that they need to hire to techs. After I explained the problem and all, they actually offered me a job there.

Background: My company used to send out its DOS product updates on diskettes, and some udpates required more than one diskette. Rather re-write the installation program for each different update, we just used the same program every time - the catch with that was that program never "knew" how many diskettes there would be, so it just keeps asking for more until the user presses Escape to return to the program. There is a Cancel button on the screen as well. The instructions are very clear about how to use this screen, of course, but we all know what good those are.

The Story:

Me: Thank you for calling _________. How may I help you?

Her: Oh, thank god you answered! I've been trying to install this update fo the last two hours and I don't know what to do.

Me: I see. Well, let me know what your screen says and I will do my best to get you past this point.

Her: It says, "Please insert disk #472 and press Enter to continue." I've pressed enter a thousand times now and it still keeps asking for another diskette. I don't understand why though since you only sent me one disk this time!!!

Me: Maam, when you know you've copied that disk into your system, you can then just press Escape to get out of there. Have you read the instructions that came with the update?

Her: Oh, I don't have time to read those stupid things!

Before I tell this quick tale I just want to say I love this site, its nice to find people who know the pain of being a Tech. Right...

A Friend of mine used to work in a Tech support department, and while processing a call one day he asked the user:

Tech : Ok can you tell me what OS you are using please?

Caller : (get ready for this) I don't drink Orange Juice.

For those of you who are not in the UK we also call OJ Orange Squash..

I really thought I had heard them all.....A test for users to take before being allowed to use a PC is looking better and better each day.

I'm a student "tech aide" at my high school. Our most dreaded work orders are ones that say "X program runs slow".

One time, I got an order saying that Netscape mail had been running slow. The teacher complained that it took several minutes to display, delete, or get email messages. I sat down to take a look, and realized his inbox had over 1200 messages, dating back to 98. Deleting all but the most recent solved the problem real quickly.

Another time, a teacher wondered why her computer gave her "out of memory" errors. Turns out her system tray stretched across nearly 3/4 of her taskbar.

The English department runs several "labs" with cheap computers that let students type papers and print them. We got a whole slew of work orders from one of the lab administration ladies, with various problems such as:

Recycle bin icon is now a seashell (changed it back)

Word shortcut deleted from desktop (turns out it was in the recycle bin)

Computer won't respond (she had told it to shut it down, and then walked away. She wondered why it wouldn't respond, even to Ctrl+Alt+Del... I just pushed the power button).

Computer will not turn on (she had unplugged it because it had a problem)

Printer won't print; error message "out of paper" (solution: load paper)

CD will not fit in drive (computer has no CD-ROM drive; 3.5" will not read CD's)

This is the same lady who was having a problem with a drive that was corrupting disks. I asked her for an old disk to test it with, and she gave me the one with all her records and seating assignments on it. She deserves what she got.

And people, you cannot "loose" files, games, objects, etc. You LOSE them. "Loose" applies to things like shoelaces.

Yesterday I recieved a call from an MS customer that has installed OfficeXP on his rather low end machine.

He was now suffering from extremely sluggish response in any applications and had regular system crashes.

He contacted me requesting that I solve this issue for him.

I followed my usual pattern of confirming his information and questioning him about what he had been doing with the system before the issue arose.

Here are the actual statistics of his machine:

EMachine...(did I just hear a collective groan?)

Celeron 366....(another groan?)

160 MD Ram

2 Hard drives

internal CDROM

External SCSI CDRW

USB Hub with 7 attached devices

on startup: Norton, Mcaffee (go figure), realplayer, real jukebox, real download, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Corel DAD, plus 10 others

He is on a DSL.....the real Kicker to this is:

He has a 112 Watt Power supply.

And he said that Office XP was the cause of him having only 26% resources

Me and a friend were helping out our computer teacher at school who also runs a bussiness suppling adult students with computers my friend set up two computers with specs that made us drool(loading time? what loading time?) It was pretty simple, But the nmext day one of them rang the teacher saying it was not set up right. The problem was the did not work. The teacher asked is it pluged in and so on he found out the keyboard did not go in right so they FORCED it in this made the computer have problems finding anyting in the ps/2 ports like the mouse.

Nothing is foolproof for a sufficiently talented fool.

I once worked with an individual who constantly reminded me he was a MCP and was going to get his MCSE shortly. One day he quietly came to get me because he was having problems with the CD-ROM drive on one of our servers. He had the Windows NT Explorer open and showed me the CD-ROM he had inserted wouldn't read properly. He also couldn't get it eject. It was one of those drives that only has a slot for inserting/ejecting a CD-ROM.

