Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I work in technical support for a small ISP with about 5,000 customers. As part of my job I guide new users through the internet setup over the phone. After setting up a new dial-up user, I let her go so that she could try to get online(the customer had only one phone line.) About 10 minutes later I get a call from the same lady, who by this time is livid because "her 'world wide web' won't start up". I ask her what error message she receives when trying to connect. She says "No Dial Tone". I explain to her that she should check to make sure that the wall outlet is functioning properly by plugging a phone in to see if she gets a dial tone, and if she does, she should make sure that her cord connecting her computer to the wall jack was connected properly. She says, "What cord? I don't have any cords!" I then tell her that she must have a phone cord connecting her modem to the phone jack in the wall in order to get online. She said, "well, I don't have one of those. I guess I'm just gonna have to go to Wal-Mart to get one."

Ahhh.......arent' customers fun?

I am employed as a tech support rep for a software company that I choose not to name,supporting video and photo editing software.A customer calls in one day,suggesting that the disk he received was defective and would not install on his computer,and wasn`t willing to pay(we charge for technical support) for something that was clearly our problem and not his.He therefore wanted a replacement or as he threatened "I will return the product to the store for a refund".

I asked him,"do you receive any errors?" to which he replied,"no it just hangs".

So I asked him if he had another computer,on which he could install to narrow down the problem.He said,yes,then proceeded to tell me that he already installed the software on that computer and it works great,but he cannot get it on this one and therefore is an indication of a bad disk.Did I laugh? No,I did not.If I could however,I would have loved to slap some common sense into this guy!!

I am a supervisor for a major ISP. We have a customer that calls in EVERY week. Here are some of the issues...

She has her firewall settings so high that she can't get to very many sites. She calls in, we walk her through how to change the setting (and, we don't support firewalls I might add). She then hangs up, puts it back to the high setting, then calls back and says "I can't get on the internet." One Saturday, this went on for about 2 hours. She then wanted us to send out a technician, who again did the same thing (and, for a $50.00 charge) and she called back after he left.

Another call I got from her this passed week... "your email server was down and it caused a problem with my computer by blowing out my NIC." WHAAAAT? We sent a tech out there... the customer didn't have the correct drivers installed and was having problems unzipping a file. Another $50.00. She really is dillusional.

Me : hello this is *******, thank you for calling ****. How may I help you.

User : How come my pages are loading slow.

Me: Have you restarted the pc since the issue began.

User: No.

Me: Please close out all windows and return to your desktop screen please.

User : (Silence for about 3-4 minutes)Noise in the background.

Me : hello

User :Sorry for the wait, im back.

Me: What were you doing.

User: I closed all my Windows as you suggested.

Me: Are you referring to the windows open on your pc or the glass windows in your house.

User: The glass windows.

Me: Laughing out loud ( I know, not proper)..

User: I left the screen door open, does that matter.

Me: No that should not matter.

User: Oh its raining out and I figured the humidity was causing the issue.

I had a call from user who was having trouble with her computer running slowly.

User: My computer is running very slowly lately. Is there anything you can do to help?

Me: When is the last time that you have completely turned off your computer?

User: Oh no, we don't do that....

Me: (I think I know where this is going) How long have you had your computer?

User: About a year and a half...

hmmm... Have to love calls like these :)

I do tech support for a large Isp in Aus...

And I recieved a call not so long ago:

Me: "Opening Spiel"

Caller: My username is *******

Me: And you Name?

Caller: Mrs Jane Smith (Not callers name but just putting a name in)

Me: Ok, Jane, how may I help you?

Jane: I just signed up and it's asking me for a password to connect!

Me: Ok, just type in the password to your account in the password field and click "Connect"

Jane: Well that's the thing, I don't remember my password, the last person I talked to had to transfer me to Accounts to get my username...

Me:*rolls eyes* (This is one bad customer)

Me: Ok what I'll have to do is change your password, is that ok?

Jane: You will do that?

Me: Yes Jane, I can do that for you, I just need to verify some details...

Details verified

Me: Ok your new password is *Password*

Jane: I DON'T WANT THAT PASSWORD...

Me: Why not?

Jane: Well now you know my password!!!

ME MUTES AND GOES INSANE)

This one played 'ticket pong' for about 3 days....until

someone got the customer on the phone and asked the one question that needed to be answered....(and got called a jerk when he tried to explain 'it doesn't quite work that way').

Customer complaint was 'getting recorded announcement in Spanish when calling cell phone in Mexico'...the LEC in Mexico reported back that the phone was out of its service area and not responding. The customer was confident that the phone was in fact turned on: he had it right there on his desk...in Portland, Oregon.

Please please please....when you're thinking of something to buy Grandma from Christmas, DO NOT decide to get her a computer. Most grandparents have a problem using a remote control, much less a mouse. I just spent 45 minutes talking to an old lady in Dayton, OH trying to type in her username! She couldn't figure out how to get her cursor in the fields to type in information, she couldn't double click anything, she typed out symbols (ie username at isp dot com)...I was ready to jump out of a Window! She called back later and complained that our software doesn't let you see what you typed in for your password (I think she was talking about Dialup Networking and Internet Explorer...if that was my software, I wouldn't be listing to her whine on the phone). She couldn't understand that your password gets blanked out for security purposes. She said "What do I want security for???? I live alone????" She's probably against door locks too. Geeze!

I worked for a golf company. Although my job was not technical, I quickly became the "tech guru" of my office. As such, I somehow became the technical support for software that we provided to golf courses for members to post their scores and then e-mail them to the central computer. This software was creakingly ancient and we worked hard to make it as brain-dead easy as possible to install and use, so no one would ask us technical questions like, "What is DOS?" and "How come I can't use my mouse?"

One day, I got a call from a gentleman who worked for a golf course in Palm Springs. He had just purchased a new computer with a touch screen monitor, and he needed help installing the software. I explained to him that the software did not utilize a touch screen's capabilities, but the monitor should still work to display data. (This software was developed before Windows meant anything more than "shiny panes of clear glass.") He huffily told me that the members of *his* club would not use a keyboard, and that was why he had bought a special monitor.

Deciding to finish that argument after we had the software installed, I asked him what the problem was. He said the instructions on the disk indicated that it needed to be put in Drive A, but he couldn't find it. "Okay, look at the tower... look at the *box*. Do you see a slot?"

He saw many slots, but none of them would accept the disk, and really, he needed to use this as a touch screen monitor because the members of his club would not touch a keyboard.

I asked if I could put him on hold and put my head down on the desk and started to laugh. Apparently, he had bought *just* the fancy monitor. He probably thought that the people at the computer store were trying to rip him off by selling him stuff he didn't need, like a hard drive, keyboard and mouse. I walked to my boss's office, explained the situation, and begged to transfer the call to him.

They decided to fax their information in to us rather than sending it through the computer system. Wise choice.

Pegasus mail - allows you to choose the filename for your address books, or just creates a name like 'addr1234' if you don't specify. Most lusers don't specify. So you end up with, say, an addressbook called "My Friends" for which the file is called 'addr1234.pmr'.

'Doris' had recently changed job within the organisation, and need to give 'Dot', her replacement, her address books. Me, IT Tech, sends out explicit instructions to Doris as to how to find out the FILEname of each book, and to tell me those filenames, and I'll transfer files for her. (One doesn't push too hard - finding filenames is a struggle, actually being able to send those to another person is nigh impossible).

So, of course, what I get back from Doris is "Dot needs all addressbooks except Personal and Management" - 'personal' and 'management' of course being the book names, not the filenames.

Wonder what she thought those explicit, quite long, and probably reasonably complicated (to her) instructions were for? Makes you wonder how dense Doris thinks some of our people are if they need long instructions just to know what their addressbooks that they themselves created and named, are called.

But then, let's not dwell on what the users might think. That's a dangerous field to cross. ;)

Some things I've learned from the various students at the two tertiary institutes I've worked at:

If your file doesn't show up under an MS app's recently used file list under 'File', your file has gone missing and you have lost all your work.

Something called 'Word' is a file storage area - "Where did you save it to?" "I saved it in Word".

Walls are things which prevent through-access. They are not sources of information. 'Posters' is a mythical term.

A room divided into Mac/PC halves by a windowed wall with two large doorways (and no actual doors) is now two rooms, hence the "machines on the back row" only applies to six machines, not the other six through the doorway.

Listening to CDs in a lab is a far more crucial thing to get going after an untested and rushed migration to Win2k than, say, software that is taught in classes that started two weeks ago.

Because some divisions copy the material on a networked drive onto a website for at-home access, all students nationwide can access the entire networked drive from any PC.

"The computer doesn't work, why don't you have things that work in this stupid place" with no indication as to which computer, where, or the manner of "doesn't work", is a valid help request.

Lecturers are gods. If they promise something, the IT department will deliver. Even if the lecturers were wrong.

Ugh, enough for now. I suppose there's not too much difference between students and general lusers. Maybe just the attitude (instead of getting paid to be there, like employees, they have paid to be there, so maybe they expect different things).

I do email support for a large Cable Internet provider in North America. We have a site at which users can fill out an online form to request support on a given issue. Here are two different requests that I have received.

1: (I have cut the ends off this to keep it short)

For the last two days I have trouble keeping a connection. I have unplugged the system and restarted and then it works for about 10 minutes. I also have tried rubbing two nickles together and that keeps me connected for about 15 minutes. Obviously it is working now as I am writing this message to you, thank goodness for nickles. If other people are having this problem, please let me know. If it's just me, please let me know I'm living under a cloud!

