Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I was talking to one of those EUs who think they know everything about computers when really they don't know .... (actually a friend!) and he said that he wanted to try Windows NT. I tried to explain to him that he should install Linux instead of NT, but he insisted on NT. After a little bit of arguing, I gave up on offering him Linux and instead, I offered him a copy of NT 4.0 (which is the only version i had lying around), and he said "No! I want NT 3.0!" I told him I didn't have 3.0 and that I could give him 4.0 if he wanted it, but he kept on insisting on 3.0. I finally asked him "Why the heck do you want 3.0????" "Because I have a service pack for 3.0!" I tried to explain to him that service packs were available for NT 4, but he didn't buy it. :)

This isn't really a funny call I recieved, nor does it involve EUs with a ID10T error - actually, it's a call I put through myself, but the training of this agency (Macrohard) is pretty... interesting! (Considering they think that all users are idiots)

M=me, T=tech

...

M: Okay, what should I do from there?

T: Close up all the windows on your screen...

M: Okay

T: Now can you see the desktop?

M: Yeah

T: Now click on the Big E...

M: The "Big E???" .... ahhh .... do you mean Internet Explorer?!

T: Yes! It's great to talk to someone who knows what he's talking about!

(It's quite scary that compared to most Micro$oft lusers, anyone who knows what IE is "knows what he's talking about"!)

2 quick tales:

The company I used to work for ran a helpdesk for a national print/copy shop chain. The majority of users were Graphic designers, who were mainly Mac users. Sometimes they had to use PC based systems - such as these:

Call 1:

User - How do I get a "PLUS" sign?

Support - Either press the grey button on the right of the keyboard with the "PLUS" sign on it, or hold down the shift key and press the key with the "PLUS" sign above an "EQUALS" sign.

User - Great, Thanks very much.

Call 2:

The user was having a problem which needed them to look at the properties of a file. We join the call part way through....

Support - OK, now point the mouse at the file and right-click, then choose properties from the drop-down menu.

User - Right-Click?

Support - Yes, press the right mouse button. [The user's PC system was fitted with a Microsoft Mouse].

User - The mouse has 2 buttons???

Support - Yes, the left button and the right button.

User - Oh! I thought it was broken and cracked down the middle!

.....

Hey Chris here with another story from this ISP tech support. You have to wonder where these people come from. WHERE? Here is how it went.

ME:

Customer:

Thank you for calling Blah,Blah,Blah....

First of all Blah,Blah,Blah,....(this goes on for 3 minutes)

Oh what you cant get on the internet?

Well I was on yesterday then I sent email and

(interupting before she got into another long story)

How many lights are on you modem?

Power cable and pc

We just got this new Rooter that was working fine last night and this morning I got email so I dont know what it could be.

Ok well we cant troubleshoot your home network with that router hooked up so we will have to try and make a dirrect connection.

What?

Ok.... Lets unplug the power supply to you cable modem.

Are you talking about the cable that goes into the wall?

Uhh.. Lets find the modem. What brand is?

Pipewriter, Ericsson

Unplug the small black cord from that modem. Did the lights turn off?

Yes

Now lets go to the router. There are some cord there that look like larger phone cords. How many of these do you see?

There are two and a third.

Do they all look like larger phone cords?

One is a grey one. But thats looks like the power. There are two that look like phone cords.

Ok one of these has to go the the computer that we are working on.

Well it looks like one goes to the ericsson box. And one goes to the computer in the other room.

(waited to see if she would catch on for a second but she didnt) Ok Well it looks like there is no cord going from this router to your computer. There is no way that you can get online or get email like this.

But it was working this morning! I just logged on the internet last night. When I came to the computer I got email this morning.

Well I cant explain what happen here but there is no cord. This computer is not connected in anyway to the router or modem. There is no cord.

(sounding like she is giving up on tring to understand this)

Thanks...click (customer hung up)

What was that!

I hope she calls back and someone looks at my ticket. Here are the notes.

TROUBLESHOOTING STEPS:

1 )checked the modem lights

)power cable and pc

2 )tried to make a direct connection

)unpluged the modems power

)looked at the router

)she says there are only 2 cords that look like ethernet cords (large phone jacks)

)she says one goes to the pc in the other room and one goes to the router

)there is no cord going from this router to the pc in this room

)customer says it was working today

)she said thanks and hung up

i had a phonecall off my friend saying his joystik wasnt working.. i asked him what type of joystik it was.. The 1 off my Atari was the reply...idiot

As a Tier 2 Tech backup in our Help Desk, I'm one of the people assigned to take laptops for anyone who walks in with one. Today, a PhD candidate came in with her laptop to discuss a problem she had. When she transferred images to an MS Word document (her dissertation), its size would suddenly balloon.

The funny thing wasn't that, since I just had her switch from a regular to a JPEG format, thus shrinking the file down to something more manageable. It was what *she* was doing to the laptop that was funny. I scooted in a bit to work the voodoo that I do, and while I was doing so, she began petting and stroking the laptop as though it was a cat. She was also switching between talking to me and the laptop, so between the conversation, the petting, and my working on her problem, it took everything I had to not bust out laughing. Since she had quite a few images there, it took me a while to convert them all in and get them positioned correctly. Once I got that done, and recommended some other things to free up HD space (she complained about not having enough space for all these images and such), she went on her merry little way, and I proceeded to nearly bust a gut from her and her little laptop too :) I never did ask if she gave it a name or not....

I work in Tech Support for a major corporation. (ok the Government) and at slow times I sub in on the helpdesk.

Phone rings.

Me: Help desk how may I assist you.

User: I cannot get my e-mail to work.

Me. Ok is there any error codes?

User: Yes it keeps telling me that my server does not exist.

Me: Well Sir can I get you to open Windows Explorer and tell me what network drives you see.

User: Only C: and D: drives

Me: Alright Sir can I get you to reboot the machine and log into the network.

User: Ok did that now what?

(hear children playing in back ground)

Me: can I get you to open Windows Explorer again and tell me what drives your seeing?

User: Still only C and D

(hear children playing in background)

Me: Sir maybe I should have a Tech stop by your office and check your network settings for you.

User: Ok I will be back in the office Monday.

(YES HE IS SITTING AT HOME WITH HIS LAPTOP TRYING TO GET E-MAIL FROM A SECURE SERVER THAT IS IN THE OFFICE)

A year ago, I received a call from one of the execs who was at an executive meeting in Montreal.

Exec: I have a stupid question.

Me : OK - go ahead.

Exec: I have just received some number from the CEO, and have entered them into a spreadsheet on my laptop.

Me : OK - sounds good so far . . .

Exec: I just have to know - will the numbers still be there when I get back to Edmonton?

Me : (Stunned Silence for about two seconds) Yup.

Exec: Good. It was a stupid question, right?

Me : Yup.

First - some background.

My boss got sick 7 years ago, and a real jerk was hired to replace him (a personal friend of the CEO).

First hour on the job - he tells me he doesn't like me and wants me to quit. No way - I've got a wife and kids!

We have a five year long BAD relationship - until I get another job in the company - moved to another city - and now work in IT. (Networking, Helpdesk, Jack-of-all-trades)

This jerk has since been demoted, and now has NO actual duties. He does nothing - no joke. But still pulls in about three digits salary.

- End of background -

He phones me a year later. He needs help moving stuff on his computer.

I think to myself "What do you know?! This idiot has FINALLY learned how to do something with his PC."

(Up until now, opening e-mail was a long difficult process that involved re-reading written notes I had left . . .)

But, he won't TELL me what trouble he's having, or what he's trying to move.

After 5 minutes, I finally say, "XXXX - you asked for help - you HAVE to tell me what you are trying to move if you want any help".

He then quietly admitted that he couldn't figure out how to move the cards in solitaire. (Pause for a moment.)

"You hold down the mouse button, and then move the mouse".

(Sigh)

After almost two years of no job, but big salary -management is finally looking at restructuring.

I can't wait . . .

I had to smooth out relations with a (l)user and explain myself to my supervisor after responding to an email in which said (l)user was asking for software support. This was totally out of my "boundaries of suppor," but I was feeling good so I emailed him back. Some where in the message I asked him about the FAQ, but mistyped it as FA Q with a space. Well, *he* read "fah kyoo," and went straight to my sup with his panties in a knot.

That'll teach me not extend myself any further than absolutely required.

I recently replaced a programmers 200Mhz workstation with a 950Mhz. No sooner did I walk away when I start hearing how 'slow' this new pc is. As usual I try to ignore this, but after about four days I figure I should look into it. After trying to convince this woman for twenty minutes that its not possible that her new machine is slower, she insists on showing me. "See, when I click on this network share, it takes forever for anything to show up" ... Sure enough she clicks on it and there is nothing there. So I say "Do you suppose thats because there is nothing in that particular network folder?" .... Silence .... "Oh, I guess..." Programmers.....

Well, I've just about finished upgrading our computers to Win XP, a job I've found fascinating, considering the programs and hardware we use in our office are not XP compatible (for the most part).

Of course, with a new operating system comes new problems from the ID10T's with whom I work. For example:

1. "It's telling me to press C-t-r-l A-l-t Delete, what do I do??

me: Uh, press Ctrl-Alt-Delete

them: Oh wow!

2. After they figure out how to get to the logon screen: "I can't logon"

me: why not?

them: I don't have a password

me: what was your password before?

them: (password)

me: exactly. Type that in and press 'enter' (make sure you always tell them to press 'enter')

them: Oh wow!

3. While upgrading their computer, they used a "piggy-back" computer.

them: I can't find my documents

me: that's cuz this isn't your computer, they are on the shared drive until I get your computer done, see, here.

them: Oh wow!

(ten minutes later)

them: I can't find my favorites for the internet

me: that's cuz this isn't your computer, they are on the shared drive until I get your computer done, see, here.

them: Oh wow!

(picture this scenario happening every ten minutes for two hours straight!)