Sure enough, I couldn't get the CD-ROM to eject. On a whim, (after about 10 minutes of useless clicking) I looked in the space between the CD-ROM and DAT drives. I noticed a slight gleam of silver and came to a quick conclusion. He had inserted the CD-ROM between the two drives. He then announced he was going to tear the machine apart to get the CD-ROM out. Quickly, to avoid another debacle, I used a piece of scotch tape to snag the CD-ROM out and left the server room before I lost my mind. He made me promise not to tell anyone, but of course, I just couldn't resist.

I work on the English/German Tech support lines for a big Software Company (No MS!! *spits*) Some of the stories I have heard there are fabulous, excellent stand up comedian stuff!

But, after a few months on the line it was my turn to get one of these "Dumb" customers on the line.

The story is this.

His particular program has all of a sudden been popping up error messages during its launch, then shuts itself down.

I explain to him that this is a new error and that we are researching its causes. He agrees to fill out a quick questionaire. So I send him one via e-mail.

Simple things like

"In windows explorer, Go to C:) Program File ) **** ) Extras. Fine the file called "ANYFILE.File"

Right click that file, choose PROPERTIES and note down its size and version".

What could be simpler??

So, He sends me an e-mail back and in it he says

"Dear Sir

I received your questionaire, and I can;t understand it at all. What do you mean by Right click and Choose Properties?

Also, what is C:?

It would be best if you regard as someone with the intelligence of a potatoe.

Please, send me a easier to understand questionaire".

I sweat to the allmighty himself, that's what the guy said.

Needless to say, me and my co-workers were laughing for a good 10 minutes after that!

Poor guy, he must be 60+!!

Here's to the folk in the Video Team where I work!

I'm not in tech support, in fact my computer knowledge is basic at best. I would have thought my parents knowledge would be at least so...then I realized that as neither one of them had EVER worked with computers in their workplace (my mother being a cashier and my stepfather being in the construction industry-neither one of them had anything more than a high school diploma) this was going to be a long, agonizing experience. To make matters worse, my stepfather kept acting like he knew more than me about computers, because (no joke) he was older and a male.

Here's some of what I got from them:

Around the time that Windows 2000 was about to come out (it was still having bugs) I had received a copy of OFFICE 2000 as a graduation gift, and installed it on the family's computer. Shortly thereafter, my stepfather started screaming at me for "ruining" his computer-he thought I had installed WINDOWS 2000, and now he would have to deal with all sorts of bugs and viruses on the computer. Not that he would know what they are anyway.

Things got worse when we had the Internet. AOL (which, in my understanding, is designed for the beginner) was way beyond their understanding. Originally, my stepfather had the master screen name. I asked to create my own so I could use AOL mail, and he said fine (yes, I had to have permission to create an email account in my household).

Later when arguments started about spending too much time online, he thought he could alter this problem by changing HIS password, thereby making it so that ANYONE who wanted to access the internet would need him to be there. I nearly got thrown out of the house when he discovered that I was accessing (my own personal) email without his permission, "going behind his back".

Things were a little better with my mom. Except for one amusing incident. I was chatting with her online from my apartment (I had to move out...my stepdad's "I am superior to all of you because I am male" attitude was too much for me) which was something she had never done before. She was trying to find a Little Bo Peep costume for my sister, and should she try to look online for a store that would carry it? I told her no, just call up a costume shop, but she insisted the internet would be easier.

She then typed in "Little Bo Peep+Sheep" into a search engine. I can only guess what the search turned up.

She wound up calling a costume shop after all.

Hello - I've thought I've seen my share of problems. But...

We have an older computer running Sco-Unix as the o/s, as one of our mainframes. On the o/s, we have it set to a maximum of 32 users. The company refuses to put more money into it, as we will be moving to the Windows 2000 environment soon.

We have a total of 42 users that could try to get on the system at once. You do the math. At least once a month, I get complaints that "I can't log into Unix!!". Ususally this means there's at least one or two people logged into the system more than once. I've told them time and time again, only one log-in at a time allowed. But do they listen???? NO!! I just had one person logged in 2x on their computer, then logged in again on another computer. AAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!

Thanks for letting me vent.

I came across an interesting tale 1st hand.

A co-worker came into my office, and said he was trying to Start / Find / Files, and type in the name of documents he was trying to locate.

However, when he clicked on View, and pressed the Details option, if there were any files listed, they would disappear. But the files would show up if we went to View, then Large or Small Icons, or the List feature. Interesting...