* So, nickles gave him 50% more time. I wonder what quarters would do! And, how is he typing if hes rubbing nickels together?

2: (The fields have been modified to protect the customer)

Name: ********

Phone: ********

Email address: login@ourcompany.com

Issue: I have forgotten the password to my email account. Could you email it to me?

Thank you in advance, Jeff

* Where do you want me to send it to? the email address that you dont know the password for? a lot of good its gonna do ya when you cant check your email!!

I work for a mid-sized ISP based in PA. I get some tech tales worthy calls but this one takes the cake. This woman calls up, and proceeds to tell me very calmly that her computer is typing words by itself in Outlook Express. She did not sound upset or panicked in the least, just curious why it would do that. First though off the top of my head, trojan. So I ask are you connected? She said yes. So I tell her disconnect. She does and its still doing it she says. I'm kinda boggled, so I ask her if she has antivirus software. She does, and she updated today and ran a full scan, no viruses. So I'm way out of my league here, I say ma'am I've honestly never heard of this, and I'm going to have to suggest you call your comp manufacturer. I do ask her to please call me back and tell me what happened. So a while later, she calls asks for me ands says "I have a voice typing program and my mic was picking up bits of what I was saying." I have to give major applause to the tech who figured that out, cuz I was all sorts of stumped! Awsome site btw. :)

This happened many years ago in school.

We used to hang out in the Mac plus lab at college because the rest of the school was not safe for anyone who knew how to use a computer.

Anyway, me an a mate are sitting at the Macs, (with another Mac between us) when this girl walks in.

She sits down at the spare Mac, opens her case, pulls out her pencil case. (We all used the hard plastic carry cases holding 10 3.5 inch disks)

Out of the pencil case (one of those zip tartan jobs), she pulls a 3.5" disk, proceeds the shake off the pencil shavings and clear liquid paper glue (the tube had exploded in the pencil case) and proceeded to try to put it into the Mac.

Both me an my friend dived for the disk, thankfully stopping her before she could destroy the disk drive.

Her excuse?

The glue was clear, so it should have still worked?

Right?

OK folks, please indulge me for a moment while I vent. I know the people who need to see this won't, but it will make me feel better...

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

I'm in tech support. My job is to assist customers having problems with their cable modem service. In general, I love what I do, and it brings a lot of satisfaction. However, there are some things that customers do that are not particularly helpful. Towards that end, I've taken the liberty of listing some of those things here so you will know what not to do. Enjoy...

1. Please don't start the call off by asking, "Is the internet down?". There are millions of computers all around the world on the internet, and even if our system is having a problem, that doesn't mean that the entire internet is down. Just tell us what is going on with you and your computer.

2. Please try to remember that I am here to deal with cable modem connectivity issues; I cannot assume responsibility for your entire computer and/or network. If you are having a problem with your printer, scanner, digital camera, CD-ROM, zip drive, monitor, router, MS Office application, Ebay, etc., and you don't know how to fix it, call the program or hardware vendor, or a qualified repair facility. And please don't say, "It was working until you installed the cable modem". Nothing the installer does in the course of plugging a cable modem up to your computer will affect any of the things listed above. If you want to insist that it does beacause of something someone else told you, see number 3 below.

3. Please don't try to argue with my assessment of your problem by saying, "My friend/ boyfriend /girlfriend /husband /wife /son /daughter /community colllege instructor /babysitter said it was your fault". I'm sure they're nice people and all, but I do this an average of 60 hours a week - they don't. Contrary to the stereotypical view of tech support, I'm not 15, I wasn't recruited from a local McDonald's to do this job, and I'm not reading from a script - I actually use my computer to do things other than online gaming and mp3/porn downloads. Let me bottom line it for you: I know more about what I'm doing than THEY know about what I'm doing - which is why I'm sitting here and they are doing whatever it is that they do for a living.

4. Please, if you happen to work in the IT department of your company, don't start the conversation by saying any of the following:

"I'm A+ certified" - The A+ cert doesn't cover cable modem operations. Wonder how I know that? Think about it for a minute...

"I'm a network admin" - and just like any other career field, there are good ones and bad ones. The good ones don't try (or need) to impress with their job title.

"I'm Microsoft certified" - which means you had the time (and money, either your own or your company's) to take the tests. And that's great. But it isn't relevant.

5. Please follow the instructions I'm giving you to address your problem. Remember, if doing it YOUR way had worked, you wouldn't be on the phone in the first place.

6. Please try to remember that if you cannot reach your favorite sites (especially if you can reach others), it is not necessarily our fault. We don't own every single server on the internet, and if a server between you and that site goes down, we cannot fix it unless it actually belongs to us.

7. Mac users: Please don't puff up about OS X being better than anything Microsoft ever did, then go slack-jawed when I ask you to open something up. If you're gonna crow about what you're using, know HOW to use it.

8. If you get an "illegal operation" error, it is because of a problem with either Windows or another program your machine is running - NOT the cable modem. If you get a bootup error that says Windows is missing some files it needs, guess where those files come from? That's right - Windows. Please don't get mad at me because you don't have a Windows CD.

9. If you cannot correspond by email with someone in China because their domain is being blocked for spamming, PLEASE don't curse me out for it. The mail server admins have a hard enough time fighting spam; the last thing they're going to do is open up their server and expose several thousand customers to a known spammer domain just so you can get email from one or two people.

10. Business users (ESPECIALLY DAY TRADERS!!) take note: Please don't say "I'm using this for my business!" when a server is down. All servers have to be maintained, and all servers develop problems from time to time. The fact that you are using your connection for business won't make the work go any faster, and if what you are doing is that important, you should have a backup in place. If you're routinely at risk to lose $10,000 if your internet connection fails, you should have enough money on hand to have a backup connection in place, or you could, you know, pick up the phone and talk to whoever you're trying to email.

11. If you have a child, and that child is on your shoulder screaming in your ear that he just pooped his pants, PUT THE PHONE DOWN AND ATTEND TO YOUR CHILD! We're not going anywhere, and the child is more important. Besides, we can't hear you when the child is screaming.

12. If you have to call us from a pay phone across the street because you don't have one in your house, the problem you're having with the internet isn't your biggest problem.

There is more (much more), but you get the general idea. Just keep these things in mind when you call.

Let this story be lessons to everybody with responsibility for specifying and purchasing IT equipment,

as it shows that shortcuts intended to save money can have unforeseen effects, and also uncover previously undiscovered configuration problems.

The MD of the company I used to work for was notorious amongst its staff for being stingy when it came to upgrading computer equipment. Up until mid 2000 an old 486-66 was running Netware 3.11 because he was too tight fisted to fork out for an upgrade to a later version, to which year 2000 patches could be applied.

This server was finally put to rest when a client upgraded to NetWare 5, so we had to as well. This 486 was well specified as a 3.11 server, with SCSI disks and CD-ROM, 32Mb RAM etc. Its replacement was probably the worlds slowest Netware 5.1 server: a spare Pentium 100 upgraded to 80Mb RAM with IDE disks for storage - the supplied 1Gb drive for Sys, and a 6Gb one nicked from another workstation for the data volume, an IDE cd-rom pinched from another workstation and a PCI network card swapped from another computer (an upgrade from its previous NE1000 - really).

The 3.11 was a 10 user, and each PC had the Novell client installed for its appropriate operating system; however, when 5.1 was purchased, only 5 users were purchased to save more dosh. Instead, the Netware gateway service was pushed into use on the NT server, and was used to share the data volumes and printer.

The Novell clients were removed from every machine except one for administrative purposes, and of course

the client on the NT server was replaced with the gateway service.

Most of the people didn't use the files on the Netware data volume, but one of those who did was the aforementioned MD, who had a folder containing a large number of documents and spreadsheets relating to company business.

However, everybody used the server indirectly because it hosted the main company printer.

Now, over time, having the main printer on the Netware server became a bottleneck, because it was clogging

up with disk access requests, print jobs etc, and it would often take a long time to do anything, and said MD and some colleagues were constantly moaning about "B*#$^y Netware" whenever they were waiting to get a print job, access some files on the server etc.

Eventually people got used to it, but this didn't stop the occasional cry of "B*#$^y Netware" or "B*#$^y Novell".

When the company relocated at the end of 2000 it was decided that the HP OfficeJet, connected to the NT server, was no longer required to be attached to the server, because nobody would need the scanner or colour printing facilities any more (pardon). The Laserjet was attached to the NT server and the print shares were remapped to this machine. This had a noticeable effect on the NetWare server's performance, because it meant that it was no longer spooling print jobs as well, and there was no discernible effect on the performance of the NT box, far faster than the Netware box was.

Now of course, file sharing became the big problem, and the MD was constantly moaning, saying it was taking up to 2 minutes to get a directory listing of the G: drive (hosted on the Netware server, accessed via the gateway service). This was odd, as other workstations didn't have such a problem. He never mentioned this to me beforehand, but this apparently had always happenned since he used that computer. It was not due to moving the print queue at all. However, why he even thought moving a print queue would cause such a disk access problem was beyond me.

I checked the network control panel - nothing obviously wrong but IPX was still installed from the Novell client - I removed it as it was no longer necessary and set the client for MS networks to verify network connections at login. This had a slight performance benefit overall, but nothing spectacular.