4. After the upgrade.

them (in an absolute panic): I can't find my files, I have to have these files! It would take me days to recreate these files!!

me: where were they located on you computer?

them: they were used for the (program name) program

me: okay, well, I pulled everything out of that directory and put it on the shared drive, then put it back. If they were there, you would have them. Are you sure they were kept on your computer, or were they saved on the shared drive?

them: my computer, I told you, i used them on my computer! now you've GOT to get them back! You brought them back for me once before!

me (remembering when I was trying to free up space on the shared drive, and he had told me those files were useless, then about died when he realized he needed them. luckily they were on the last full backup I did): Oh yeah, those ARE on the shared drive, see?

them: Oh wow! (funny how simple things amaze them).

Jesus and Satan were arguing over who was better with computers. Finally, God suggested they settle it: Each would spend two hours using spreadsheets, designing web pages, making charts and tables - everything they knew how to do.

The two sat down at their keyboards and began typing furiously. Just before the two hours were up, a thunderstorm knocked the power out. Once it came back on, they booted up their computers.

"It's gone! It's all gone!" Satan began to scream. "My work was destroyed!"

Meanwhile, Jesus began quietly printing out his work. "Hey, he must have cheated!" Satan yelled. "How come his stuff wasn't lost?"

God shrugged and said simply, "Jesus saves."

-from Reader's Digest

Just a little joke, thought I'd share!

A little background. I work as a webmaster/tech/purchasing guru for a local Mom N'Pop computer shop. We build computers, on occasion. Mostly for businesses, but we get the occasional residential customer wanting a box built. Most of these are GREAT BIG GEEKS who know exactly what they want damn near down to the motherboard and just lack the time or energy to build it themselves. Most of the idiots go to Best Buy instead. But one of them didn't today.

A lady called wanting some information on graphics programs--Photoshop and such--and a quote on a computer.

When we build a computer, we can put your choice of Windows on it, from 98SE to XP and anything in between (except ME, which we can't get anymore, and it's probably just as well), and some people prefer one over the other. Some people are used to 98 and like to stick with it. Some people are hot for 2000 Professional. Some people want XP. And some poor masochistic souls want ME which IMHO is the biggest stinkiest pile of crap Microsoft has ever produced, but I digress.

And there was also the matter of "do you want a plain old CD-ROM drive, or a DVD drive, or a burner, or any combination of two of the above? How big a monitor do you want? How fancy do you want your speakers? Do you want anything weird like a Zip drive or an extra floppy drive or a special keyboard or mouse?" And so on.

So, I had to call this woman back.

I knew I was in trouble in the first five seconds of the call. Now, don't get me wrong, she was very, very nice.

Too nice.

I explain Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro/etc. to her. She babbles on for about ten minutes about what she needs and whether PSP has /this/ feature and whether Photoshop has /that/ feature and how much do they cost and are they easy to use and this and that. My boss is giving me a progressively hairier eyeball with each passing second.

Twenty minutes into the call: I give her JASC's URL and tell her to go get the Paint Shop Pro trial and see if she likes it, as we finally establish that Photoshop is a little too expensive.

Thirty minutes into the call: she asks me if she actually has to buy the software, or if she can just pay someone to install it on her computer without buying the software. No, honey, that's illegal. "Why is it illegal?" Oh dear god kill me now.

Forty minutes into the call: "So I have a lot of stuff I didn't buy on here...like this Microsoft Internet Explorer. Is that illegal?" No, honey, that came with Windows. It /should/ be illegal, and should possibly be put on trial for crimes against nature, but, once more, I digress.

Fifty minutes into the call: I abruptly steer the conversation to the computer she wants. First question: what OS? "Oh, I don't know, I just need something that has a browser and I don't care much about solitaire and I might get something other than Windows, like Netscape..." No, honey, Netscape is not an OS. Ten minutes of attempting to explain the differences between 98/2K/XP and web browser/OS follows. Boss is glaring at me.

The one-hour mark: She says she wants the newest one. Good enough for me. I put her down for XP Home.

1 hour 10 minutes: Monitor. "Well, I've got this little tiny one, and I'd really like a big one, and the ones they have at Kinko's, how big are those? I want the exact same kind of monitor..." Honey, I don't know exactly what brand they are, but I think they're 17". Just in case, I pencil in "19"?" off to the side.

1 hour 20 minutes: decide not to bother asking about CD/DVD/CD-RW or speakers, pick speakers that are not too cheap but not too expensive, figure in our usual standard vanilla CD-ROM drive, and throw it into the quote while she tells me she's heard Opera is a really good operating system. I do not have the heart to tell her it's a web browser AGAIN. Boss holds up a sign: "Get her off the phone."

1 hour 30 minutes: ask if she has DSL or cable. "No, I just use a modem." Finally, a straight answer! Modem. Check. Then I made the mistake of asking if she ever needed to be on a local network, so I could determine whether or not she needed a network card. "Yes..." Network card, check. "I use Everyone's Internet. They're local." Network card, uncheck. Boss is giving me very hairy eyeball for not being able to get this woman off the godpounded phone.

1 hour 40 minutes: Tell woman that I must calculate all this crap and call her back with a quote. Thanks for calling! Goodbye!

I started beating my head against the desk and silently weeping around the "EV1 is local!" point. I also marched over to Boss and explained exactly why the call took so long. Aaaaargh.

While working as a techie at a customers site for the last 3 years I have had some fairly unusual problems, but the one that sticks in my mind the most was a call from a lady who complained that her monitor was not working correctly.

She said that it appears to have some strange 'blob' that travelled aound the screen.

I paid a visit , and sure enough, there was a discolouration on the screen, she said that it was not always in the same spot and sometimes moved.

I was already thinking about a replacemnt monitor when I noticed a large magnetic pyramid that had paper clips attached to it sitting on top of her desktop next to the screen, removing it returned the monitor to normal.

Nuff Said

Obligatory lines: LOVE the site. I am not directly employed in tech support, but have been freelancing for friends, family and 'friends of' for over 10 years. The following does not deal with a tech support issue but may just explain why so many people

The following excerpt appeared in a newspaper column from one of (Silicon Valley) San Jose, CA's biggest papers. In a review of a handheld/cellphone hybrid, the author wrote in regards to specs:

...206 Megahertz processor, ((32 megaHERTZ of RAM))...

This from a usually intelligent fella. Benefit of the doubt: Printer's error.

Ok for a little background i know a bit about pc security and pcs in general. Well my dads friend thought he was all that one night and decided scince i was setting up the network at my house hed prey on me....boy was HE wrong...

Me: (setting up network) Sup XX?

XX: nm, thats not secure you know.

Me: umm...its an internal network and my pc is the only one that is connected, and scince i have hardware security its pretty secure.

XX: I can hax it.

Me: You mean hack?

XX: Yea.

Me: um ok have fun trying.

Well he went through his routine of busting into my "Trouser's tirewall" (dumbass!) and blah blah. So finally i got him :)

Me: O yea? I already "hax'd"(lmao) your computer.

XX: Nah the fbi protects my pc.

Me: right. i can prove it.

XX: How....

Me: Well when you go home go to start---run and type "command" and hit enter.

XX: right...

Me: You'll see the black screen of death i put on there. and theres only one way to get rid of it.

XX: *goes home and does it*

XX: What did you do! How do i fix it?!

Me: Ok i'll help you. (guide him t making a boot disk, he reboots to the c:\ prompt)

me: Ok now type format c:\

XX: ok its going.

Me: when its done reboot and call me back.

He never called :)

...once upon a time there was an OS called CP/M. And yours truly was a young programmer tho whom was assign a task to write a file transfering program between two CP/M computers via serial link.

Since one of them had an 8 inch (yes, 8 inch!) FDD and another 5 inch, I had two write the code on both of them (in Mark Williams C), compile and run. That was an easy task. I did it and transferred several files back and forth, and to my astonishment text files were ok, but programs didn´t want to run, after being transferred.

So I debugged it, and found that all transferred files had forty bytes of zeros attached in the beginning. I spent a whole bloody week trying to figure out where these zeros come from, until one of older and wiser colleagues decided to help me out. So he asked

- What are the names of standard input and output devices in CP/M

- PUN: and RDR:

- Ok, now what do these stand for?

- PUN: stands for puncher, RDR: for reader.

- Did you _ever_ see a puncher or a reader?

- No. ( I was not _that_ old.)

- So, young man, they use paper tape, and 40 bytes of zeros mean that PUN: is configured for a paper-tape puncher and ..... IT TRIES TO ADVANCE THE TAPE!

There's more than trash managers don't do... [see last month's]

We provide a web-based interface to our mail server so our staff can receive/send their email when away from the actual site. Manager X helped me write the instructions by dummy-testing them for me, so I KNOW he knows how to use it.

Secretary calls. Manager X is overseas and needs his email. So he calls Secretary and tells her "Go into my office, turn on my PC, log in as me, run Pegasus mail, download my mail, forward it to my Hotmail account, make a new folder called "Forwarded to X" and move all the mail into that so I know when I get back which ones have been forwarded." Secretary only phoned because after DLing, the PC crashed and she couldn't get it going again.

I talk her through starting it up and send a nasty letter to Manager X's Hotmail address, cc'ed to IT Manager, "reminding" him that he knew we had webmail, he should be using the webmail, and if he'd simply forgotten how he could have emailed Helpdesk from his Hotmail asking for instructions instead of wasting Secretary's time.

Sad thing is, Secretary knows it too, and still acquiesced. Me? I'd be telling the boss where to get off on that one!

I have worked with a lady for two years now who I believe is totally useless when it comes to computers. First of all, I work in transcription for a family practice. There is only myself and this lady (let's call her Verne because that's her real name and I doubt she'll ever read this because she doesn't know how to use a computer let alone get on the Internet). We do all the transcription on MS Word. Which is about all Verne knows - to turn on the computer and open Word. I have tried several times to teach her new tricks, but she refuses to learn.