I saw that when I changed View mode to Details, there would be just a grey bar across the top, right above where the files are supposed to be. However, the grey bar had no wording on it (File / In Folder / Size / etc). By thinking about it for awhile, I dragged the beginning of the grey bar to the right, and low and behold, some details started coming out.

Someone had played a joke on him, and drug the 5 'title bars' over to the left so you couldn't see any anything.

Makes you wonder about some people!!

I worked at a medium-sized print/imaging shop a few years back, setting up and troubleshooting equipment. There was one other guy there who did the same work, only without the benefit of a clue. My most memorable story involves the time he came to me, saying he was setting up a new scan workstation and asking if we had an adapter which he could use to attach a scanner to a serial port.

Now right away a "serial scanner" should have set off my alert, but I was busy with other things and didn't want to deal with his issue right then, so I found him a parallel-to-serial adapter. 2 minutes later he's back, says he needs *another* adapter, this one with pins instead of holes on both ends, because the one I gave him before couldn't plug into the serial port. At this point I gave up and looked at what exactly he was doing.

Wait for it...

This doof was attempting to attach: scanner, connected to an a parallel-serial adapter, connected to now this male-to-male serial adapter... to the VIDEO CARD, where the monitor is attached!

Seems he'd pulled a spare PC out of the back with the I/O card removed, didn't realize this, and was working on connecting the scanner before he attached a monitor. God knows how he'd attempt to retro-fit THAT onto it!

I've been in computers and networking since 1986, in electronics and radio since 1977, and a Unix admin (professionally) since 1999. With that many years in multiple technical fields, you can bet I've heard some pretty wild things (some of which have already made it to TechTales). However, this most recent statement had me wondering what the frell I was thinking when I signed up.

Specifically: I currently work Unix support for a big aerospace company. We got a trouble ticket through our reporting system today that said, and I quote:

"...He states the machine is not on. Customer requests someone to come out and turn the machine on..."

As it turns out, this particular machine had been disconnected and powered off to prepare it for moving to another location. However, think about the above: What kind of mentality is not even willing to so much as push a single button?

Major nitwit just called in. She wants to install our software. Firstly, She has to run it. Ok, this isn't too bad as some people don't know how to navigate round a computer. I don't mind helping.

Me: Ok, browse to the set-up icon on the CD.

Luser: how do I do that?

Me: How do you normally do it? (I was actually going to try and teach her and first wanted her to tell me what she thinks)

Luser: I normally double click on my computer and then double click on the CD drive.

Me: (Yeah!! wicked!! So you know how!..here we go, another moron.) Then do that.

[Software installation starts, it say it's gonna install and to click ok to continue or cancel to quit]

Luser: Ok it says to click OK or cancel...what do I click..?

Me: What does it say?

[I'm now going to give you the text which I got her to read out aloud...]

'This program will install XXXXX onto your computer or network. In order to proceed you will need to consider the following:

You will need to telephone the XXXX Help Desk later in this program for a code number which will allow you to operate the software. Is there a telephone close to your screen?

Although you are able to leave most of the XXXXX data on the CD, a quantity does need to be copied to a hard disk. Check that you know in advance where you will install the software.

The amount of blah blah blah (ok, can’t be arsed to type but you get the idea…anyway this is the important bit)

If you wish to proceed press OK, or Cancel to quit the installation.’

Silence............

Me: Hello

Luser: Hello?

Me: [mute-string of curses & expletives] Um..Ok.. [sarcastic/simpleton tone] so-I-think-you-need-to-click-OK.

Luser: Ok done that...and it continued from there without too much more moronity(?).

She read it once, she couldn't work it out. got her to read out the whole damn text and she STILL had to ask. I don't mind helping people but for %*&$ sake!! I refuse to think for them.

Can somebody shoot this woman?

I work for the tech support desk of a major bank. During the 'merger', regions had to be converted one at a time and there were always problems. After a particularly difficult converson the (non-tech) staff celibrated with balloons and confetti,,, metal confetti,, shaped like cows and fish (don't ask). Despite being warned not to toss that stuff near the computers, they did anyway and a few pieces fell into my keyboard. They got stuck between the keys and were difficult to get out. My phone rang while I was trying to get the last one out and after I said my getting (and before I realized what I was saying next) I asked my caller:

"Can I put you on hold for moment? I'm trying to get a cow out of my keyboard."

Just got off a call with a guy who's Outlook crashed and when he tried to get back in he gets the usual "Login credintials supplied are invalid.". As I was assisting him he asked me "Is there a problem with Microsoft?". Oh, but yes, there is, sir....