One day when I had nothing to do and MD wasn't in, I had a close look at his PC and saw there was an embedded network card on the motherboard with an RJ-45 connector only. This turned out to be of the same type as the one which a colleague put in when this machine was first installed, because we used Coax rather than RJ-45 cabling. I went into the CMOS, disabled the built in card, and rebooted again. I got a listing in seconds of this directory.

Problem fixed.

Morals of the story:

1. Slow computers, although they may be responsible for part of the problem, may not be the cause. It was

found to be a configuration problem on his workstation.

2. If you are going to create a mission critical server out of an old desktop machine, just souping it up

with some more RAM and a faster network card isn't going to turn a sloth into a performance demon. Look

at the recommended minimum specs for the software you are going to use and ensure that what you are going

to use will exceed it. Speak to people who already use it and ask what the realistic minimum spec of the

machines is/are that they host it on.

3. Using the NT Gateway service and resharing the volumes is a false economy - it is far slower than

connecting directly to the server.

In my job doing support and programming I once had to troubleshoot a bizarre problem on a new PC at a clients over the phone. As the basic troubleshooting had not found any faults, and all the signs pointed towards a database/ODBC problem I said I would look at the vendor's knowledgebase for the database vendor and get back to him.

As luck would have it, I found an article that said that the version of this database they were using didn't work properly on Win2000, and they would have to apply a patch to upgrade it.

Now, I knew that this client had all NT servers and workstations, but Win2000 had been out for sometime (it was before XP) so I figured that this new PC may be running the new OS, and this was the problem. I phoned up my contact there and asked him "What operating system is your new PC running?"

"How do I tell?" he asked.

I could have understood this question if he was an end user, but would have liked to administer an electric shock to him over the phone if such a thing was possible, because he was their network admin, an MCSE and probably specified this equipment, but instead I told him to click the right button on My Computer and choose properties.

When I was in my final year at University 3.5 years ago I needed to send round a set of 8 word documents to my project group. So, being sensible I zipped them up and emailed the attachment around to everybody concerned.

At the next group meeting, I asked everybody if they received the documents OK, as the university email system had suffered from a lot of unforeseen downtime. Everybody had received the documents, but one person

spoke up "Your document crashed my computer".

"Pardon" I said, "Did anybody else have problems getting to the files?"

Nobody else spoke up.

After quizzing her for a few minutes, I discovered that she had opened the Zip file directly into Word, without first extracting the attached documents.

The best bit happenned at the end of the course though: This person failed her degree, as this was only one of a huge series of blunders made during the year, including getting very low marks in every exam.

While supporting connectivity on a cable-based network that required a unique entry in the computer name of network settings in order for customer to connect, I received the following call.

Customer: "I want a technician to come out and remove your software. I haven't been able to connect for 3 days. Your service is terrible..etc..." (and he was working himself into a real lather by the end of his comments.)

Me(Tech): "Wouldn't you rather I help you get your connection back? Since I can ping your modem, it is probably a problem with your computer. Let's check the settings on your computer..."

Customer: "I'm in my office and the computer is at home. There is nothing wrong with my computer. Your software probably messed it up."

Me: "I can't schedule a technician without doing some basic troubleshooting first, so is anyone at your home now that could check the settings?"

Customer: "Just my nanny, but she doesn't know anything about computers, so I don't see how she is going to do you any good!"

Me: "Can she speak English and follow directions?"

Cust: "Yes"

Me: "If you will call and let her know it is alright for her to speak with me, I will phone your home number and see if we can determine why your computer isn't connecting."

He agreed to this arrangement and a few minutes later, I was speaking to the nanny, who after apologizing for not knowing anything about computers, had no trouble turning on the PC and locating the control panel, network settings, etc. In fact, SHE was faster at it than a lot of callers who profess to know what they are doing.

As soon as she got to the identification tab, she began to laugh. When she finally stopped, I asked her what was so funny. She said, "I told you I don't know very much about computers, but even I know the computer should not be named after the DOG!"

Me: "What?"

Nanny: "The kids apparently went in here and changed the computer name to their dog's name? Is that why it won't connect?"

After correcting this setting and rebooting, of course the system came back online. So I asked the nanny if she wanted to explain to her employer what had happened or would she rather I call him back.

She said, "He's big and mean and you are a long way from here. Would you mind calling him?

To this day, I have always wondered what the customer did when he listened to the oh-so-diplomatic message left on his voice mail, explaining that he needed to tell the kids that even though they thought very highly of their dog, they could NOT rename the computer for him, or dad would not be able to get on line!!!"

Today in school, me and my friends were talking computer games:

Me: Starcraft is a cool game. You should get it.

F1: I'm going to get it this weekend.

Me: Be shure to get the expansion pack, too.

F1: Yeah, I'm going to download it off a Russian page. (danger, danger!) They have a button where it says "download full version".

Me: Do you know how long thats going to take? (It's a total of about 1400 MB on two CD's).

F1: It's ok, I have Cable.

Me: (thinking "it's futile to argue")

F2: Well, I have DSL. It's better.

Me (AAUGH!!) They are the same.

F2: Oh. Right.

F1: Anyways, it'll download quick because my dad turned our cable line into a T3 line.

Me: (poof; dsl-)T3)How did he do that?

F1: He is and engineer.

I'd love to get me one of those transforming cable lines.

I'm not a tech support guy, (actually I'm under 18)

But anyway, here's a good one a friend told me:

Customer: "Hello?"

Tech: "Yes, may I help you?"

Customer: "My Computer won't turn on."

Tech: "Are you sure the screen is plugged in and the computer is connected to the power?"

Customer: "I followed the wire instructions, but when I press the little white foot pedal, it won't turn on."

Tech: "Foot Pedal? What brand is your computer?"

Customer "It says Windows 95."

Tech: "Umm.. turn the foot pedal over. What can you see on it?"

Customer: "Well... there's a circle with arrows around it and a ball inside..."

I work for a small architechtural practice and have ended up inheriting the network problems since our outside consultants left the area.

I am not a tech but more of a hobbyist and often end up sorting out friends' systems.

A friend ( Matthew )had bought a new box and motherboard etc etc for an upgrade and while the supplier ( another friend, Ian ) was demonstrating some of his self-written software on his own laptop I was busy installing all of his old kit into the new box. One of the final bits was an IDE zip drive.

At bootup nothing worked so I spent the next 30 mins changing all jumper settings, checking and changing bios settings etc. Eventually I took the zip out and tried again, with no success.

I was now extremely pissed off and it was at this point that Ian ambled accross, swapped the ps2 mouse and keyboard plugs into the CORRECT sockets and it booted up immediately.

This story is not mine - my users just come out with normal repetetive stuff - but told to me by my wife.

She has finally got a new machine at work, they replaced her old P75 with 16 meg ofmemory for a PIV 1.4 with 256 meg, and upgraded(?) her to Win98. Unfortunately, her machine refuses to shut down properly, and waits for ever on the "Your machine is closing down" screen, never getting to "It is now safe to shut off your machine".

Her IT managers explanation? "your machine is too fast for the connection to the server, and it's getting confused - you'll have to live with it".

Not for the squeamish:

In the late 80s I worked as a student consultant in the CS department at a small midwest university. Our job was to answer students' questions about the Vax, IBM, and PC systems. I was in the office one day with two or three other consultants when one of the guys shows us a knife that he just bought. This knife was like a switchblade, except that the blade was spring-loaded to shoot straight out of the handle and lock when you pressed the release button, rather than opening sideways.

Anyway, we're all checking out the knife when the consultant on duty, Rick, decides to test how strong the spring is. I swear, the following is absolutely true: Rick takes the knife, puts it right in the middle of his forehead, blade end in, and, over our rather strenuous objections, hits the button. Predictably, the blade shoots out into his forehead, leaving a small cut and a dot of blood. Rick feels his forehead and says (amazed), "Did that draw blood???" Right then a huge gout of blood shoots out the newly made hole in his head, covering his face, his clothes, and the floor in front of him. The rest of us, while trying not to pass out from laughing so hard, grab anything we can find to help stauch the flow. In this case that turned out to be a box of that large format green and white striped continuous feed dot-matrix printer paper (this was the 80s). Inevitably, right then a student (a woman in her early thirties) walks in with a question. Being the supportive co-workers that we were (we were off the clock!), we let Rick answer her question. Imagine the scene: The woman with a horrified expression on her face asking how to login to the Vax; Rick, blood absolutely everywhere, holding sheets of green and white printer paper over his face that snake over from the box, answering her question; everyone else in the office ROTF dying of laughter!

Grim, yes, but hilarious! The moral of this story: Being good with computers doesn't necessarily mean that you have any common sense!

This was just spooky.

I was at a friend's house. They had a DVD of "The Matrix" playing on a PC. At the scene where Morpheus offers Neo the choice... right where the camera zooms in on Morpheus's hands holding the two pills... the DVD froze. And then the message came up: "This program has committed an illegal operation"...

I knew Microsoft was scary, but this is ridiculous...

This just came into my inbox 10 seconds ago...

Everything on the e mail is as it should be according to the cirections you provided. Error message comes up after sending e mail The host POP 3 could not be found Please verify that you have entered the server name correctly.

Account POP 3 Server POP3 Protocol POP3 Port 110 Secure SSC, No Socket Error 11001 Error number 0x800CCC0D. Hope this might help us. Thanks for the

assistance.

this is funny because after this statement he quoted the directions someone had already sent him which read...