I often have fun with Verne - she only shuts off her PCU, never her monitor so I'll often turn off the monitor. The first time I did that she called the Help Desk because her computer wouldn't start up! Now she starts up the computer and loudly complains that the computer was "turned all the way off" (???). I've yet to understand that.

Most of our dictations are one page long but a few are two pages. Instead of doing a header, Verne manually types a header on both pages. She can't make a list - instead of letting Word make numbered list for her, she does it by herself and if the list is long, she'll mess up the numbers. She doesn't understand justification and just recently figured out that she doesn't have to hard return after every line. Only in the last year has she figured out how to save her documents.

I do have a lot of fun with Verne - with computer pranks and such. At one time, I did an AutoCorrect to replace schitzophrenia with "twice the fun" and whenever she spells out a color (red, blue, etc), the word itself turns that color.

She didn't know envelopes could be printed from a printer and until I came she put her letterhead directly into the printer tray instead of using the bypass tray. She did recently discover AutoComplete although she has no idea how to add words to it and has to go through a complicated routine each time to figure it out.

I could go on and on but I think you get the idea. She is your worse nightmare!

* Smash forehead on keyboard to continue.

* Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue.

* Press any key to continue or any other key to quit.

* Press any key except... no, No, NO, NOT THAT ONE!

* Press Ctrl-Alt-Del now for IQ test.

* Close your eyes and press escape three times.

* Bad command or file name! Go stand in the corner.

* This will end your Windows session. Do you want to play another game?

* Windows message: "Error saving file! Format drive now? (Y/Y)"

* This is a message from God Gates: "Rebooting the world. Please log off."

* To "shut down" your system, type "WIN."

* BREAKFAST.SYS halted... Cereal port not responding.

* COFFEE.SYS missing... Insert cup in cup holder and press any key.

* CONGRESS.SYS corrupted... Re-boot Washington D.C? (Y/N)

* File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N)

* Bad or missing mouse. Spank the cat? (Y/N)

* Runtime Error 6D at 417A:32CF: Incompetent User.

* Error reading FAT record: Try the SKINNY one? (Y/N)

* WinErr 16547: LPT1 not found. Use backup. (PENCIL & PAPER.SYS)

* User Error: Replace user.

* Windows VirusScan 1.0 - "Windows found: Remove it? (Y/N)"

* Welcome to Microsoft's World - Your Mortgage is Past Due...

* If you are an artist, you should know that Bill Gates owns you and all your future creations. Doesn't it feel nice to have security?

* Required Government Warning: After we got caught in cahoots with the hardware manufacturers for trying to needlessly fill your hard drives, the following message is now required as you save your files in Word. "Word has detected that you don't wish to save your text file as a lumpy and space wasting .doc format filled with potential viruses. Would you like to save your old outdated ascii file as a Word file anyway?"

* Your hard drive has been scanned and all stolen software titles have been deleted. The police are on the way.

A man is walking down the street. He looks over and sees a frog sitting there on the sidewalk. The frog looks up and says in a sweet voice, "I am really a princess. If you kiss me just once, I will return to my human form and do anything for you." The man picks up the frog, looks at it, and places it in his pocket. He then heads on his way again. Shortly a voice is heard from his pocket: "Didn't you hear me? If you kiss me, I will turn into a beautiful princess and do anything for you." The man takes the frog froms his pocket, looks at it for a moment, and returns is to his pocket. Shortly the voice is heard again, this time with a frustrated tone: "Hey! What's wrong with you?! I said if you kiss me I'll turn into a beautiful princess and do anything you want!" The man pulls out the frog and says to it, "Look, I'm a computer science student. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog is kind of neat."

July 18 I just tried to connect to America Online. I've heard it is the best online service I can get. They even included a free disk! I'd better hold onto it incase they don't ever send me anther one! I can't connect. I don't know what is wrong. July 19 Some guy at the tech support center says my computer needs a modem. I don't see why. He's just trying to cheat me. How dumb does he think I am? July 22 I bought the modem. I couldn't figure out where it goes. It wouldn't fit in the monitor or the printer. I'm confused. July 23 I finally got the modem in and hooked up. that nine year old next door did it for me. But it still don't work. I cant get online. July 25. That nine year old kid next door hooked me up to America Online for me. He's so smart. I told the kid he was a prodigy. But he says that's just another service. What a modest kid. He's so smart and he does these services for people. Anyway he's smarter then the jerks who sold me the modem. They didn't even tell me about communications software. Bet they didn't know. And why do they put two telephone jack holes in the back of a modem when you only need one? And why do they have one labeled phone when you are not suppose to hook it to the phone jack on the wall? I thought the dial tone sounded funny! Boy, are modem makers dumb! But the kid figured it out by the sound. July 26 What's the internet? I thought I was on America Online. Not this internet thing. I'm confused. July 27 The nine year old kid next door showed me how to use this America Online stuff. I told him he must be a genius. He says that he is compared to me. Maybe he's not so modest after all. July 28 I tried to use chat today. I tried to talk into my computer but nothing happened. maybe I need to buy a microphone. July 29 I found this thing called usenet. I got out of it because I'm connected to America Online not usenet. July 30 These people in this usenet thing keep using capital letters. How do they do that? I never figured out how to type capital letters. Maybe they have a different type

of keyboard. JULY 31 I CALLED THE COMPUTER MAKER I BOUGHT IT FROM TO COMPLAIN ABOUT NOT HAVING A CAPITOL LETTER KEY. THE TECH SUPPORT GUY SAID IT WAS THIS CAPS LOCK KEY. WHY DIDN'T THEY SPELL IT OUT? I TOLD HIM I GOT A CHEAP KEYBOARD AND WANTED A BETTER ONE. AND ONE OF MY SHIFT KEYS ISNT THE SAME SIZE AS THE OTHER. HE SAID THATS A STANDARD. I TOLD HIM I DIDN'T WANT A STANDARD KEYBOARD BUT ANOTHER BRAND. I MUST HAVE HAD AN IMPORTANT COMPLAINT BECAUSE I HEARD HIM TELL THE OTHER SUPPORT GUYS TO LISTEN IN ON OUR CONVERSATION. AUGUST 1 I FOUND THIS THING CALLED THE USENET ORACLE. IT SAYS THAT IT CAN ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS I ASK IT. I SENT IT 44 SEPARATE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE INTERNET. I HOPE IT RESPONDS SOON. AUGUST 2 I FOUND A GROUP CALLED REC.HUMOR. I DECIDED TO POST THIS JOKE ABOUT THE CHICKEN THAT CROSSED THE ROAD. TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE! HA! HA! I WASNT SURE I POSTED IT RIGHT SO I POSTED IT 56 MORE TIMES. AUGUST 3 I KEEP HEARING ABOUT THE WORLD WIDE WEB. I DiN'T KNOW SPIDERS GREW THAT LARGE. AUGUST 4 THE ORACLE RESPONDED TO MY QUESTIONS TODAY. GEEZ IT WAS RUDE. I WAS SO ANGRY THAT I POSTED AN ANGRY MESSAGE ABOUT IT TO REC.HUMOR.ORACLE. I WASNT SURE IF I POSTED RIGHT SO I POSTED IT 22 MORE TIMES. AUGUST 5 SOMEONE TOLD ME TO READ THE FAQ. GEEZ THEY DIDN'T HAVE TO USE PROFANITY. AUGUST 6 SOMEONE ELSE TOLD ME TO STOP SHOUTING IN ALL MY MESSAGES. WHAT A STUPID JERK. IM NOT SHOUTING! IM NOT EVEN TALKING! JUST TYPING! HOW CAN THEY LET THESE RUDE JERKS GO ON THE INTERNET? August 7 Why have a Caps Lock key if you're not suppose to use it? Its probably an extra feature that costs more money. August 8 I just read this post called make money fast. I'm so exited. I'm going to make lots of money. I followed his instructions and posted it to every newsgroup I could find. August 9 I just made my signature file. Its only 6 pages long. I will have to work on it some more. August 10 I just looked at a group called alt.aol.sucks. I read a few posts and I really believe that aol should be wiped off the face of the earth. I wonder what

an aol is. August 11 I was asking where to find some information about something. Some guy told me to check out ftp.netcom.com. I've looked and looked but I can't find that group. August 12 I sent a post to every usenet group on the Internet asking where the ftp.netcom.com is. hopefully someone will help. I cant ask the kid next door. His parents said that when he comes back from my house he's laughing so hard he can't eat or sleep or do his homework. So they wont let him come over anymore. I do have a great sense of humor. I don't know why the rec.humor group didn't like my chicken joke. Maybe they only like dirty stuff. Some people sent me posts about my 56 posts of the joke and they used bad words. August 13 I sent another post to every usenet group on the Internet asking where the ftp.netcom.com is. I had forgot yesterday to include my new signature file which is only 8 pages long. I know everyone will want to read my favorite poem so I included it. I'm also going to add that short story I like. August 14 Some guy suspended my account because of what I was doing. I told him I don't have an account at his bank. He's so dumb.

ALright, here we go. We recently moved (only one town over) and so I wasn't on from friday afternoon to saturday afternoon. So of course, that's when everyone and his mother starts looking for me, even though I had told them all I would be gone.

Including my friend. My friend who's about as computer savy as F-117A Stealth Fighter savy. Seems he can't get his computer to do certain things any more. It "just won't do it." So, knowing from prior experience not to get too technical on the phone, I call up and ask what he was doing before this happened, did it suddenly happen or a slow buildup, yadda yadda. "It just won't do it."

Oooookay, so a few days later when we actually got a decent amount of stuff out of boxes and could walk around the house, I hop in my beat up old car and head over to Joe's house. Now, I helped Joe set up his computer. Deleted all the crap that HP installed in the factory. Shut off the 5 factory-installed startup programs, and the 3 he had downloaded since. Y'know, system critical stuff like RealPlayer, AOL, *TWO* CD player programs (gee Joe, why do you think it takes your computer so long to load a music CD?) Well I get there, and get to go through the happy chore all over again, since over the months he's just clicked "yes" every time something asked if he wanted the startup back, or just didn't take it off again after an upgrade.