Client wanted my company to make a change to the website. In the drop-down box where you select your country, he wanted us to add two entries: Holland and The Netherlands.

Client couldn't log into website, so I asked him what kind of browser he was using. He thought about it for a moment and proudly announced "eBay!"

A couple of our upper-level people managed to trigger the 'goner' virus on the day it started appearing. One of them triggered it again the next morning! And he was one of the later ones to trigger it the day before, so he had to have had at least 5-10 copies of it showing in his in-box when he decided to open it. And this is one which does not auto-run; you have to double-click the attachment to run it.

I got the following request: A lady from 'Z' called, she tries to print our form 'xyz' and it keeps asking for a manual paper feed - why?" I do know that 'Z' is an insurance company, but I don't know their id/password, or which product she's accessing, or which line-of-business the form is under, or ... Actually that one came in late yesterday, with a followup this morning saying the id/pw was 'in the files'. And it is - for each of the dozen or so 'Z' subsidiaries we have contracts with. Someone else here finally figured out which one, and we logged in to try it and discovered she isn't supposed to have access to the form she was trying to print!

A few weeks ago I got a call via the helpdesk from a user who was having problems with her computer. The helpdesk being the helpdesk, this was as much information as I got. Not being particularly busy that day, I decided to have a stroll up there and take a look at it. It turned out that she had a terminal, and the screen was covered with random characters. There were very few terminals still being used, but with nothing functional ever being thrown away we had more spares than you could shake a stick at. This being the case I didn't try too hard to fix it.

I pulled the plugs, and told her that it was dead and that I'd bring her another one in a few minutes. At this news she looked as though she was about to cry, and protested that she needed that one as "It's got all my work on it!" Explanations fell on confused ears, and in the end I reassured her that I'd make sure I copied her work onto the replacement terminal.

One of my users had put in a helpdesk call for e-mail problems. The next morning I went over to her workstation.

I started to boot up the computer when one of her co-workers came by at which time I asked her "Do you know if Ellen is having e-mail problems?" having a puzzeled look on her face she respones "Why...., no, I don't think so." I then turned back to the workstation and slowly turned back to her and asked again, "Are you sure that she's not having any e-mail problems?" she answered " Oh..., I thought you asked if she was having female problems!" We both started to laugh so hard, thinking of what was said. E-mail and female problems?

I work for a large printer manufacturer. We mail out physical print samples from each of our printers, so that the customers can see the quality of what our printers can do, much like the demonstration printers you can do test prints in the retail stores.

CUSTOMER: Ya, can you fax or e-mail me those?

ME: Sure, would you like me to mail those to you also, incase you don't like the faxed ones?

I get a kick out of people who call thier computer tower a "modem" or "hard drive".

*ring*

Computer Services, how may I help you?

)I'm trying to get the cover off of my modem can you help me?

Sure, flip it over and there should be some screws on the bottom.

)No, its too heavy and all these wires are connected to it, I am not flipping it over.

Why do you want to take the cover off your modem...are you having problems dialing out?

)I'm trying to install a CD burner.

Internal or external?

)It says it is internal.

Well you need to unscrew the screws on the back of your tower, and take the case cover off.

)In the back of the modem?

Yes, in the back of the modem.

*rolls eyes*

I do tech support for a major company that makes printers(among other things), anyway this is a call that I took around the time of the Anthrax scares in the US and in Europe. Hardly a "funny call, but here it is anyway.

m = me

c = customer

m: thank you for calling *****, etc. Do you have a reference number?

c: (interrupting me) No I don't, this is a medical emergency, can you help me?

m: I'll do what I can, what's the problem?

c: I came in today to change the toner cartridge on the *printer name*, and under the toner cartridge I was removing, I found a small pile of white dust. Is this a normal thing to find in the machine? Do you think it's anthrax, should I clear the building?

m: (SH*TE) Hold on a minute and I'll double check.

----I realise that given the circumstances, listening to Pan-Pipes on hold wasn't exactly what the customer wanted, but I wasn't sure if white powder was common in the machine as it was very old, and I wasn't an expert on that particular model, or any other model according to some!----

m: White dust or powder isn't common in that machine, the only thing that would make sense is if it was black powder, which could be leaky toner. The only explanation I could give is that you're using poor quality paper, which could leave some white powderey residue in the machine as it is passed under the toner cartridge.

c: So you can't tell me for definite that this is a normal thing to find?

m: unfortunatly not, I can tell you that it is uncommon, but I can't tell you that it is definitly a dangerous substance, it may be harmless paper residue, but we can't say for definite.

c: Ok thanks anyway, but I think we'll have to clear the area anyway as a precaution.