"if it says error in server go to tools then down to accounts go to properties of the email address. go to the server tab. make sure that it is a POP3 and both incomming and outgoing mail is set to mail.xxxxxxx.com"

I took a call from a gentleman who was having difficulty receiving email. "The server has unexpectedly cancelled the request" was his error message. After hearing him explain the problem, I tried to research it.

Me: "What's the email address you're having difficulty with?"

Him: "I don't understand your question. I'm having trouble with MY email address. Why would I call about someone else's?"

After explaining that his email address was one method I can use to pull up his account information, he gave me his email address. Then he continues, "You know, a better way of asking that question would have been, 'What is your email address?'". I replied with "well, now that I've pulled up your account information, I can see you have four email addresses, so again, which one are you having difficulty with?"

We moved a customer's website to a new server platform.

"Ever since you moved my site, I have to scroll on the page. The new server must be smaller."

Microsoft Windows - A 32 bit extention to a 16 bit Graphical User Interface for an 8 bit operating system on a 4 bit processor by a 2 bit company that can not stand 1 bit of competition.

We recently moved a bunch of servers from one data center to another, because the first data center was closing. The second data center used shelves instead of regular racks, so we removed all our rails from the servers and put them into the company van.

Before we had a chance to figure out where to store them, the second data center also announced it was closing. So, we left them in the van for the short period of time, figuring we'd need them for the third data center.

One of the big wigs borrowed the company van to move one weekend, and in his hurry to get moving, just put all the rails right there in the alley. The next day, when he brought the van back and the rails were gone, he just figured somebody else had dropped by on a Saturday afternoon/evening, came in via the alley instead of the street, and brought all the rails inside!

I just was told this one from a collegue. An important client was in town and had 3 floppies of data. My friend called in his secretary and asked her to make copies of the disk. A few minutes later she returned.....with 3 xerox copies of the floppies.

Me: "I understand your having a problem with your local printer?"

User: Yes. It makes a weird grinding noise and the print out light and faded."

Me: "Okay, send a print job to the printer." He does this and everything sounds fine so I lean over and put my ear almost on the printer.

User: "There! Hear that?"

Me: "No. I don't hear anything unusual."

User: after about ten seconds "Me either." He picks up the print out and hands it to me. "See, it's faded."

Me: Do you have another print out we could compare it to?" And he hands me another printed page. "These look the same to me."

User: After closely examining the two pages for another ten seconds. "Yeah, me too."

Me: "Well, glad I could help."

User: Smiles. "Thanks for coming so quickly."

Being a full time computer tech and having many friends that are as well, I attend LAN parties at least once a month. For those of you that don't know what LAN parties are, imagine lots of geeks, computers, caffine, and as much p0rn as you can grab in a night.

Anyways, I was at a LAN at my friends house, after having gamed all night and through most of the morning. The host of the LAN (we will call him Jimbo) had taken some time off from the gaming to check his ICQ and e-mail messages. He was surfing away when I heard him cursing at his PC. "What the h3ll is this 'Msgsrv32.exe' file that keeps hagning my PC?" Always ready to help, I replied, "it's a Windows system file, measures driver loading on boot, and loads other system settings. Don't mess with it." Not thinking too much of this incident, I resumed my gaming, as did Jimbo.

About an hour later Jimbo went to restart his PC because he had changed some network settings (he was running WinME at the time.) His PC POSTed, and started to go through the boot process, and just as soon as it showed the 'Windows ME' loading screen it immidiately rebooted. He just sat there for a minute, dumbfounded, and watched it reboot again. The string of expletives that came from Jimbo, I dare not repeat here. He stood in front of his computer, and while cursing the entire time, tried numerous different things to fix the problem: he tried SafeMode, checked and re-checked his BIOS settings, checked his cable connections, and having found nothing wrong, proceeded to blame the entire things on a hapless bystander, Mikey (who was a bit of a trickster.)

As Jimbo was ranting, I happened to remember his questioning about the 'Msgsrv32.exe' file before, so I went to go ask him. When questioned about anything that he had done before rebooting, he didn't have much to say, until I prompted about tat system file. He mumbled something about renaming the file.

Sighing, I went back to my backpack, and grabbed the Win 98 bootable floppy that I always carry with me for just such an emergency. I popped it into Jimbo's PC, booted to it, found the file that Jimbo had indeed renamed to 'Msgsrv32OLD.exe'

The thing that really gets me is that Jimbo is not THAT dumb. I mean, he was a tech for Qw**t Internet...wait, that's not saying much. I still give him crap about that to this day. =]

BTW, in a tale back in Janyary 2002, entitled "Getting her fax straight" there was a quip by Steve "...her answering machine was set to pick up on 3 rings and the fax waited until 5...Unless they've totally changed how fax machines work and forgot to tell me, I think she got it backwards"

I'm a tech for HP All-In-One units, and as odd as it sounds, that works. Our units listen in to the answering machine, and if they hear a fax tone, they grab it. Just thought that I'd clarify. =]

background: The software for a certain brand of All-In-One units (printer/scanner/fax/copier) that I support goes through a basic Fax Setup Wizard after install, asking stuph about the phone setup, etc.

This is a typical occurance on a walkthrough for a software install:

User: (reading through the questions) "...do you have to dial a number such as '9' or '0' to reach an outside line?"

User: (pauses in confusion)

User: "Do I?"

Me: (wanting to say) "I don't know, hang up and when you go to call me back, see what you dial."

Been ghosting here for a few days. Does seem like a few deep breaths could do everyone (but most especially the typical caller) a world of good?

Anyhow, this just happened and I couldn't pass up chance to pass it on;

I get a call about a power outage and a general panic at a small office. I drop by and find most of the staff out on the lawn by the front door, cell phones and day runners in hand, doing a little business and talking about an early lunch.

Then the boss storms out. "I was up there alone, in the dark, without phones!"

And why?

"I'm expecting an important client!" she barks. "Someone has to be up there to listen for..." she points, to door not six feet away and clearly visible "...the door bell!"

To give her credit, she had calmed down five minutes later and most days is pretty sharp technically and otherwise. I guess a power outage on a busy day can frazzle nerves.

I don't -- thank god -- have to answer a tech support hotline, but I've been wrangler of all things electrical for several companies over the years. I'm far too familiar with the terse note "thingy broke --again!!" or the heartwarming experience of walking a user through "turn on the power button. Now hit start," for the 16th time in only a month.

But here's a tale a little off the beaten path;

Back a few years ago I set up lights for Shakespeare on the Beach. Tapped into the 400A 3-phase service they gave me, ran power to my dimmers, my rack, hooked up my speakers, broke out a couple power strips for walkways lights...

And the concessions gal pops up. "Can we get some power please?"

"You aren't on my list. What are you plugging in? Maybe I can spare you something."

"Just some lights."

"Some lights. Okay...I've got a fifteen-amp breaker I haven't used, I've got two-hundred feet of heavy-duty extension cord... it isn't Code but I'll risk it for a couple of lights."

(Note; this is back before I learned the wonders of GFCI.)

A week into the run. "I don't know what you did wrong but the breaker has been blowing all week, and today the ice cream is melting."

It's always nice when the Electrician is kept in the loop. "Breaker blowing? Ice cream?" I say. "Do you mind if I look at your concessions booth?" Come to find my little extension cord plugged into six different strings of bright white lights...and two refrigerator-sized commercial freezers.

My mistake. Handing someone a live power cord and walking away is just asking for trouble.

I love how our clients exaggerate their problem

I get a call that says:

"MY WHOLE SYSTEM IS DOWN I CAN'T OPERATE".

To me, this means that he can't launch the program.

The real problem: He can't get to his customer letters. The other parts of the program works fine!

What's worse, is he wants me to stay with him to find his backup to restore the letters!

This was insane... as told to me by my Head Technician ...we'll call him Hoss...

Customer came in and says she heard on the radio that Gateway was having a deal where she could trade in her Gateway for a new one... She asked if we were a Gateway retailer.

Hoss: No we are not a Gateway dealer.

Lady: Who is?

Hoss: Around here no one is. You'll have to go at least 400 miles to find a Gateway store and even then...

Lady (interrupts): Well I want a Gateway.

Hoss: Ok... well you will have to go to....

Lady (interrupts): I like Gateway's commercials.

Hoss: Well.. most computers are built with the same or similar components anyways, I am sure we could find you something you could be happy with..

Lady (interrupts): No. I do not want a Dell. I like Gateways commercials.

Hoss: Ok. Honestly you will find no one within 400 miles of here to build you a computer and use your old one for a trade in for the amount you are willing to pay.

Lady: But I want a Gateway. I don't like Dell.

Hoss: We don't carry Dell either.

Lady: I don't want an HP.

Hoss: We don't carry HP either.

Lady: Yes you do have a Gateway I see one right there.

Hoss: That is a customers computer we are fixing. We have four other Gateways in the back that are currently being fixed too.

Lady: Yeah Gateway is good I like their commercials. Everyone has one. You use Gateways here don't you?

Hoss: No. We build our own computers, most pre packaged systems are too weak for what we do here.

Lady: O. Where can I get a Gateway?

Hoss: You'll have to contact Gateway and ask them. As far as I know all the Gateway stores around here have closed.

Lady: Closed? Why would they close? They did the computers for the Olympics.

Hoss: Yes they did.. they also got hacked. Gateway closed all it's stores here because they are going through a financial crisis (hee hee).

Lady: oh... well they are still better than Dell. I don't like Dell's commercials... you know the ones with that kid that looks like he smokes pot? Yeah.. that is very unsettling I want a nice professional computer.