So now, we get down to the meat and potatoes of his problem. Alright, he's now *UP* to 60% system resources. Let's see what else is going on he--- Wait, what's this? Norton Antivirus.... AvantGo.... VirusScanner.... And 3 other free/shareware virus programs whose names I don't remember. "Uh, Joe, why do you need all these different virus programs? Any one works." Ten minutes later, once I convince him that yes, they WILL all cover the same viruses (i didn't even bother trying to explain safe downloading practices to this guy, he didn't do a single thing with the computer for the first month but look for porn on the internet) I safely uninstalled everything but Norton, as that was the only one he had a disc and documentation for.

So, let's move onto the next-- *DINK* What the frag? ".... Joe.... All these 'web enhancement tools'? You realize they do nothing but hog your system's reso-- memory, and half of them are spyware, yes?" After another five minute explanation of what spyware is, they're gone. Now we're up to acceptable levels of performance. But the game's still not running. Or rather, it's running, but it's not connecting for multiplayer. Hmmmm..... Wait, brainstorm, what were some of those icons I disabled? Hmmm.... BlackIce, Zone Alarm, and some other firewall I had never heard of. Eeeeyep. Once I assure him that no, nobody will be hacking his computer while he's playing Counter Strike, they're gone. He gets all happy because he can play now, I accept the can of Coke he offers as repayment, and I head home.

That was about three months ago. I'm counting the days until the next time I get a call, "Chuckieeeee, what's up man?"

You have a car. You know how to drive a car. You don't know how to FIX a car. You don't go under the car's hood.

You have a TV. You know how to use the remote. You DON'T know how to fix the TV. You don't open it up and start fooling with wires.

You have a computer. You're barely able to get it powered up. You know jack crap about hardware, programming, or anything else of a technical nature. So why must people try to fix these most complicated and expensive (usually, for around the house anyway) things themselves?

I recently purchased a whole new computer because the RAM on my old one died, and I was in need of upgrades all around anyway. Now I know that I know software, and I know that - given the pieces - I can assemble one. I ALSO know that I'm ludicrously out of touch with most of the most system-critical pieces of hardware, so rather than spending a buttload of cash and ending up frying it all, I head to a local PC City my friend reccomended, and was thoroughly pleased with the service while picking out, customizing and finalizing my order. I get a call Friday that it's done, so I head over. Erm.... Where's the CD burner? Yeah, the burner. The one I asked be removed from MY computer and put into THIS one? Right. And the hard drive. .... Yes.

Seems whatever nimrod had assembled the computer just followed the parts-ordered list, not the actual receipt of what I wanted. So the other guy sets to work on swapping out all the old things I wanted to keep, I take a quick drive over to my place of employment to pick up my paycheck as I had had the day off, then head back. Pick up my system, all set up, bring it home, plug it in, marbelous!It's not so bad having a nitwit tech, as long as there's at least one good one to make up for it.

So anyway, while I'm hanging out around the place waiting for him to finish copying over the data from my old backup drive, I asked if I could just take a gander at the slips for the other things sitting around fixed/waiting to be looked at, as I was curious how my fellow New Jersians were screwing up THEIR systems. Sure, he says. So, I thought I'd share what the other things were in there for:

3 were in for upgrades or to have a bit of hardware they purchased installed. (SMART PEOPLE!)

2 were in because they purchased an upgrade, forgot to disable the prior hardware, and somehow slagged Windows while "fixing" it.

1 was in there because he didn't unplug the system, nor shut off the power supply, before messing with the cards inside.

1 was there because his cat peed on it. (okay, not HIS fault.)

1 was there because the DVD-ROM got something stuck in the side of the drawer while closing, so rather than pushing the button to get it to come back out, he just grabs hold of the front plate and pulls. Hard. While the internal motors are still trying to pull it in.

Another was there because he had a tape drive in his system (older one he had just gotten second-hand) and somehow wedged a ZIP disk in the slot.

And finally, one was there for "severe windows problems." I took a look at the receipt. The techs uninstalled various known trojan horses, ran a viruscan to get rid of the approximately 200 viruses installed (got this number from the guy) and a little note suggesting the man invest in a CD burner, that way he doesn't clog up his 10 gig hard drive with *SIX GIGABYTES* of varied pornography. I don't even wanna THINK about what THAT fella's computer area looks like!!!

I've been working with PC's since 1985.

In 1996, I decided to buy a new computer and picked up a Compaq Presario 4784. Since I still had a decent monitor, I decided to keep my current monitor.

A couple of months later, my monitor went dead, so I decided to pick up the Compaq Multimedia monitor which went with the PC.

The monitor had a big volume control knob on the PC, built in microphone, and a button on the left.

I hooked it up to my PC....and it didn't work.

I tried hooking it up to my old PC, and it didn't work.

So, I'm thinking that the stupid Compaq Presario is frying my monitors.

I drove a half-hour to return the monitor to the store, but the techs there insisted the monitor worked fine (which it did).

I brought it back home, connected it to the PC, and.....nothing.

So, one quick phone call to Compaq Tech Support. I'm livid! The stupid monitor doesn't work! It's probably they're stupid PC frying my monitors! Something's not right.

Tech Support: Have you turned the monitor on?

Me: Of course! I've been working with PC's for over 10 years.

TS: You see the volume control know?

Me: Uhhh...yeah?

TS: Push it in.

Me: Push it in?

TS: Yeah, push it in.

Me: OK (the monitor comes on). Wait just a minute.

(I go and grab the manual that came with the monitor to find where in the book it says you push in the volume control knob to turn the monitor on and off.)

Me: Do you think maybe you guys didn't need to bury it so far in the manual?

I guess it just goes to prove, when all else fails, RTFM!

I'm known by family and friends as a "computer expert" so I get asked for help all th etime; this one takes the cake so far:

I was at a local home supply warehouse, when one of the employees (spotting my Windows XP T-shirt) asked me if I worked for MS. I said yes, and he responded with:

"I have this game I like (he told me the game, but I don't rememeber), and I tried to install it on my new computer with Windows XP, and the game came up with a message that said 'you need something to run this game on Windows NT." What should I do?

I asked if he knew what the "something" was it told him he needed. He didn't. I suggested he go to the web site for the game, or to MS's web site and enter the name of the game. He seemed incredulous that, as a Microsoft employee, I didn't know everything about every application ever written for every version of Windows.

I just had to pass on this news article from Ottawa Canada.

In the wake of 9-11 the Canadian Government spent $27 million on a new security system with pass cards and electronic locks on all the Members of Parliament's office doors in one of their campuses. The MPs, afraid of missing visitors while they were out, all got in the habit of simply propping their doors open.

Better example of the end of the internet.

Previous post has links - so it's not the end

http://www.mythologic.net/end

During my freshman year of high school i dont know why but i signed up for a website design class. Our first assingment was to create a simple web page using goLive! I ended up creating it using not only goLive but notepad as well. My teacher was in shock when she saw actual "HTML" on notepad and thought i was writing a virus or something. I was sent down to the office and accused of "tampering" with the school's computers until i showed them that i was really doing my schoolwork. After a couple of weeks with this teacher she was replaced with a student teacher who was in this class can you believe it? :P

I'm a support technician at a local Internet provider, and it amazes me how stupid people can be.

I was talking on the phone with just such a person yesterday. His name will be "Joe". This is how we setup a dial-up networking connection in Dial-Up Networking, and this is how a good number of my conversations go.

Me: "(Company name)"

Joe: Yes I can't get on the Internet... (said in a winey I-know-nothing tone of voice... I can sniff these kind of people out a mile away!)

Me: Ok. What happens when you try to connect?

Joe: Nothing.

Me: (said a little snotty) Okay, well there HAS to be something that happens. You have to do SOMETHING to conect to the Internet, and as such you have to get an error message.

Joe: Oh yeah... there WAS an error message (litterally wait on the phone for two to three minutes). It saaaaiiiiid.... it can't connect.

(UGH! This helps me nil!)

Me: Ok. (At this point I am giving up on getting an error message. If this continues I will be on the phone for hours)...(Our software holds information such as what OS a person has, and if we fill it in it makes it a little convenient for people like this)

Me: Are you at your 'desktop' (inner monotone "Sh*t why the HE*L did I ask this moron that?!)?

Joe: Uhhmmmm... I don't know. How do you tell??

Me: Nevermind. Double-Click on 'My Computer'.

Joe: Ok... (normally when people say OK it means they've done it and are ready... ohh no. OK to HIM means 'I comprehend what you are saying, let me take an hour finding it!)

Me: (As explained before OK means go ahead for me) Ok now Double-Click on Dial-Up Networking.

Joe: I don't see it.

Me: (internal sigh) Ok... what DO you see?

Joe: My Computer, Internet Explorer, Out... (interruption time... I've been on the phone for about 15 minutes just trying to get into Dial-Up Networking!)

Me: Ok... that's enough... Did you double-click on My Computer?

Joe: No

Me: Ok... do that... that's what I just said to do.

Joe: Oh ok. Maaaaeeeeeeey Cooooommmmmppuuuuuttterrrrrr... hmm... OH THERE IT IS! Ok I'm in there.

Me: Ok... Now look for Dial-Up Networking. Once you find that, double-click on it.

Joe: Ok

Me: (Again ok means go ahead w/ your instructions) Ok Now you should see your (company) icon.

Joe: I don't see it.

Me: (Getting a little perturbed now...) Ok. what DO you see??!!

Joe: A:\ Drive (3.5 inch floppy), ...

Me: Ok Ok... Do you see Dial-Up Networking?

Joe: Yes.

Me: Ok... double-click it.

Joe: Open it?

Me: YES!!!

Joe: Ok it's open...

Me: Ok. You should see your HMC Icon?

Joe: No. I don't see it.