Scary!!!!

A colleague called me the other day. She was unable to boot her PC - it kept reporting that various Windows files could not be found. I went up to her office and sure enough various VXDs, DLLs and EXEs could not be found. I booted in to a Command Prompt and found the problem. The Windows folder was completely missing! I investigated further and discovered that the Windows folder intact but in another subdirectory on the PC! To avoid having to reinstall Windows and all the other applications I took a gamble - I removed the hard drive, put it into another Windows PC as a slave and used Explorer to drag-and-drop the Windows folder back to it's correct location. Amazingly, when the machine was reassembled, it worked perfectly.

What I believe happened was that a slip of the mouse in Explorer moved Windows into a different folder (they were adjacent in the tree) but why she didn't get any errors or sharing violations is beyond me!

Hello,

I do technical support chat for a living, sometimes I am tempted to call these people and just to see if they actually speak this way in real life. Below is a chat I had the other day which was unbelievable. The names, email addresses and URL's have been changed,however you may wish to edit it further if you do deem it worthy of posting. This person was about as sharp as a marble. so here it is:

ME: Thank you for using Technical Chat. My name is Debbie, may I have the account information please?

joe@stupid.com: HI MY NAME IS JANE SHARP HOW ARE YOU DOING.

ME: I am doing well, may we have the rest of the information please?

joe@stupid.com: LET YOU KNOW HIS NAME IS JOE STUPID BUT I NEED YOUR HELP FOR HIM USER ID OF joe@stupid.com ALSO PLEASE YOU SEND ME QUICK RIGHT NOW I WILL LOOKING ALIKE NEW OR SAME BECAUSE OF THERE STILL TRY MAKE SURE HIS ACCOUNT STILL SHOULD RECEIVE BY EMAIL NOT WORK .

ME: I'm sorry, we will also need to have the area code and phone number as well please.

joe@stupid.com: SURE MY TELEPHONE NUMBER IS 310 555-5555 TDD ALSO MY NAME IS RHONDA SHARP AND MY ADDRESS IS XXXXXX and his acconut number is XXXXXX

ME: Thank you, may I ask who I am speaking with please, and what technical issue can we help you with today?

joe@stupid.com: OKAY SMILE I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HOW I CAN SET UP OF EMAIL BECAUSE THERE NOT WORK OR NOT OPEN ANYTHING INFORMATION ?

ME: What is the name of the email program you use to check your mail?

joe@stupid.com: YES BUT THERE NOT WORKING BECAUSE OF I TRY RESCREACH OF E-MAIL I WONDER ASK YOU QUESTION IF YOU CAN SEND EMAIL HUH QQ

ME: We will need to know the name of the email program you are having problems with in order to help you.

ME: Are you still with us?

joe@stupid.com: HIS NAME IS JOE STUPID BECAUSE OF joe@stupid.com SHOULD BE SEND FROM E-MAIL BUT WHERE I CAN LOOKING FOR EMAIL SOMETIME NAME OF SOMEISP BUT THERE joe@stupid.com

ME: Do you use Outlook Express to send and receive email?

joe@stupid.com: OKAY HOW I CAN SET UP OF EMAIL FROM OUTLOOK EXPRESS RIGHT.

ME: We can send you information on how to properly configure Outlook Express if you like?

joe@stupid.com: yes ma'ma please thank u

NE: Solution: http://www.tigerwrestling.net

ME: Was this information helpful? May I help you with anything else?

ME: I'm sorry, other customers are waiting with technical questions. I'll need to discontinue this session now.

Sincerly,

Debbie Astley

So, I'm not a tech supporter, but sometimes I help my sister a little with her computer. About four years ago, my parents decided that we should get our own computer. ONE computer. Well, everything was ok so far, but she called me several times because she had dragged her taskbar to the right side of the screen. one year ago, szhe got her own computer. She uses it daily, mostly for internet and she even designed her own homepage. Yesterday, she asked me if I could help he rwith her computer becauser everything was bigger now and she hadn't changed anything. I said sure, went to her compi, opened the menue and asked her how the resolution had been before. She told me she had already checked resolution and that wasn't the problem, but sure enough, the resolution was at 640*480. I changed it to 1024*768 and asked her if it was ok now.

Her: No, it wasn't like this before.

Me: Sure it was.

Her: No it wasn't.

Me: Yes it was.

Her: Oh, yes yuo are right.

Some people never learn, do they?

Radio

Today, we were both at my father's office. I turned on the radio, and at the same time, the screen saver kicked in.

Her: What have you done?!

Me: I turned on the radio.