Hoss: Ok well when you get tired of looking for a Gateway store we are open until 6pm.

Lady: Ok.... well if I got a computer here what would it be?

Hoss: The cost will depend on what you want on it and with it.

Lady: No, what kind would it be? A Gateway?

Hoss: No. We make custom systems it would be one of ours.

Lady: Oh, but the parts would be from Gateway.

Hoss: No the parts are from computer components dealers.

Lady: Oh well what would it have on it? Windows 98?

Hoss: If you would like Windows 98 on it we can do that, or windows XP or 2000 or ME.

Lady: What do you use here? Windows 98?

Hoss: No, we use Linux and Unix

Lady: What are those?

Hoss: Basically Windows Alternatives

Lady: What do you mean? There is nothing else than Windows.

Hoss: Yes there are many different operating systems. And a lot of them are actually free.

Lady: no there aren't. There is only windows. That's the only one. I know because that is what Gateway uses.

Hoss: Ok.

(they look at each other and Hoss again refrains from yelling and bashing her with a floppy disk)

Lady: ok well I'll think about it.

and she finally leaves.

Customer comes in.

Cust: I want a Gateway modem.

Me: Uh... well we have several types of modems. Did you want internal or external.

Cust: I want a Gateway one. It's internal.

Me: Ok Well we have...

Cust (interrupts):I know a lot about computers, I installed a cdrom the other day. Something happened to my modem one of the kids tripped over the cord and I think it did something to it because you have to take the line out for it to disconnect. Can I have a Gateway modem?

Me: Well.. we have this modem here and it works well in a gateway...

Cust (interrupts): Is it a Gateway?

Me: No, it's a Best Data.

Cust: Oh.. well what is this one?

Me: It's a US Robotics (duh it says that on the box)

Cust: Oh well what is this one?

Me: It's a Pine. Those are pretty good.

Cust: Well I see you have a gateway there... I want one just like that.

Me: Well actually that computer is here to have it's modem replaced too, it exploded.

Cust: Ok well give me one that you would put in that one.

Me (starting to make out a sales slip)

Cust: I know a lot, I have been working on my computer for a long time. Do you ever need any help here? I'm real good.

Me: No.

Cust: oh well if you ever need any help I am really good at Gateways. How come that other Gateway is in here? The one next to it.

Me: Well when they brought it in it would only go into safe mode and if they could get it into windows, everything was passworded and no one had the passwords anymore. Tell me... what would you have done to fix it?

Cust: Oh that's easy... when mine does that kind of stuff I just format it.

Me: Right. You're bill is 26.87.

Cust: okay. I am right aren't I? There is no way to fix that computer without formatting it...right? Yeah I fixed mine like that a few times it works great.

Me: Actually... I just edited the config.sys file to stop loading the 23 other drivers it didn't have that it was trying to load and then hacked the registry to get all the passwords out and reset the BIOS.

Cust: And that WORKED?

Me: Yes. You never want to fdisk or format unless it's the last resort.

Cust: O. Well thanks.... but formatting is easier, have a nice day.

One day I was on the computer, and my dad barged into my room. It turns out he wanted to go online. I closed IE and let him go. My dad pointed to the screen and said...

"But you turned off the Internet!"

I kindly pointed out to him that IE wasn't the Internet and that we were still connected to the Internet. Then I let him go on his merry way.

I do support for a large North American broadband internet provider. This is an actual email that I received. There is no history attached to the message, no previous message, and NO OTHER INFO!

"I am receiving messages that I am unable to send messages which throw me into windows! Help"

Yes, that is the entire message. Do you know what they want?

Not really a story, but some wierd ways of saying common words, these are all from one customer:

Typical install = Tropical install

Operating System = Opertuning System

Platinum Edition = Pluminum Edition

Configuration = Confijurate

McAfee = Magafee

You should have heard her try to read the error "executed an invalid instruction" it was all I could do not to bust out! I know illiteracy is no laughing matter but what else can you do?

This is why I dislike on-site technical support so much.

I'm the sysadmin of a small network for a technical

translation firm. The translators take documents in any

number of different languages and translate them into

English. They are very, very good at their job...most of

the time.

In this case, a client is sending a document to be

translated on a rush basis. The people who work at the

client are borderline cluefull, and so the work usually

comes in without a hitch. Not this time.

Friday afternoon, 4 PM. A ZIP file comes in the translator's

electronic mail. The translator tries to open the document

directly from the ZIP file, and gets error messages from

Microsoft Word about damaged files. Translator

calls me and I immediately think virus. (Documents from

Europe are very prone to be infected with the latest and

greatest virus bugs, so the usual "when you hear hoofbeats

think horses, not zebras" doesn't apply here -- viruses

from Europe are the horses.) I then rush to update the

antivirus definitions and do a full scan. Nothing.

I then take a close look at the ZIP file, and see that

the document has a zero length. No wonder Microsoft Word

was complaining!

To top it off, the client then bitches to everyone here that

they did everything right, and it was somehow our fault.

(You know the translation -- it was MY fault!)

What a mess.

Tech (on the phone to Miss Finnley): My dispatcher has notified me that you have one of our computers with no display.

Miss Finnley: Yes I do.

Tech: Would you please press the button at the bottom center of the monitor and tell me what you see?

Miss Finnley: Do I Have to?

Tech: It will help me decide what parts to bring so I can have you up and running as quickly as possible.

Miss Finnley: Well, I'll have to put the phone down.

Tech: OK. (Hears sound of phone hitting desk. Then what sounds like a bar-room fight or objects falling to the floor.)

[Minutes go by. Then....]

Miss Finnley: (Out of breath) I need some help on this. I can't do it.

Tech: What seems to be the problem?

Miss Finnley: I can't get the damm box open!

I work for a one the few surviving "dot.coms" that still provides free e-mail service to the general public. I recieved this e-mail from one of our users:

"My username is xxxxx. I know for a fact that when i signed off last night i had msgs in my box...today i look and all of them are gone. Granted, they were all read messages, but about 3 weeks old or so. Does the system erase "old" messages? I hope I haven't been hacked."

After spending about 15 minutes checking the users account and scratching my head, I received this message:

"Sorry for the panicked email. Never mind--everything's okay with my messages. I was in the wrong mailbox..."

Why does everyone assume that some mysterious internet "hacker" is concerned with the contents of their mailbox? :)

While working on a support desk for a large company, I received a call from an Asian employee who first language was not English. During the call, we had to make a change to his network configuration.

I asked him to to locate the Network Neighborhood icon on his desktop. Then I asked him to right click. He pause for a moment and said nothing happened. I asked him to try again - right click on the icon and pick properties. He said nothing was happening.

Since his english was not very good, and he wasn't far from the helpdesk, I told him I'd be right up. When I got to his office I had to bite my lip to prevent laughing out loud.

I sat at his desk and looked at his monitor, where he had written the work 'clik' twice - with a felt tip pen no less. I tried to wipe it off, but a faint impression was still left. Since nobody beleived me - I sent a hardwar technician up to look at his computer and swap out his monitor. It sat at the helpdesk for about a year!

This is a true story - I'm not kidding!!!

I work at an internet desk for a large company - not tech help - but I do have to do a LOT of training on how to use the computer with some "customers".

One of my coworkers gets a LOT of attachments (photos and relevant documents) on a daily basis. I forward them to her and she gets back to me if they don't open for her. She can open .jpg and .gif - I can open Adobe Acrobat and zipped files - home office didn't want to license everyone of the 300 plus people in the office - so I un-zip and forward the useable attachments.

Last week - she tried several times to open a file from out of state - finally asked me to "unzip" it for her. When I tried clicking on the little paper clip icon - I was greeted with C:xxxxxxxxxxxxxx - the sender had sent the "address" of the attachment on HER hard drive instead of the file itself. We had to phone and walk her through sending it AGAIN (twice) to get a "real" .jpg file instead of the hard drive location........

Joy of joys - I had to call her back the next day to repeat the instructions because a NEW e-mail came in - with the hard drive address in the "attachment".

Let me begin by telling you the type of tech support I offer at my job.

I work for a large manufacturer of IFE (In Flight Entertainment) equipment for commercial airliners. That would be the TV, phone, audio, games and other such entertainment equipment that you find on most carriers. (Although if you've never flown international, you've probably only seen the most basic audio and video systems. The really cool stuff is relegated to the expensive international flights.)

Anyway, my position is "Technical Specialist". And one of my duties is to field calls from flight attendants that are having difficulty with our more complex systems. In all fairness to the FAs, our systems can get pretty complex, with multiple operating systems, distribution paths, etc. . .

One of the typical problems we experience is when one of the several hundred individual PCs in our system fail to boot up properly. The only way to bring them back is to shut down the whole system from the main power switch, and then restart it, thus "rebooting" the entire system.

On one occasion when I asked a flight attendant to "reboot" the system, she asked me if turning off the "main power switch" would cut power to the engines of the aircraft. Being originally from New Jersey, my first impulse was to respond with: "Yes, so when you do it, for God's sake, DO IT FAST!" However, the part of my brain that has gotten used to eating, driving, and the other joys associated with being employed, spoke for me and very kindly told the flight attendant that: "No, shutting down the main power switch will not cut power to the aircrafts engines." "For the most part the general public does not have access to the more critical systems on an aircraft." (The main power switch for the IFE is at the flight attendant station.)

Back in the day (several years ago) I was a dispatcher for a security and alarm company. We used to monitor commercial and private fire, intrusion and access alarms, among other things.