(NOW I'm getting so pi*sed my blood's seriously starting to boil and my face is most likely beet red. I do NOT have time to do this right now. I have to leave for a concert that is two hours away. I need to LEAVE.)

Joe: I see Make New Conection.

Me: Ok What ELSE do you see in there?

Joe: My Connection.

Me: Ok Open My connection, and read me the telephone number in there.

Joe: xxx-xxx-xxxx. (We're in like THE only part of the country that has to dial their area code for local calls... It's a pain, and don't worry it's coming for you too)

Me: (The number he gives me is totally not right. I don't even think it's local in my state period.) Ok... (I run him through making a new connection and deleting the old one out...If you make 2 connections that are the same name it will tell you there's one w/ that name already...I had him make one icon for our service and then asked if he saw it. He said "No I don't see it." I had to help him make a new one w/ the same name and it gave the error a connection exists w/ this name...I get him all straightened out and everything FINALLY and after 45 minutes of walking through how to make a new icon and putting an icon on the desktop he's ready to go.)

Me: Ok now double click the Shortcut to (company).

Joe: Ok

Me: Now type in your username in the box that says username and your password in the password box.

Joe: It says this connection does not exist (said AFTER I said that WHOLE THING. UGH)

Me: Ok... Look for another icon on your screen there that says HMC. (He finds it, types the username and password in, and I tell him to connect after we get off the phone. He says Ok... uh oh)

We hang up and he calls back about 10 minutes later to tell me that the connection says it does not exist...

I do not see why old people insist on getting computers. Albeit they are like 40% of our customers and pay their bills w/out question, but if they have not taken a BASIC BASIC computer course, they are harder to show how to do things on the computer than a fricking ROCK! It's a good thing I only have a few more weeks here and then I start college :|

This isn't the standard "Where's my (any) key?" anecdote.

I had a friend who, back when PC's first came out, acquired one. After he'd owned it about a month, he called me (since I've worked with computers since 16 KB was a LOT of RAM and two floppy drives was a luxury) with a problem: "When I boot the system, it says 'press any key to continue.' Well, I've tried it, and several keys don't work." He then went on and listed every key on the keyboard (e.g., (ctrl), (alt), (shift), etc.) which didn't work to continue (I can't imagine how many times he rebooted). He then insisted on knowing why they said "any key" when some didn't work. I quipped "you'd have to ask Bill Gates."

He did; if you wonder why Bill Gates now has an unlisted number, this guy is probably the reason....

This is the god stuff.

****** TROUBLESHOOTING ******

The customer can not find the modem.

EXACT ERROR RECEIVED:

TROUBLESHOOTING STEPS:

1 )checked the modem lights

)she says there is one light

)the customer was looking at the computer

)had her look for a small box

)the customer says there is only a big box

and wants to know if the modem is on the floor

)told the customer I would have no clue where the

modem might be.

)the customer found something that says linksys

)this is a router we are still looking for the modem

)the customer says she is now crawling around

on the floor and found two little buttons

)asked if she knew what those buttons do

)she said no

)the customer pressed the button

)the computer turned off

)asked her to find the modem again, the small box

smaller the the size of a shoe

)she cant find it

)let her know there is nothing I can do if she cant

find the modem

)asked her to call back when she finds the modem

)customer disconnected

EU said that her Macintosh internal CD-ROM drive wasn't working - whenever she put in a CD it would read infinitely. She'd tried restarting, different CDs, et cetera. Problem: EU's kid had put an M&M in the drive and it had melted. :)

Although I am not strictly in tech support, I do work for a noted consumer electronics company that claims to have all the answers (you do the math). That makes me tech support in the eyes of most of the customers.

One of the things that my company is known for is stocking many different varieties of batteries. Thus, we are often called upon to help customers get hard-to-find batteries for their watches and cordless phones and remotes and stuff. Not usually a problem -- unless, of course, the customer has absolutely no clue what battery he is looking for.

Enter Subject A.

Me: Welcome to R**** S****. What are you looking for today?

Subject: I'm looking for a 1.5-volt battery.

Me: What kind? (I'm expecting him to give me a battery number or *something* here...)

Subject: You do sell 1.5-volt batteries here, right?

Me: (rolling eyes) Well, we stock about 30 different varieties of 1.5-volt batteries. What kind of battery were you looking for?

A short conversation ensues. Subject A did not bring the battery with him, nor could he give me any information about the battery -- whether it was a watch battery, standard alkaline battery, NiCd rechargeable, NiMH rechargeable, lithium battery -- *nothing*. Suffice it to say, Subject A did not leave with a battery that day.

But I am not sure who was worse, Subject A or Subject B, whom A called on a cell phone in the store but who could not tell A what kind of battery it was even though she was *staring at it*. Ah, the fun of retail! :/

This goes down as perhaps the funniest call I've personally ever taken....

I took a ticket out of our queue, and it was a girl who needed help setting up her dialup connection under XP. Seemed simple enough. I called up, but no one answered at first. We've got an 8 ring limit on calls, and halfway through the 8th ring, she picked up. As I introduced myself, she let out this moan. Yes, THAT sort of a moan. I was naturally surprised and asked if she needed assistance. I could hear both her and her boyfriend moaning with delight, and she managed to get out a request in between things to have us call back a little later. I naturally obliged, and when I hung up, I busted a gut. It's the best call I've personally ever taken, and as far as I know, it's a first here where I work.

Keep coming with the tales!

My grandmother bought a computer several years ago so she could keep in contact with the rest of the family who were all online. She's fairly intelligent, especially given her age, but still has problems that she has me fix from time to time, although nothing worse than those caused by a general lack of familiarity with computers on her part.

Once, she had me look at a problem she was having with Microsoft Word. She was transferring the family tree from hard copy to her computer (geneology is one of her things), and after several pages worth of data entry, she went back and changed something earlier in the document which completely messed up the formatting in the rest of the document. All of her nice indented lists of people and their children were out of alignment and she didn't understand why.

I went and looked at the document and fiddled around a little, changing things and seeing what happened. Sure enough, if I changed the length of one line, the following lines would jump around from tab stop to tab stop. Now I was even more perplexed. This was weird. Finally, I thought to view the document in normal mode rather than page layout, and lo and behold, the problem revealed itself!

My grandmother was apparently used to using the old-fashioned typerwriters and was unaware that she needed to hit return to go to the next line on the page...so she just hit the tab key until the line wrapped around.

I spent about an hour deleting tabs, inserting returns, and reformatting the document so that everything was aligned correctly again. :P

I do tech work for a small customer service company in Alberta, Canada. One thing I've noticed over the years is how the same few really stupid problems keep popping up over and over again. I'm going to assume that this is because everyone but me has read a secret manual that comes with thier computers that I have never read before. Here is my idea of an exerpt from it.

Luser Guide

Part 1: The CPU

This is a large box that comes with your computer for only one reason: the power button. The disk drive and cd-rom can be removed and placed in a drawer for convenience. Plugging in is only neccesary once a week.

Part 2: The monitor

Commonly called the "TV thing", the monitor is radioactive and dangerous. It can either be plugged into the CPU or the wall, but not both. A green light means it's working, a yellow light means to smack it like a tv with bad reception.

Part 3: The internet

The internet comes to your computer through a modem, a detachable box inside your computer. The modem should be placed either next to the CPU or taken home over the weekend. DSL and cable modems plug into the wall through a regular phone cord. If a dial-up modem makes screeching noises, unplug and try again.

Part 4: Mouse and keyboard

While you do not need a keyboard, Windows can not be navigated without a mouse. Mouse should be placed on a large enogh mouse pad that you will never rach the edges of it. Picking up the mouse can break it. Keyboard should be cleaned in lukewarm water - NEVER use soap! Keys on the keyboard can be removed and placed in alphabetical order to make typing easier.

Part 5: Fax Machine

While not a technically a part of the computer, tech support will be more than happy to help you with your problems. Fax machines come with a "shredder" that destroys the original document if it is faxed correctly. If an intact document emerges, try sending it again. Please note that if instead of a screeching noise, a human voice comes on and yells agrily, you obviously have the correct fax number and that person is just confused.

Anyone have a copy of this? I'd sure like to take a look!

I recently stopped working for an Australian Government department.

This department was in charge of assisting other departments to outsource etc. Needless to say, we were one of the most hated department in the country.

In December 01, we were abolished and tehn absorbed into our"parent" department, the one we had been split from a few years earlier.

Now the fun started...

We had to move our entire office, from our great buidling, to a space about 20% of the size.

My area boss told me to make sure the webpages and online databases I had been working on were backed up for the move.

As I did not have a CD burner to copy the setup, I approached our "IT" person. This Lusers name was ITP##e (Name obscured to protect the stupid.)

I wanted a CD so I could burn the webpage and all my work, my previous copy was out of date and it was important to make sure we had a copy.

The IT Luser said I was not allowed to copy the data, that was his job, and he would do it when he got round to it. My Boss, uderstandingly told me to bring a blank CD to work tomorrow and do it myself anyway.

The next day, I turned up at work and found that the CD burner PC had be "Removed" to allow it to be re-configured for the move.

To make life even more like something out of a bad Techtales story... ITP##E even told our hosting people to delete the setup from their computers, including backups, as the Backup they gave him worked fine.

Needless to say, once you are handed a Backup of vital information, check it to see if it actualy holds the data you want.

Once ITP##E left the department (Read, "Ran away under threats of Death") A few of us spent the next few months trying to recover data from missing servers (which had been wided)and the hardcopies we had manged to print out in time.

YES!, I know we should have kept a backup, but the person who was supposed to (ITP##E), never did.

I left the department after four months, and now have a better paying job in another area, and the old department still hasn't recovered the data.

I'm beginning to wonder why I ever agreed to run my Mum's web site and host email services for her...

*EVERY* time my server goes down (it's an old PC running on an ADSL connection with a dynamic IP - but hey, this is a HOBBY...) Mum immediately sends me an email telling me that "Email isn't working! Please fix it!"