Her: So, and why has the screen gone dark?

Me: The screensaver, stupid!

She didn't believe me, but when she moved the mouse, the screen misteriuously sprang back to life. HELP!

I have been learning about computers for a few years now and sometimes people will ask me questions. I was at a friend's home one day when she got a phone call. It was a friend of hers and he wanted to ask her husband a question. Her husband is a computer support person for a cell phone company and is very knowledgable about computers. He wasn't home so she gave the call to me. I asked the person what the problem was and he says the following:

P: I just bought a new printer and I'm trying to install it. I'm getting a box asking a question.

Me: What is the question?

P: Do you want Windows to make this printer your default printer? Yes or No?

Me: click on Yes.

P: Are you sure?

Me: Yes. That just means that Windows will automatically print to that printer.

P: Okay, thanks.

_________________

I used to work at a new hotel and I was working at the computer one day and the printer wouldn't print. The clerk said that something was wrong with it, for some reason it just wouldn't print and it hadn't printed for a few days. I went into the printer settings to verify that it was there and the drivers had been set up. The printer was there and everything looked okay, but there was a print job in the list. I checked it and sure enough "pause print" had been checked. Apparently someone had been printing a personal file from Word and had paused it, probably when the boss showed up : ) I cancelled the print job and when the printer worked my boss thought I was a genius!

___________

I worked for the same hotel boss at another business that she owned. She had brought a printer from home after the printer at the office had died but it wasn't working and she didn't know why. The administrator asked me to fix the problem. I checked the settings and the printer had been plugged in but no drivers had been set up - Windows didn't even know it was there. I found the driver disk and once I set up the printer it worked.

This same boss wanted to know why the sound didn't work on the computer. I crawled under the desk and plugged the speaker wire into the hole.

I'm currently the secretary at a local church but I've been used to troubleshoot various computer problems already. Just yesterday I showed the pastor how to make a new folder on the desktop to save a floppy file into. It's simple little things that people have problems with. I've taught my 7yo son how to change the screen saver, so if he can do it anyone can!

My husband called me at work one day. He's on the internet surfing and he says, "Honey, a box is at the top of the screen and it says, "Urgent! Your internet connection is not optimized!"

I reply, "Dear, did a sound accompany this? Can you still move around the screen? Is the message flashing?"

He says "No, Yes, Yes."

I say, "Honey, it's a banner ad. Ignore it."

He called me again later on.

"Honey, another box came up and it says "You have an Urgent message".

I ask the same questions and then I give the same answer.

He called me again a few days ago. I had been printing checks from Quicken and told the program to close but didn't hang around to make sure it was closed. I left the computer on and went to work. He called me when he got home and said "You left the computer on and there is a box up. It won't let me do anything. It says "Do you want to backup your Quicken file at this time? Yes or No."

I say, "Honey, I was using Quicken before I left and it just wants to know if I want to do a backup now. Click on No".

He clicks and says the message is gone.

Just clearing out our helpdesk "help@myisp.com" address and found this beauty:

"My Email jams each time at 2 out of 7 and will not deliver the others has happened several times. Not sure what to do"

Ok, not a major drama, just go into our web based e-mail and clear out the 20MB BMP attachment that your dopey inlaws have mailed you, but my question is, just how was she supposed to receive my advice? Telepathy?

I worked tech support for a manufacturer of pc's who supplied a lot of the TV offers. These PC's were sold to new users who knew nothing about a pc. I had one person tell me that the only reason they bought their PC was it had the ability to play DVD's. Incredible to believe they paid between 1500 and 2000 dollars to watch DVD?s on a 19 inch screen while their 40 inch big screen TV sat in the living unused because it did not have a 200 player. The point of all this of course it that most of the pc problems that I dealt with are an "interface" problem, typically the interface between the mouse and the chair.

I was trying to help my mom figure out why she couldn't print out pictures I sent her, and even after taking a class on Windows at the local senior center, I couldn't make heads or tails out of her description. ("I know why I can't print. It has a black dot on it!" WTF??)

I had a sneaking suspicion it was my fault. I had changed her default viewer to a demo version of a program I had downloaded the last time I visited and had a hunch I had forgotten to change it back. Trying to confirm my suspicion, however, was quite an adventure. First, I told her to open her email program and the email I had sent with the attachment.

Her: I can't do that.

Me: Why not?

Her: I'm not on the Internet!

I eventually managed to convince her it was okay for her to look at her emails any time she felt like it. She's had this computer for over a year and never even tried! I had set the thing up to auto-connect when the program was opened, so the little box popped up asking her to select the service she wished to use. I tell her to click cancel and hear the sound of the modem trying to dial out. I tell her again to click cancel and she wants to know IF I'M SURE!!!