I'm not a big fan of alarm systems, because what generally happens is that the systems "false alarm" so many times, the owners and responders become very complacement about them and begin to assume that all of the alarms are false.

One night a fire alarm was triggered in a residence that I was monitoring. As a rule we ALWAYS dispatch the fire department for a fire alarm. (It's the law. The fire department must investigate and determine the cause, with very few exceptions.) But within two seconds I received a phone call from the resident. "Please disregard the alarm, I just shut it off. It was our upstairs sensor." I confirmed the information, and then asked the resident what caused the alarm. He informed me that he didn't know, as it had just woken him up. I then asked him if he had considered the fact that his house might indeed be on fire. I then stayed on the line with him as he went upstairs and investigated the source of the alarm. (It had been a false alarm, but the point is that he shut off his alarm and cancelled the dispatch PRIOR to confirming that.)

WHY BUY IT IF YOU JUST IGNORE IT?

A guy from Houston called (why he felt the need to tell me he was from Houston is beyond me) to inquire about our software. (it's a demographics program) At one point he asked how the program comes (a common & reasonable question--many people want to know if it's Internet based). After I told him it comes on CD ROM, he actually said (this is an /exact/ quote), "Oh, so you don't need a computer to run it?"

Now granted, he probably meant you don't need an Internet connection to run it, but jeeze louise, learn the difference between "a computer" and the Internet...!

I got this call a few months ago...

We sold this lady this machine and she live about 2.5hrs away from the city in the middle of nowhere. She calls up.

Her: This piece of crap you sold me doesn't work....

Me: Okay, what's wrong with it?

Her: The internet just stopped working

Me: whats happens when you click on the blue e?

Her: It won't do anything.

Me: What kind of message does it give you.

Her: (yadda yadda) no modem.

Me: Okay bring it in...

She goes off about how inconvinient it is and everything. Anyway she brings it in and there's no modem detected. I open the case and the modem is sitting BESIDE the PCI slot screwed down tight. She sits there and tells me nobody opened the case. I ask her to give me a scenario where the modem unscrews itself, jumps out of the slot and screws itself back in...

Do they think were stupid...

Another tale to show it's not just the users who make it up...

Years ago I worked in a support team for an IT project in a (UK) government department. At that time all PCs were procured from one of three approved suppliers, IBM, Siemens-Nixdorf and ICL.

Most of the estate was 386 based with a 486DX2 being state of the art.

I joined the team straight from Uni and worked the support desk with two industrial placement students on their year out of Uni.

None of us had any formal training and we learned as we went along picking up sufficient knowledge to build and maintain Netware servers as well as PCs running DOS and Windows 3.1x on a 10Mb Ethernet LAN.

On this basis we were generally able to deal with most faults, myself and one of the students (Gary) would persevere with any problem, no matter what and usually achieve a fix. Our other colleague (let's call him William) was not so fastidious and would invent reasons for problems he couldn't fix.

One day one of the programmers on the project played a trick on a colleague of his by removing the 'C' and 'V' keys from his keyboard and replacing them transposed. The victim then reported a fault with his ICL PC explaining that when he pressed 'C' he got 'V' etc...

William went out to investigate and failed to see what had happened. To the astonishment of the onloooking pranksters and the bewilderment of the user, William explained that this was how all of the ICL keyboards were configured and it couldn't be fixed, the user would have to wait until an IBM or S-N PC became available!!

Unfortunately I suspect many more instances such as this were the cause of increased workload for Gary and myself as the user community asked for our assistance with their problems instead of Williams.

As a footnote...the project was ultimately outsourced and upon completing his Uni course, William was taken on as tech support by the company that won the contract (Gary and myself had since moved on...)

Whilst working at a computer show a couple of months ago, I had a lady walk up to me and start an argument with me about how Athlons were inferior and unstable ... blah blah blah. She was a previous customer so I was nice to her. She informed me that her system that she bought from us would not come up, so I told her to bring it in and I would look at it. When I opened up the case, the first thing I noticed was that the CPU (a slot Celeron) was on the floor of the case. Then I noticed that she had the floppy cable plugged into the motherboard header, then the floppy, then her HARD DRIVE, then the IDE header. Needless to say, she was lucky that this particular board would not power up without a CPU in the slot, or she might have seen the magic smoke exiting her computer. When I told her what the problem was, she said "I thought that the cable could be routed that way." So in her case, I guess an Athlon probably wouldn't be the best choice.

Recently I bought a firewire card and it came with video editing software from the XYZ company. Both the XYZ manual and their website claimed, that Windows 2000 was "fully supported" by their software. I followed the instructions installing the card and software on my Win ME and both hw and sw worked fine. Next I moved on to my Windows 2000. The card was recognized by the OS instantly and the appropriate drivers installed but the video editing software did not work, I kept getting "Application error" and "failed to read (or write) (a range of memory)". I uninstalled and reinstalled the software several times, tried patches from their website, tried to hack their config files but eventually I had to give up. It was time to call the product experts (XYZ tech support).

First I got a girl who loudly and very confidently instructed me to uninstall, reboot and reinstall the program, then reboot again. I went along, eventhough I did just that about half a dozen times before, because I expected that somewhere along the line she would actually do some troubleshooting. She didn't. When we ended up with the same results she asked me to uninstall, reboot, reinstall and reboot AGAIN and call back if it fails. I did it anyway and called back when it bombed again.

Product expert #2 (a guy) was apparently bothered by the fact that my Windows was apparently installed on E: as opposed to C: (he never saw that before). He stopped short of suggesting that it could have been the problem (I would have bough it!). Instead he loudly and very confidently isntructed me to uninstall, reboot and reinstall the software, then reboot again and call back if it still doesn't work. I hung up and called back a little later.

Product expert #3 (a guy again) listened to my story, then loudly and very confidently isntructed me to uninstall, reboot and reinstall the software, then reboot again and call back if it still doesn't work. I tried to explain that this was done many times and resolved nothing but the expert insisted that something "could have changed" in my system since the last reinstall and it was absolutely necessary for me to reinstall again. At this time I called for a senior guy or supervisor and was shocked to learn that I was talking to him. I kept asking him to try to do some real troubleshooting and he kept asking me to reinstall.

Eventually it dawned on me that I was talking to the dumbest helpdesk on this planet, so in a way I should feel priviliged. How many of us can honestly say that in the 21st century, when almost all kids are at least computer literate, I managed to find an entire group of people who were stuck in some time warp 20+ years ago and exhibited spectacular ignorance about computing in general.

Lucky me.

Two years ago I was working in a company that makes outsourcing. I was asigned to a project where my boss was a complete computer illiterate, but she believed that she was a GENIUS....imagine that.

Anyway...we where at the first group meeting...you know the one where everyone meets everyone. After all the protocol I had to explain the basics of the system we where about to begin:

- This is the Login window. Here, the user will provide his userId and his Password, will click on the....

At this moment my boss interrupts me:

- HOLD!!! What did you said? Click?!?! What's that?

Sadly it's a true story.....You wonder how a person with this computer knowledge can be a Boss....

I do tech support for a specific type of inkjet printers, and one man called in asking me if he had the right number to purchase an extended warranty. I politely said no and told him the correct number. When he asked what I did I told him I was a technical support agent. He said, "Good! That's what I need! My printer is broken!"

As it turns out, he was out of warranty, and wanted to buy another warranty so that we would fix his printer for free. I tried to explain to him why that was not allowed (it's like crashing your car and then buying insurance to make them pay for it), but he just never got it...

Down under, Telstra are our ex-government owned national carrier and Bigpond are their Internet arm. Read the rest and weep.

Got a phone call from a customer last Thursday. She'd been trying to use Telstra Bigpond's sign-up CD for a week. The sign up wouldn't get past a certain screen. She'd called them six times and been on the phone for nearly hour each time.

Some of the techs had told her it was a computer problem, some had said it was her computer. It's a Compaq Armada 7700, PII-233, 64Mb RAM, Windows 98. Not state of the art, but okay to run IE5.5. As far as the modem went, our logs showed a successful test login to our server when one of our techs visited a few weeks back.

I got her to run Hyperterminal and the modem and test connection were running fine. Sorry, I said it's a Telstra problem. She said she'd try again and call back.

She called back an hour later and told me Telstra said she has to replace the modem because now her computer is saying "cannot open port." I asked her if she had shut down Hyperterminal? whoops, no. (Bigpond "tech" to drone in adjoining desk: "what's this high-per-thinggumy she's talking about?" "Dunno, tell her to get a new modem." )

Tell her to shut down Hyperterminal and call back Bigpond. Don't hear from her again so I assume it's fixed.

She rings up this morning in tears to our help desk. We've got to come out and fix her computer. She can't get onto the Internet.

I go out tonight and have a look at it. The new Bigpond sign-up disk has a number of new features. It tests the modem and line which are fine (surprise, surprise). It then goes through the screens for name, address, serial number, etc. If you don't fill in the correct fields it highlights them in loud bright orange.

We get to the stuck screen. She fills it in, leaving the "previous e-mail address" field blank. The screen returns with an "insufficient information error" and highlights the blank field.

"Oh, one of the techs told me to leave that blank."

"What about the others?"

"They didn't mention it."

I put a dud name in the blank field and, guess what? It worked!

So it took eight Bigpond sheltered-workshop dwellers to miss that point in their own script, not to mention the bright orange error highlight. They also ignored the earlier okay their script gave to the modem and dial tone. The other Bigpond "tech" couldn't figure out that screen with "ATDT...." may be interfering with the modem.