Every time I get a message like this (well after I've discovered the fault and fixed it, which allows her email to get through) I reply and tell her that using email to tell me that email isn't working is kind of useless. Her reply is that "well, you got the email, didn't you!"

(sigh)

I recently started working as a technician at a local school. We had just got a number of laptops and some lockable trollies which could be used to charge them up. These trollies needed to be assembled.

Once this had been done, I took one of the keys so that we could get at them when we needed to, and then gave the other keys to the teacher who was going to be in charge of them saying "Here are the keys for the laptop trollies"

His reply was "Oh right, You'll have to show me how that works"

I resisted the urge to say "It's a key, you put it in the lock and turn it" as he had a class with him.

I just took him to where they were and he realised what he had just said.

My official title is "Student Assistant" for our I.T. department, which basically means I'm responsible for anything going wrong, even though I had nothing to do with it.

One day as I'm walking by the offices, one of the staff tells me that the domain controller (named Virginia, and I don't know why) has been giving him problems. I tell him I'll look into it but I don't know offhand what would be causing the problem but I'll check it out.

Then just as a female coworker walks past he says "Virginia has blown!" She looks at us and I quickly explain what he's talking about.

I'm asked to look at a laptop and portable printer for a small business my friend works at. (His business only has 4 computers so they don't want to throw anything away if they can help it) He says that it's been left by a former employee and is there anything they can use it for. I take a look at it and find Microsoft Works running on Windows95 and almost nothing else. (The guy knew he was leaving and stopped short of formatting the whole thing apparently).

My friend is the manager of inventory for a small business, one day one of his coworkers is let go and leaves behind a laptop, he asks me if there is anything I could use it for. It's got Microsoft Works on it already, so I tell my friend that he could use the word processor to type out letters or notes and then print them out, or in the spreadsheet program he could manipulate numbers to add up complex orders or sort things, and a database for keeping track of stuff if he wanted.

Him: "Hey could I use it sort my inventory."

Me: "What HAVE you been using for inventory?"

Turns out he's been keeping spiral notebooks filled with descriptions of every item in inventory. Want to see what bearings can fit which axel? Well start a new notebook listing all the bearings by width. I look through some of the notebooks and see he had crossed out items and added more between the lines as inventory would change.

Just a few quick quips:

Job Interview:

Supervisor:We run a complex lab here of Windows 2000 computers running the most current version of Office, along with some statistical software and image editing applications. Please fill out this form detailing your technical know how and work experience for the past 4 years.

Me:Wow, cool, I'll finally get to work in a lab where my troubleshooting skills will be appreciated.

Supervisor:Actually no, your job will be to push in chairs.

Hard Drive Failure:

StaffMember:Hey my computer says that the hard drive is corrupted and it won't boot.

(He had put a non-bootable floppy disk in the drive before turning the computer on)

Excuse me officer, can you hand me my drugs?

EndUser:Hey I got done with the computer and I want to clear the cache.

Me:Why?

EndUser:I don't want anyone to know that I was looking at porn.

Me:This is a library, your not supposed to be looking at porn.

EndUser:I know, that's why I want to clear the cache.

Outlooks newest folder; Deleted Items

EndUser:Hey I logged onto Outlook and none of my messages were in Deleted Items.

Me:Yeah we have Outlook just delete the Deleted Items when you log off.

EndUser:But that's where I store all my letters!

Me: Thank you for calling Computer Support do you have an existing trouble ticket.

Caller:Yeah

Me: Allright, I'll have a tech page you, can I have your name?

Caller:"T"

Me: (confused, but figure it's okay), okay "T", what's your phone number?

Caller:806-xxx-5341

Me: Okay I'll pass that along.

(5 Minutes later) 2nd Call

Me: Thank you for (etc.)

Caller: Yeah I have an open ticket, I called you a minute ago and no ones called back.

Me: Well give me your name and number again and I'll page the tech again.

Caller: "T" 806-xxx-9880

Me: Oh, okay "T" we must have had the wrong phone number written down last time.

(5 Minutes later) 3rd Call

Same conversation, same name, different phone number again

(5 Minutes later) 4th Call

Me: Thank you for calling Computer Support do you have an existing trouble ticket.

Caller:Yeah and I keep calling you people, why aren't you ever calling back?

Me: (realizing who it is) Well ma'am if you don't give me your phone number we can't call you back

Caller: Okay, I'll play your game. My name is Taboobikah and number is 806-xxx-xxxx

Play my game? Oh no, yours is much funner.

I make up part of the help desk for a small ISP/phone company that offers dial-up and DSL. Here's a call I got recently from a guy who was a little old and a lot bitter! He was extremly rude from the start...

Me: Thank you for calling "ISP", how can I help you?

Cust: Can you hold please, young lady?

Me: (trying to be nice after the young lady comment) Sure!

Cust: Ok, thank you for holding, young lady. I have your DSL service and ever since I've had it my computer get's kicked off after a period of inactivity.

(after doing some more digging I find that it's not the Internet he's getting kicked off, but it's his Windows 98 power saving that shuts off the monitor and locks up the system)

Me: It seems that Windows 98 has a power saving feature turned on that is causing this. Windows 98 is knows to have this problem, causing you to have to reboot your computer to bring it back up.

Cust: Now, I know that your a phone company. Everyone else has problems with thier phones and phone lines except phone companys. (after repeating this 3 times, he goes on...) I know that this computer did NOT do this before I got your DSL. I don't think it's the DSL causing this, but I know it's YOUR phone lines!

Me: I can't think of anything in the phone line or DSL that would cause this. It is a setting in your computer. Now this is not something we would normally support here, but if you'd like we can go in and find the setting that is causing this. (going way out of the scope of support to make the cust be a happy cust! But, he has different plans)

Cust: Young lady, I'm not he kind of person who has time to change the settings. I do have time to use the computer; thats it! I am not going to change the settings! I want a phone guy to come out here and fix this!

Me: (I refuse to argue w/ this guy who thinks he knows everything and keeps calling me young lady!) What kind of computer do you have?

Cust: It's a Dell.

Me: Maybe Dell can help you out with the settings on your computer. There is a setting causing this to happen.

Cust: Young lady, you have been more than un-helpfull!!! I am going to call someone who can help me! Good-bye!!

Good, go call dell, maybe they can make you realize that a phone line isn't going to send windows into power saving mode! It amazes me how some people can be so ignorant, but yet think they know everything! If you know everything, you shouldn't be calling tech support!!!!!

I am a systems administrator for a Directory Advertising department in an ad agency. We have several remote salespeople who have been around seemingly since the beginning of time - and they are not the most computer literate folks you'd ever want to meet.

We had set up a webpage for our department on the agency's main site. In order for the salespeople not to have to key the URL into their browser, I attached a shortcut in an email with instructions for them to drag and drop the shorcut to their desktop and then it would be there whenever they wanted to access.

Shortly after, one of the salespeople called to say she had no idea what I was talking about. She didn't even know what the Desktop was - realized I had finally gotten through to her when she said "Oh, you mean the blue screen with all the thingies on it". Then she said there was no way she could do what I was asking because when she had Outlook open, she couldn't see the desktop to drag and drop to. I explained (with much muffled laughter) that if she just clicked on the grey box that looked like 2 boxes in the corner if the window, she would magically be able to see the Desktop in the background, because the window would be smaller.

She was amazed, and said "Oh, you young ones (I'm 31!) know how to do all this computer stuff so well."

-Laura

I work at a reasonably large ISP in the tech support department, and I deal with everything from fried modems, to lUsers not knowing how to dial in. This is one of the calls that forced me to take a smoke break.

Me: Thank you for calling *&^%&() Tech Support, this is Patrick, how can I help you?

User: Yes, I've been trying to connect to you for about an hour now, and it keeps giving me errors.

At this point I ask for his username, and look up his account info. There are no previous notes, other than opening his account the previous day... so this is a new lUser.

Me: Sir, do you have a second phone line so you can try to connect while you're on the phone with me?

User: yes I do.

Me: ok go ahead and try and tell me exactly what the error message is.

User: *tries to dial in* Modem already in use.

Me: Ok sir, that's a pretty easy fix. I'll need you to use Cntrl-Alt-delete to open your task manager and look for somethinhg called Rnaapp.

User: I don't see it.

Me: ok. do you have any fax software, or auto-updating software running in the background?

User: no.

Me: *at this point, the only thing I can think of is the com port is stuck open and he needs to reboot* Ok sir, let's try rebooting the machine and then starting from scratch.

User: ok. should I log off AOL first?

Me: *stunned* You're on AOL right now?

User: yes. I wanted to log on to you to get my e-mail, but it kept giving me errors. that's why I called.

Me: sir... you can't dial into one ISP while you're connected to another.

User: I don't understand what you mean.

Me: Sir, is it possible for you to press the numbers on your telephone right now and call your best friend, without hanmging up with me first?

User: um... no...

Me: your modem is no different. Log off AOL and try to connect to us.

User: ok hang on... HEY! it WORKED!!!

Me: you don't say...

*sigh* and the sad part is... I really do love my job.

I used to work for a small ISP in the late 1990s. One day I get this call from a woman who is having connectivity issues.

Me: Thank you for calling *****net this is Ron. How may I help you?

Customer: Yes, I am having problems accessing the Internet. I don't know what is wrong.

Me: OK. Let me see if I can connect using your Username and Password. (At the time we did not store Customer Passwords for access to the Tech Center. We had to ask them for it and change it afterwards if they requested it). May I have your password?

Customer: Uh..(she seemed to hesitate) I can't give it to you.

Me: Maam, I understand your reasoning behind not giving me your password, and I assure you we will keep it confidential or change it after this call.

Customer: I can't give it to you, please understand.

Me: Maam, I need the password to see if there is a problem.

Customer: (Again she hesitates)Uh...well, I need to connect. If I give it to you will you not tell anyone.