Okay, she finally opens the email and the .jpg file. I ask her to read me what it says at the top of the screen. After she reads off three words, I know I was right about having stupidly failed to remove the program and tell her that's all I need to know. What does she do? She keeps reading, of course, including the entire spiel on how the demo expires after 30 days and the benefits of registration. I break in and tell her she can stop, I don't need to know all that. Then, the hunt for the elusive black X in the upper right corner is on! I had no idea the upper right corner could be so difficult to find, but she finally manages. Almost immediately, the box pops up again. I ask her if there are any buttons at the bottom and what they say....so of course, she starts reading the whole thing from the beginning again.

We finally manage to shut the friggin' thing down and I discover that this has been happening EVERY time I sent her a picture. The popup boxes confused her, so in order to get rid of them, she REBOOTED. EVERY TIME!!! Why didn't she call me when this started happening? Well, she had to be on the Internet to open her email, so the phone line was busy and she couldn't call me! And of course, by the time she got offline, the error was gone and everyone knows you can't possibly write anything down, you have to memorize it all!!!!

Yeah, I had to actually tell her to TAKE NOTES when she learned something. She was trying to use the excuse that she was too old and her memory wasn't good enough for her to remember everything! I reminded her of when I was in college and said I could never have gotten through without taking notes. She had never realized that and was amazed! I wonder if her head rattles when she shakes it?

This was about 5 years ago in the days or Win 3.11. This was a call from an external customer using our EDI based e-commerce system to place orders. We didn't officially support this app for the clients but most of them were too cheap to pay for support from the company they bought their software from. So this was strictly 'goodwill' work, and a major pain in my neck.

This call was from our smallest client, they had no support of their own and often called on PC matters, not really related to the software we 'helped' them with. And it's fair to say that the girl calling had never rated highly on my support-ometer.

Me:M

Her:C

C: ::description of some problem or other

M: Ok, click on the red icon that looks like a telephone.

C: What do you mean click?

M: You know move the cursor with the mouse until its over the icon and click the button on the mouse.

C: I haven't got a mouse.

M: ::Brief description of how that thing on her desk is called a mouse.

C: I haven't got a mouse

M: ::More brief descriptions and a suggestion that she looks under the desk etc.

There then followed a 4-5 minute conversation in which she became quite angry as I clearly didn't believe her and thought she was thick. I had always thought she was uniquely computer illiterate, but was amazed she seemed to be regressing rather than learning.

In a twist on the usual 'Can I speak to your supervisor?', I asked to speak to HER supervisor, who I'd spoken to before and I knew that in the absence of any support, looked after their systems.

M: Can you find the mouse click on the @@@@@@ icon?

Him: There's no mouse.

M: Pardon.

It turns out that, because all his staff had to monitor three alarm terminals as well as use a PC, he'd decided to make the place look more professional by having all the terminals/computers boxed and panelled up into the walls so it looked like a control room. And of course, the mouse cable no longer stretched so he had the poor girl using Win 3.11 without a mouse.

Moral: The user isn't always lying/stupid/blind.

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

PS having supported numerous users for 9 months on Dell Latitudes, a model I liked a lot, I finally managed to persuade the company to switch my old Thinkpad for a Dell.

Like the proverbial dog with two dicks, I was happily unwrapping, setting up etc this shiny new computer, on both docking station and stand alone. I realised, off the docking station, it had the number lock on and I couldn't find the num lock key. With the num lock on laptops using ordinary keys as numbers, this meant I could no longer log-in to NT4 as certain letters were mapped as numbers. Now I'd been doing support for quite a few years, and I don't call anyone unless the things really broke. So after at least an hour of fruitless keyboard gazing later - Yes I even opened the manual - I called Dell.

Yes, it was the key marked Num Lock next to the one marked scroll Lock, which has somehow evaded my field of vision.

Believe me after years of cursing while holding the mute button down because users were so thick, this was a humbling experience, not helped by the fact that I KNEW I was asking the stupidest question the tech would have heard for a long time. So remember - go easy on those users, it can happen to you.

Having done computer help desk support for more years than I care to admit to, I was surprised when a lady began a call with, “I need a new printer cable; the cable is bad, and I need a new one.”

“And the cable is bad how, again?” I inquired.

“Well,” she continued, “the printer used to print just fine, and then we had to move it across the room; and now it won’t print; has to be the cable.”