Of course, its always been too much for Telstra just to sign customers up over the phone. They have to use their snazzy sign-up CD, just so they can be like AOL. Then they wonder why it takes twenty attempts for Joe Public to successfully sign up.

This is our national carrier. God help us.

PS: To any Bigpond tecchies going job hunting, please don't put your "experience" at Bigpond on your CV. We need people who have understanding of how computers and the Internet work. Although we could do with some laughs.

This is a loooong story… “In a galaxy far away, and long ago…”

A friend’s father had a small business of his own, selling toys through home parties, like Tupperware. One year, before the Christmas rush, he bought out another company that did the same thing. He was totally swamped with orders that year – just couldn’t keep up. His computer system just didn’t have the horsepower to handle the load. His daughter (my friend – well, actually, my wife’s friend) suggested he call my company, a contract development shop, to see if we could help. When we arrived, a week or so before Christmas, the 8-ft long leather couch in his office was completely buried in orders he hadn’t been able to process… Needless to say, a lot of unhappy customers that Christmas.

Now, this was in the early 1980s. His computer system was an IBM system 3, with programs written in RPG. Remember, this was long ago… anyway, we did arrange to develop a better system for him. Hired an RPG programmer (even we had trouble finding one) and he set to work. We estimated about 3-4 months to complete the programming work. In addition, we arranged with IBM to upgrade his hardware – add memory, upgrade the 10 meg hard drive, etc. so he’d have the capacity to do the work. We arranged to have the hardware upgrade done when we finished programming the new system.

Day comes when we’re ready. IBM service calls, says they’ll be in the next day to do the upgrade, and can we please have the operator do a complete backup of the system, so they can restore it when the upgrade is finished. We say “sure!” and give the operator the instructions to do the backup.

At 4:00 pm the next day, I get a frantic phone call from the customer. They’ve attempted to do the restore, and none of the new software can be found. When they try to restore it, what they get is another copy of the operating system. I figure what the heck, it’s near enough quitting time at the site I’m working at, I’d head over to this site and see what I can do.

I get there, and they are totally panicked. I check with the programmer, who was there, and see what instructions he gave the operator. They appear to be OK, but clearly, when they attempt the restore, all that’s there is the OS. I ask the customer if he has any recent backups, and he says sure – he keeps them at home. (about 10 miles away). I ask, and he calls his wife, and she gets the backups from his clothes closet, and drives them out to the office (not that it matters, but the backups were on floppies – 8 inch floppies). When I get them, I realize they weren’t going to help much – they were two years old… I asked if he had a policy of doing regular (daily, weekly, at least monthly) backups. He said no, why should he? He couldn’t conceive of something happening to the computer that would be bad enough to need them, that wouldn’t mean the business was “out of business” as well – like the building burning down…

At this point I call the IBM service manager, to see what he thinks, and if there’s any chance of recovering. My thought was to see if they had another system, similar to the configuration of the customer’s before the upgrade, that we could install the disk in, and try to figure out why the backup didn’t work. He tells me the following:

1. They can’t do it on his system for sure, because the upgrade to the system involved cutting some traces on the disk controller card so it could handle the new size disk (yeh, I know. Sounds hokey, but that what he said.).

2. He indicated that standard policy for their engineers doing an upgrade like this was to erase the old drive before it was removed, because they’d been accused of software piracy in the past. He knew that not all techs actually did this, and wasn’t sure if it had been done in this case, but obviously if it had, all hope was lost.

3. He pointed out that in any case, now that the old disk had been removed, there was the possibility of surface contamination, such that if the disk was put in another drive, it could cause a head crash. Fortunately, the techs had not taken the old disk with them when they finished, and it was still at the customer’s site. I promptly told the customer not to let the disk leave for any reason until we got this resolved, or had a plan of action.

4. The Service manager also mentioned that there is another possible problem. With older drives like this one, there was a problem with “head drift”. The heads were known to drift slightly out of alignment over time. As long as you kept the disk in the same drive, it could still be read, but if you moved it to a drive where the heads were in proper alignment, it might not be readable.

5. He also didn’t know of any other systems as old as this customer’s original system – IBM hadn’t sold that configuration in three years.

The Service Manager agreed to look to see if he could find another site the next morning (by now it was about 8:00 pm). I told the customer what the prospects were (not good). He asked about other options. I checked with the programmer, and he had had enough foresight to print copies of all the programs before the backup was done, so we at least had printouts of everything. I indicated we could arrange to have the programs re-keyed from the listings, but that it was going to cost money to do that. He couldn’t decide, and we ended the evening deciding to wait until the IBM Service Manager had a chance to see what he could do the next morning.

The Service Manager calls me the next morning with good news. He’s spoken to the techs, and they didn’t erase the disk. He’s also found another site with a system like my customer’s before the upgrade, and that’s only 5 miles away from the customer site. He’s spoken with them, and they’ve agreed to let the IBM techs come in at the end of their business day (about 6:00pm) and try to read the disk. But, they also warn IBM that if the disk causes a head crash due to contamination, my customer will be responsible for paying to fix it.

I call the customer and lay it out for him. I’ve also checked a few places, and have cost figures for him on what it would cost to rekey the programs from the printouts – about the same as to repair a head crash, as it turns out. He opts to try to install the disk first, even though if it causes a crash, he’s going to pay twice as much.

The good news is that it worked. I went with the techs when they took the disk to the other site, and we were able to successfully backup the programs. We then returned to his site, and loaded the software, and everyone lived happily ever after. And yes, the customer did learn the need for doing regular backups after that, and actually did do them.

But wait, you say… you can’t get to this point and not tell us why the programs didn’t get backed up to begin with!! What was the cause of all this mayhem???

Well I did find out. I got the console logs from the second site, when the techs installed the drive and did the backup there, and compared them to the logs from the original site. It turns out that the backup command was parameter driven, with the parameters separated by commas. One of the parameters was the name of the directory you wanted to back up. The default value for this parameter was the OS directory.

You guessed it. When the operator typed in the command to back up the programs, he got the wrong number of commas in it. When the system ran, the directory name was in the wrong place, so the backup defaulted to the OS directory…

(And no, we won’t go into the discussion about why the directory name, being in the wrong place, didn’t cause some other kind of error with the backup command. Remember: with IBM, It’s a Feature, not a Bug.)

I work in a small company and myself and a monkey do tech support on the phones and for inner office computer troubles. I sent the monkey who works with me to make 20 photocopies of a document. Time passes. More time passes. I want to point out that I have no formal training at all and learned everything on the job, this guy supposedly has a C.S. degree. So after enough time passes roughly 30 minutes I figured I'd go find him and see whats taking so long. I find him with a supervisor desperately working on a computer. Aparently the supervisor can no longer access vital document which are on a shared drive and he cannot see the rest of the network or network drives. The monkey did not even make the photocopies he's been sitting there for 30 minutes doing the most obscure network checks and diagnostics. I get there and he rants on in some technobabble crap for about 2 minutes. He then says "the network card must be fried I'll have to put in a new one." The supervisor is practically in tears most of the office is in ear range to find out whats so important. I bend over and plug the cable back into the network card, reboot and LO AND BEHOLD IT WORKS!!! I told the monkey to go and make me my damn photocopies.

*phone rings*

Me: Good afternoon, S****** S********, this is Sarah, how can I help you?

Caller: I JUST BOUGHT THIS WASHER AND DRYER /TODAY/ AND IT TOOK YOU FOREVER TO DELIVER IT! AND NOW IT WON"T EVEN FIT IN THE SPACE WE HAD FOR IT!

Me: .................ma'am? We're a computer repair place.

Caller: SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS WASHER AND DRYER!?

Me: .......ma'am. We don't handle washers and dryers. We are a computer repair shop.

Caller: WELL, THEN! WHO /DO/ I NEED TO SPEAK TO? BECAUSE /I JUST BOUGHT THESE FROM YOU TODAY/ AND--

Me: Ma'am, you did not buy them from us. I believe you have the wrong number.

Caller: ...Oh, well that's just /great./ *click*

I was using my office laptop when the video drivers went bad. Rather than bother the overworked office technician, I set about taking care of it myself. Booted in safe mode, downloaded the drivers, read the specs etc. Tried to install...nothing. I gave up and left it for the morning office tech.

I asked him the next day what the problem was, and he said "Did you think about removing the bad drivers before trying to install the new ones?"

D'oh!!

I was between calls and thought this little tidbit up. However, some of the jokes you'll only get if you work for HP.

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

You're on the HP Party line. On the phone now is Becky Johnson. Hello, Becky!

Hi, Mr. Happy! I just want to say, God likes the USA!!

Er, shouldn't that be 'God bless America'?

Whatever.

Ok, Becky, tonight you'll be playing for a brand NEW printer!! Now have you played Technical Support Roulette before?

Yes, but I forgot how to play.

It's quite smiple, Becky, you'll dial into our secret number pool, mash random buttons on the phone, and hope you get to the right agent. Are you ready, Becky?

I'm ready.

--For Deskjet,..---

*BEEP*

--Please enter the model number...--

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

Thanks for callings HP Officejet.

[annoying failure tuba, and crowd moans]

Well, Becky, it looks like you didn't win this time, however every contestant recieves a complementary prize, a long distance phone bill. I'm Mr. Happy and thanks for listening to the HP Party line!

I work for a tech support line for aol.