Me: (Curious at this point as to what is going on) I promise I will keep it confidential as I said or change it if you want me to.

Customer: Its Erection.

Me: Excuse me. That's Erection or election.

Customer: (Quiet Voice) Erection. Hey, it wasn't my idea, it was my Husbands.

Needless to say me and the entire call center got a good laugh out of this one. So much for confidential.

This is really more of a complaint than a funny story, but if you could see my bruised forehead from slamming my head into my desk or hear my sailor-like language after some of these calls you'd be ROFL. Some techs out there must be just plain lazy. That or extremely ignorant. Others are of the opinon that having the customer call MS on wierd issues that are not our problem is funny. That said I work for an outsource company supporting a large portion of the MS products sold in the US. Now I'm not the world's biggest MS fan and I wouldn't use our products at home if someone paid me too, but I'm getting off the subject.

Anyone who's ever taken a tech support phone call has probably been the one on the recieving end of the old buck. Who's everyone's favorite when it comes to passsing the buck? MS of course. "Just call MS, it's their problem!"

AOL once sent me a customer that was getting an error, [some AOL file] caused an IPF in [some other AOL file]. Excuse me, I support Works, how could that be our problem?

One of our products allows people to view eBooks, which must be activated with Passport in order to view books that are purchased. One major bookseller (step one letter back on C&O) sent a customer to me at 8:53pm because they supposedly had a problem with our program. The issue: "this page cannot be displayed" when accessing the download page for the bookseller's website.

The biggest and worst though is the OEM's who's techs I swear sometimes are trained only in running system restores and passing the buck to us. Everything is an MS problem with them, and customers have to pay to talk to us if their software is OEM. Some very simple issues cost our customers a lot of money, for example:

Customer tries to access clipart normally stored on a CD

It prompts them to insert the disk

Their fix: send them to MS

My fix: actually investigate the problem for 2 whole entire seconds and notice that the path (which was right on the same box as the error) being referenced for the clipart was a folder on the C: drive. Change the path to D: (the customer's CD drive) and wham bam they've got clipart.

Tell me they really needed to send them to us to have us charge them 35$ to fix that. Hello Mr/Mrs/Ms OEM tech!!! Try actually THINKING about the problem and ASKING a few QUESTIONS. You'll be surprised how many happy customers you'll have!

Sorry to have insulted anyone who may be in the habit of pawning customers off to MS, but remember we're people over here too and we appreciate it when other companies do their jobs. To everyone who stands up to the challenge and does what they're paid to do, a hearty thanks!

I did tech support for D-Link for a while. A customer called me and reported that after installing a D-Link router his internet connection would no longer work. I asked the customer "What type of internet connection do you have, cable, or dsl?" He replied, "cable." Now, Cable companies like to register the MAC or physical address of the first Network card that connects to your account. I walked the customer through the setup of the router and told him to click on the clone MAC button. He replied "but I don't have a mac, i'm using a pc."

This was a near miss of mine when applying for a data entry position. I had written on my application that I have been trained in Corel Suite 8. When I was brought into the Director of Human Resources' office for my interview, I was turned down but I did get this:

HR: We do have a 3rd shift position that you might be interested in.

Me: 3rd shift is fine until I go back to college.

HR: Great! Well, the IT department needs people to do something.

Me: Well, I'm not certi. . .

HR: I think its troubleshooting. They probably have to do it during 3rd shift after the system has been brought down.

(At this point I knew I had to get out, when the Human Resources Director can't even provide an accurate job description of the IT position to be filled, it has to be bad.)

Me: What system is it?

HR: I think its Windows.

Me: Which version?

HR: I'm not sure, but are you interested?

Me: Like I said, I'm not certified for that.

HR: Oh, we offer on the job training.

For Microsoft Systems Analyst? Either she doesn't know what she's talking about or I passed on the best job benefits package ever.

I was taking incoming calls with a high-up from Head Office listening in. The customer was trying to register but wasn't getting online. The username to do this is "register" and the password is "BTinternet", said as capital b, capital t, internet in small letters.

Me to EU: What's the error you're getting?"

EU: "Error 691"

Me: OK, what are you putting in the username?"

EU: "register".

Me: "OK, what about the password?"

EU: "I can't get it all in the box."

Me: "Why?"

EU: "I can't get c-a-p-i-t-a-l-B-c-a-p-i-t-a-l-T-i-n-t-e-r-n-e-t-i-n-s-m-a-l-l-l-e-t-t-e-r-s in the box"

I got him online, finished the call and and turned to the bigwig who was quietly crying with laughing as the mouthpiece on his headset was "live". I said to him "If you hadn't been sitting there and heard it yourself you wouldn't have believed it!"

I am not a tech support person but found myself functioning in that capacity at a former employer's office. I was an editor for a magazine, and our company also had an online store that sold software. You guessed it -- instead of calling the software support lines, the users who bought the software from us would call our offices expecting us to help. Most of the time it was pretty straight-forward stuff like explaining configurations, etc.

One day I got a call from a guy who couldn't get a configuration dialog to work. He said that every time he tried to type in the information in the config dialog box nothing would show up. At first I thought maybe it was his keyboard, so I had him reboot his system and make sure his keyboard cable was properly seated. No luck. So, I patiently went down the list of possible problems and none of them were it. He was getting more and more angry and had mentioned several times that he wanted a refund of his money because he was just sure the software had messed with his system somehow. I knew that the software worked because it was a package I used myself quite often and his keyboard seemed to be working fine with Word and other programs. Out of desperation I asked him, "Did you go through any of the help menus before you started this configuration?"

There was a pause and then he said, "Well I'm in the help menu right now."

It turns out he had found the help menus explaining how to fill out the drop-down config boxes and had assumed that the sample boxes in the help menus were the ones he was supposed to fill out!

My sweetie sent me this Instant Message that was a conversation between him and a customer calling in for tech support.

Sweetie: "Did you write down that message?"

Customer: "Yeah, it said something about java and cookies"

My reply to the sweetie: Tell him he needs to go to Starbucks for that message.

I'm not an offical tech support person, but, as the only computer savvy person in my office, i'm called on for everything from broken printers to hardware/software installations. Once, after I'd finished cleaning a particularily nasty virus off a co-workers computer, I left her with a virus scanner running and instructions to call me if it found anything. 30 minutes later, she called me in my office, frantic because there was "something wrong with her e-mail." Figuring she'd found a virus, I jogged up to her office to fix the problem.

So, I get up to her office, and ask what's up. She tells me that her e-mail window looks different, and she's not sure if it's a virus or not. I figure she's closed her inbox or something and wants it back, so i sit down at her computer and maximize the window in order to get a better look at things. As soon as do this, however, my co-worker exclaims "There, you've fixed it!!"

It took all my willpower not to laugh in her face while I explained the wonders of minimiing and maximizing to her...

Part of my role entails going on call every 3rd week.

One morning (about 2am or so) I was paged by our Data Centre Operators - they had a security alert come up on their management console. Standard operating procedure is to page the on call person. That's fine.

However, after making a few phone calls, I discovered he chilling truth.

The was a scheduled outage being done on the server that generated the alerts. The work had to be done on site (i.e. - the server couldn't be controlled remotely). To get to the server, the engineer had to be let into the computer room. The person who let him in was the same person who paged me to say the server he was working on was generating security alerts.

As you can imagine, I was not impressed.

I just spent 4 hours of my boss' time to try and format a PC to use OS/2, because I would like to make a multiboot testplatform.

I regret to have to say I did not get past FDISK!

I believe an "Encase in concrete and bury at sea" is in order here.

I didn't have as much problems with NT4 service pack 0.

Thanks for listening...

I recently bough a new desk for my computer and let my grandfather have the old one. After we set it up he seemed quite happy.

Next day, I got a call-

"I can't type!" he said. "I can't reach the keyboard"

"What?"

"Its hidden under the desk."

Yes, the poor man didn't realise the keyboard tray could come out, and was trying to type within the inch or so between the keyboard and the bottom of the desk...

I used to work as an accounting employee for an IT company with a European HQ in Brussels. I always got on quite well with office machines in general so my colleagues used to call me whenever a toner needed replacing, a copy machine or printer needed removal of jammed papers or an email needed polishing (no kidding !).

One day our receptionist came in, turned on her computer, and we all started to smell something terrible. It went so bad we had to open all the windows. Then I followed my nose straight to her monitor and told her there might be a problem there. She was a blonde, my other colleague was a blonde and they both stared at me in a curious way. She told me the monitor was showing strange colours, but that was not a problem for her. Then we heard strange sounds coming from the monitor, and the smell got more intense, so the receptionist looked between the slits on top of the now sparking monitor and commented suddenly in panick "it's burning". So they stood staring at the (then) smoking monitor. Finally I sighed, unplugged the power cable and called our sysadmin to come over and check out a burnt monitor. He did not believe me at first, but when I told him to bring along a gasmask he started to get the picture.

Why do blondes keep staring at a sizzling machine ? Doing the genepool a favour perhaps ?

One of my user's hard drive blew up, so I had to redo his entire laptop from scratch. Now, in between the time he first got his laptop, and my redo, HQ changed policy, and disallowed the use of the 800# for dial up acess, unless there was no local #. So, for the past several months, I haven't been using the 800# whenever I've sent out a new laptop. There's a big button labeled "phone book" for them to get local # access (plus they were emailed instructons).

Now, my user, sees the wrong # displayed (he had to.. I leave a 9 in, and no 1 before the area code). He REMOVES the 9, PUTS IN the 1, AND LEAVES THE LOCAL # ALONE!!!

He has been calling NJ from RI for a month now, and apparently, he's the type of user who leaves his laptop dialed in whether or not he's actually doing anything.... so his phone bill is OVER $2,200!!!