Since cables can be slightly different, I asked her to describe hers so that I could get her the correct new one. I had already decided to talk to her for a moment before I pressed for any trouble-shooting.

And she very succinctly described a standard printer cable, right down to the connectors on both ends.

“That’s a pretty good description,” I commented.

“It should be; I’ve got the cable here in my lap.”

“And where was the cable when you were trying to get the printer to print before?”

“On my desk.”

After a long pause, I hear, “You don’t think that could be the problem, do you?”

“Could be,” I suggested as I suppressed a growing desire to burst into laughter.

“I’ll try the cable, and call you back.”

(click)

Funny though: She never did call back.

I work for a electronics store that seems to be everywhere and begins with R and ends with K. This isn't realy computer related but here we go...

1) Customer walks into store looking for an accessory for their cell phone. I ask them what type of phone. Customer replies "I don't know. Should I get it out of my car to show you?" DUH..I don't work for Ms Cleo...

2) I will approach a woman with a confused look on her face. She is looking for something for her husband and has no clue what it is. I try to pry the info out of her, but she has no idea. So either she calls hubby or just buys something or just goes home and sends hubby in to get item. DUH..Again..I'm not Ms Cleo....

Ever see one of your company's in-house programmers call tech support to ask "What's a JPEG?" It's truly a terrifiying sight.

My Sister was having problems with her printer, so I said I would take it away and check it...

Later the same Day I got a call from her mobile phone -

Her: I need that printer back NOW!

Me: What's wrong ?

Her: My computer won't start without it

Me: Is there an error message ?

Her: Something about system disk.

Me: Oh, Just eject the floppy & press the space bar...

Her: But I don't use floppies

Me: Well read me the message...

Her: I can't, I'm not at the computer

Me: Well when you are ring me...

Her: But I NEED the Printer...

Me: The Printer will not stop your computer from starting...

Her: Sorry - Have to end the call as I'm pulling up outside your house... (Her Husband was driving at the time!)

Anyway she comes in and the above is repeated, I end up keeping the printer, after asking her to call me when she gets home...

Note: I do not get any feed back about this, but about 4 days later I am over at there house, and the computer that would not start is working......

P.S. Here printer was faulty - it was an antique - Epson 500 inkjet - colour head was faulty (and I do mean the head - they had fitted a new colour ink cartridge) told her it was cheaper to buy a new one...

P.P.S. When do Relatives come into Season, and where can I buy a hunting Licence ?

This happened to my buddy Chris, credit him for the story.

An old workstation had to get DX'd. The workstation came early morning, after about an hour was ready for delivery.

The old workstation was still in use bei our lady DAU.

Chris: Good Morning, we will exchange your old workstation with this new one.

DAU: help yourself, don't let me bother you (lady keeps on working in her old workstation)

Chris: excuse me, but we need to take your old workstation and will exchange it with THIS new one.

DAU: Aha, very good! (keeps on working on her old workstation)

Chris: ehemhem.

DAU: just let me know whenever you are finished(keeps on working without missing a beat)

Chris: listen lady, we will disconnect the workstation you are working on and then connect this new workstation. This is a direct exchange.

DAU: oh, there is no other way?

Chris: sorry, that is the ONLY way to exchange them. Please save your data, exit all aplications and shut down the workstation. (wait while lady DAU starts to move)

Me: I see that you still have some aplications open, Please exit them.

Our lady DAU saves her doc, leaves all apps open, stands up and exits the room. At the door, turns around perplexed and asks: why only me, shouldn't my colleages also leave the room?

This happened to me a few years ago while working for a White box OEM. This call took place during the days of tx motherboards and p1's

Caller- I picked my computer from repair today and it is worse than when i brought it in.

me- What was the problem you brought the system in for and what is it doing now.

Caller- My modem didn't work and now the computer wont even turn on.

me- Can you hit the power swich for me and tell me what happens please?

Caller- Ok, but you people messed this thing up. (sound of printer cycling in backround). Nothing happens

Me- Is there lights on the front of the system?

Caller- no

Me- Ok I know this is going to sound stupid but is the tower plugged in to the wall?

Caller- No, not into the wall its on a surge thingy.

Me- is the surge thingy on?

Caller- Yes im not stupid!

Me- Can you turn the power off then on one more time please?

Caller- Ok, but this isn't going to help you people messed up my machine. (sound of printer cycling in backround.)

Me- Where is the power swich on your system located

Caller- on the surge thingy of corse where else.

Me- (supressing laughfter) Can you press the button on the front of you machine please?

Caller- What button?

me- The one labled Power

Caller- (sound of tower starting up) *click*

I still get a smile when i think of that one