A man called one day stating he was having trouble working a program. I asked for his information and nothing was pulling up. Finally I asked for his email address and he said "xxxx@cox.net"

I stated I needed his aol email address or his screename.

He stated he didn't know what that was.

So I asked "How can I help you today"

He said "Well I'm trying to get on MSN instant messenger and when i try to go on it says "cannot logon, please check your internet connection"

I gave him Microsoft's #

So I said "Well sir, you need to connect to the internet before you can log on MSN instant messenger."

He says "what number do i dial the one you just gave me?"

I said "No, your internet service provider should have given you a # to call to connect to the internet."

He said "How do i do that?"

I said "Contact your ISP and they can help you connect."

He said "I don't know what you mean by ISP."

I said "Your internet service provider is the one who can help you connect to the internet."

He said "Do you have the number for COX?

"No sir, you should."

He thanked me for helping him, but this man needs much more than help.........

I work for a support company that provides technical support for a variety of different companies. Our end users range in skill from "newbie" right through to system engineers. The reason this particular call tickled me was the user fit into the later category (although as you will see, just barely!)

A call came into our helpdesk stating "Our Exchange server seems to be acting up. We can receive email, but can't send anything out". About 30 seconds later, the call was closed by the client because he figured the problem out-the SMTP services had crashed, thereby preventing mail from being sent. He restarted, and lo and behold, everything started going out. 5 minutes after the initial call, he logged another. I read the description and nearly fell out of my chair:

"Is there any way the server can send me an email if the SMTP service fails? We were three days without outbound email"

After I collected myself, I called him back to give him the bad news-not without another server set up to send mail if the primary failed! Chagrined, the client apologized for wasting our time-expensive time at that!!

Recently from an clueless induhvidual...

My daughter wants to burn her own cd's. I've been told that downloading Morpheus or other music programs take up an incredible amount of space on the hard drive. By regestering for space on your-site.com could we download one of these programs to the site and burn cd's from there?

Thanks

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

Ok... since when have you EVER been able to burn from a website?

"I don't know why it says that stuff about a password, I don't have one. All we do is clicky and we get online."

I work in a DSL ISP tech support call center.

recently a mem called having troubles connecting..

me: could I have your user id?

mem: give the personal info

me: ok so what seems to be the problem?

mem: well my internet doesn't work!

me: what kind of modem do you have sir?

mem: the one you sent me!

me: can you be more specific. It shoul dhav ethe name in front of it.

mem: oh yeah, ok it's says... lansing, Altec Lansing.

me: no sir, I'm talking about your DSL modem.

mem: that is my DSL modem.

thinking of taking a diff approach

me: does the "modem" have green lights on it?

mem: yes it does and all the phones and wires go to it.

me: really, can you check beneath it? and tell me what the sticker says?

mem: ACS 33

me: sir those are your speakers.

mem: no no they can't be. you guys sent me this. and it's always worked.

eventually I did convince mem that it was his speaker system

I provide front line support for about 30 PCs, a third of which are on construction sites, which can be a fairly agressive environment for equipment. I'm not strictly a support technician, but filter out the easy problems to allow our tech team to deal with the real headscratchers.

One morning, I had a call from a youngish employee who, it has to be said, had one of the older PC sets:

me : Hello ?

he : Morning, ****, it's ******.

me : Morning, ******, what can I do for you ?

he : Do you have any spare monitors ?

me : Yes. Why, does yours have a problem ?

he : It doesn't work.

me : Doesn't work ?

he : Sometimes it takes two or three starts before it works, but this morning it won't come on at all.

me : How long has this been going on ?

he : About two or three weeks, but it seems to be getting worse.

me : Are there any other symptoms ?

he : Sometimes I can see sparks coming out of the top.

me : (urgently) Is it switched off and unplugged ?

he : (after pause) It is now.

me : Do you think it would have been safer to tell someone so we could get an electrician to have a look at it ?

he : But they were only small sparks.

Ok, i'm not a computer tech, i'm just a highschool student that happens to know a thing or two more than most of the teachers at my school. This has generally been befenficial to me, because often times I can get out of doing busy work by helping my teachers with thier computer, unfortunetly. Unfortunatly a teachers stupidity once almost got me kicked out of school.

I was enrolled in a keyboarding class, I figgured it would be an easy A and on top of that it might not hurt to brush up on my typing skills because though I may be able to type shell commands at 80+ words a second, when it comes to english, I have a few defencencys. Anyway, I enrolled in the class and after 3 days of explanation on how to open up Microsoft Word, I decided that the class was a bit to remedial for me and I dropped it, unfortunatly the counclers were swampped, and it was going to take about 8 school days to get me out of the system (though I don't understand why, they could have easily just removed that class from my schedual at that moment, oh well guess it's just beurocracy) anyway, after explaining to the teacher my situation, she agreed to let me use the class as a study hall, where I could work on some relevant classes. So I set to work on a program I had been wrighting, but it was not long until I discovered that the machines had tight security on them, the entire hard drive was read only, and data could only be saved to the Buissness depts NT servers, and knowing that my account would soon be deleted, I decided that I would just ftp all of my data to my linux box at home. So I go to look for a dos prompt, nothing, but the shortcut had been removed, as well as RUN from the start menu, and we could not access the C: drive.

Ever the ingenious one, I discovered that we WERE allowed to save files to the my documents folder, and so I opend up notepad, and simply wrote "command" saved it as a batch file, and voila I had dos prompt, so I began to FTP my work to home when the teacher looked over at me, and immediatly pulled me out of class and took me to the principals office, accusing me of "hacking" the buissness depts NT server (of course she merely called it the buissness dept hard drive) I tried to explain what I was doing but to no avail, finally I convinced them to call down the computer programming teacher (whom I knew rather well) to explain to them what I was doing, I don't think I ever really convinced them that I wasn't hacking the NT servers, but having a teacher on my side kept me out of trouble.

Long Story but worth the read. True Story Trust me! :)

About 8 years ago I worked for a small company who's claim

to fame was "1 hour response 24x7x365 anytime". We had two pagers one for h/w and the other for s/w support. We used pcAnywhere 2.0 for DOS/WIN 3.1 for remote support for customers who paid for it on monthly basis.

At the end of month, it would get really busy and customers would get impatient when they called for h/w support. When customers didn't hear back within the "1 hour response", customers would start paging the s/w guy (or vice-versa).

One time, during an EOM cycle on Saturday, I started receiving "No Data Sent" on my beeper (pager). I received this mystery page about 10 times over the course of the weekend. My boss, who was on the s/w pager, started receiving the same "No Data Sent" page too.

Monday morning, I'm retrieving the company voice mail and a voicemail from this one customer is just livid. She is not happy with the service, her database is down, she is losing revenue because she can't complete any transactions, she is paying monthly fees for support, yada yada yada.

I ask my boss if he wants to take this irate customer call. "No Way" is his reponse. I verify this customer is paying for support and I call her. Well she is still livid about the whole thing. I calm her down and explain, "you have me on the line now, let's fix your computer problem and then we'll figure out what went wrong on the 1 hour response." She had no choice but to agree.

After walking her through step-by-step, through DOS commands and some old Btrieve commands to restore her database, the system was up and running w/no loss of data.

I then asked her the general troubleshooting questions:

1. Her phone line down? No, phone working

2. Using rotary or push-button phone. Push-button.

3. Any power outages? No.

4. Dialing the right pager number? Yes.

She was exasperated about the whole thing. Sensing this I asked, "Hey, you know how I just walked you through those computer commands step by step? Why don't you (customer) walk me through on how you tried to page us for support this past weekend?"

After a long deep sigh, she agreed. Here is what she said:

1. I pick up the phone.

2. I listen for dial tone.

3. I then dial 1-800-Support#

4. I listen for the short beeps on the phone (indicating to leave the number where we can reach you for support)

5. I then proceed to punch in my company phone number into the NUMBER KEYPAD of my COMPUTER.

6. I then hang up the phone and waited but you guys never called me back until today.

Needless to say, I had to put the customer on hold and literally fell off my chair laughing so hard. I took me about a minute to regain my composure and with the customer still on hold, I went into my Boss' office.

"Hey Tony! You know those "No Data Sent" pages we were getting all weekend? I think I know who that was."

I told my boss and he laughed so hard he spit coffee onto his monitor.

The real kicker was this. I took the customer off hold and said this:

"Thank you for holding. I just checked with our s/w department and that paging feature is not supported under the current version of s/w you are running at this time. But in the meantime, you can page us in this manner..."

I explained to her how to page us using her push-button phone and not the Number Keybad in her computer.

Customer response: "Oh ok! Thank you very much, have a nice week" *click*

The customer had no clue. She probably didn't have a clue she won our internal company contests either: Moron of the Month and Yutz of the Year.

This is a tale I've often used to entertain co-workers when they're feeling down.

One day I got a call from a lady who wanted help registering her iBook. I work for a cable company and told her that we couldn't help with the registration of the OS.

She says, "No, no. I need to connect to register. I need your help connecting."

So I say okay and try to puzzle out this bazaar wizard she's in. One of the beautiful "dial up is the only connection type we'll accept" wizards. So I say, cancel the wizard and I'll get you online. Then you can do the registration.

"Fine." She says.

"Fine, what lights do you see on the cable modem?"

"I don't know, it's at home."

Hmm, I think. "Are you in front of the computer now?"

"Yes, we just bought it and we're coming home from the store. It's a portable computer so I wanted to try it out in the car."

I told her to call us back when she got home.