Best part is, he thinks I'M going to pay it... lol

It was Oct 29th. The powers that be in my town were celebrating Halloween on the 30th, so there were a lot of parties going on. I was making callbacks at the local ISP I worked for. They were billing printouts about accounts that had given errors when we processed payments. I called the customer and gave her the information she would need so her service would not be interupted. It was a typical call until the end. Just as I was about ready to end the call she said "I bet you can't guess what i'm wearing?" I said "excuse me!?!?!?" She said "it's a clown outfit, tonight's out Halloween!"

nice huh?

I work for a company that installs control sytems for monitoring, controlling and reporting of gas flow from wells. Many of the installations are located in remote locations, the controllers then communicate by radio to a central host

In some cases, we'll install a computer on the remote site for the operators to monitor the controller directly. The operators don't spend a whole lot of time using a computer... they just select what they want to see.

One day I received a phone call from one of these operators, asking me why the monitor isn't displaying values.

Standard questions

Me: "Is the PC on?"

User: "Yes"

Me: "Is the monitor on?"

User: "I think so, how do you tell?"

Me: "It should have a indicator light on"

User: "I don't see one on"

Me: "check the power cord, maybe it was kicked out"

User: "It looks good"

Since the actual environment that some of these computers are installed in are not normal, we have to look at extreme cases, Lightning strikes are a common occurance

Finally wending our way past the obvious stuff we've encountered, the operator mentioned something curious about bullet holes in the building.

Meter shacks are built of fairly thin aluminum... seems some hunter decided to use this particular one for target practice, a bullet passed through the wall and into the monitor

We had a chuckle about the monitor, but we both thought about another result... what if the bullet had struck one of the pipe lines a few feet away

I have a friend (We’ll call him DJ Magneto) who is a DJ and also writes electronic music using a load of software and MIDI instruments. He is not what I would call computer illiterate, it fact, he’s quite the tech… And also what you would consider a Pothead. Well, one day he called me up on the verge of tears complaining about a used 21 monitor he had purchased from a mutual friend.

DJ Magneto: Man, you’re not going to believe this! I just bought so-and-so’s old monitor for $250 dollars and the damn thing is totally f****d! I can’t believe he screwed me!

Me: Are you sure, what’s the problem?

DJ Magneto: I just got it home, hooked it up and the screen is all distorted and discolored! I’m gonna kill him next time I see him!

Me: Chill out. Did you degauss it?

DJ Magneto: Of course! God, what do you think I’m stupid? That’s the first thing I did! I’m so pissed!

Me: Do you think maybe one of your synths or speakers could be interfering with it?

At this point he got very defensive and assured me that he knew what he was doing and he rearranged his whole workstation to no avail. After listening to him cursing out the guy he bought it from for a good fifteen minutes I managed to get him calmed down and assured him that if it was damaged I’m sure he could get his money back.

Later that evening I stopped by his place and went into his studio to have a look at this Totally F****d monitor only to find it sandwiched in between two 12 speakers on his cluttered desk. When I pointed this out to him and explained about magnetic interference from the speakers he replied with But those aren’t speakers, they’re are studio monitors!

While helping resolve an IDE driver issue on my brothers computer I forgot that Win2k is nothing like Win9x. When the driver wasn't working right I pulled the Win9x trick of "Delete the driver and let it autodetect on the next boot." Of course when it tried to reboot and didn't have a disk driver it instanly crashed, giving me a crash course in the Win2k recovery console.

I was working as a technical call coordinator for a while and had the privilege of seeing some very funny updates on trouble tickets. There was this one call that was getting opened and reopen by a progressively irate end user. This went on for about 4 days. He had a laptop that was locking up almost every time he tried to save an Access document. There was no apparent pattern except that it was an Access document he was trying to save. The computer was reimaged, Office was reinstalled and the registry was gone over with a fine toothcomb. Each time the tech thought the issue was resolved, the problem popped up a few hours later. The final two updates in the ticket read:

Helpdesk: Ticket reopened. User is requesting that this time tech bring an 8oz ball peen hammer and garbage pail.

Tech: Problem solved. Have a nice weekend. ;)

I still wonder what happened to that laptop.

First some background on the following two tales. My dad is a detective in one of the largest police departments in the nation. On several occasions I’ve been to his precinct and was amazed by how outdated and insecure the network is as well as the level of computer illiteracy displayed by some of the other officers. The majority of their systems are 486s with 5 1/2" floppy drives, no CD-ROMs and are using AOL (I found this downright frightening). One detective he works with is such a luddite his PC has never been turned on and the monitor has gradually turned into a note board. It’s completely covered in post-it notes, mug shots and business cards.

A few years ago I was working at a remote outsourcing company and occasionally received a call from my dad (not that his department had an account with us, he just called me at work sometimes to say hello). A few times he had a technical question for me. Here are my two favorites. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent...

Dad: Hey I wanted to ask you... Someone keeps using one of the computers late at night and it’s none of the detectives. How can we find out whose signing on? We think it might be the janitor.

Me: Why don’t you ask him?

Dad: He doesn’t speak English, but Mike talked to him. He said it’s not him but we think he’s lying.

Me: You’re kidding right dad?

Dad: No.

Me: (barely suppressed laugh) How do you know someone else is using the computer?

Dad: Because there’s a different screen name in the box in the morning.

Me: What do you mean screen name? In the Novell logon prompt?

Dad: When you start AOL, yeah.

Me: No I said Novell.

Dad: What’s that? We use AOL. What’s Novell?

(I couldn’t help but snicker at this point)

Me: You use AOL at work? (More laughter)

Dad: Doesn’t everyone? Mike downloaded it (he meant installed) on all the computers.

Now I’ve just about given up…

Me: Ohhh. So you’re not talking about the department network. Ummm, short of having a stake out or dusting for fingerprints I don’t know what to tell you. This is the _ _PD. don’t you guys have an IT department you can call? And if so, why on Gods Green Earth are they letting you guys use AOL at work?

Dad: (utterly perplexed) IT department?

I ended up having to explain to him what IT department is and found out that, no, they don’t have one. What passes for their helpdesk is a few other cops from other departments who are a bit more tech savvy that they call when they have problems and who occasionally do show up to fix the issues. When they do, they hassle the luddite with the monitor/noteboard for not using his perfectly good machine and threaten to take it away and give it to someone who will use it.

Another time he called and told me that he may have broken one of the CD-ROM drives. He said that he put in a disk and now it wouldn’t eject. He kept pushing the lever and all it did was make a scraping noise. The reference to a lever is what drew my suspicions. Did you put a CD in the floppy drive? I asked. It turns out he did. I feel this may be partially my fault for installing a slot loading CD-ROM drive on my dads computer at home.

The department my Dad works at has since done some upgrading (still no helpdesk though). And he’s taken a few classes on such topics as computer crimes and using the Internet for case research, and he always gets his bad-guys (as refers to the perps) Yet I’m still amused when he calls to ask what happened to that file he downloaded. Where’d you save it to? I’ll ask. The hard drive is usually the reply.

I am professional programmer and technology consultant. A couple of years ago I was working as Technology Director for a school district, where I oversaw a tech budget of about $1.3 million a year. I hired some good staff, among whom our young network administrator was the star. Being a school district we of course had to remain ever vigilant for student porn surfing, and paid handsomely for various porn prevention strategies. But enterprising students could always find porn on the web, and teachers who were less than alert wouldn't notice.

So I was not too surprised when one day I discovered that a student had not only been surfing porn, but had set his wallpaper to a rather eye-opening image. I asked the teacher how long it had been since he had looked at this particular computer, and he said, "oh, well, I guess it's been a few days."

For disciplinary purposes we decided to confiscate the CPU so we could be sure to identify and remove offending images. But my concern didn't stop there... on the way out of the classroom I turned to my network administrator with the brilliant insight that we should remove the monitor, too... after all, it had the porn image on it as wallpaper!

The dumbfounded look on his face alerted me that I had said something stupid, and after a moment's reflection I was the light. The incident set us all to laughing.

I ask you, who is stupidest in this scenario? A student who sets his wallpaper to porn, a teacher who doesn't bother supervising student activities, or a technology directory who momentarily believes that the image is somehow stored in the monitor?

I work for a network support company in Michigan, United States. We support a large insurance company, Windows 2000 and Office XP, and several hundred other appliations.

One day, I was answering email problems whenI come across one user. She was unable to install a local printer.

I proceeded to send her thorough instructions for installing a local printer. See, in this company, they have a Printer Wizard folder in the start menu, to make it easier for the users to install the printer, you would think....

User replied back, stating that she did not have the option for instlling a local printer. (there is no local printer option in Start ) Settings ) Printers).

I emailed this person back , with a screenshot of my Start menu, with the mouse pointer pointing to the Printers folder at the top of the start menu. I also highlighted it in neon green.

Apparently, this was not enough. the user proceeded to send me a full screenshot of her start menu, with the mouse pointing to the Start ) settings ) Printers folder. (ARRRGHHH) stating that she did not have the Printers folder, even though it was at the top of her own start menu.

I then proceeded to send her a cropped version of their own screenshot, with the Pritners folder circled, in neon green, with a solid bright red arrow pointing at the Printers folder.

User replies back. OK, I was able to install. now i canot print. It says something about IrDA?? AAARRRRRRRGHHHHHH!!!!

it's the 13 year old girlgeek to the rescue again (yeah right)

A friend had a program that wasn't working anymore on her computer-she couldn't call microsoft tech support anymore because she used up the two free incidents...so she calls me-everyone's free tech support...

The thing is that I had told her brother, a budding 9 year old geek-to-be that wants to learn C++/Java programming from me, and his mother, a brilliant middle-aged woman who uses Linux for everyday tasks, how to use fdisk/format days earlier. So I dialed the number for her brother's cell phone and told him "Hey why don't you try that thing I taught you a couple days ago?"

So he tries it with his mom on his sister's new Windows XP machine...

C:\) format C: /fs:ntfs

My luser friend goes berzerk. And her mom is thinking about getting a job in the computer industry!

-jane

jane@windows-sucks.com

Not working for any company (since I'm only 13) but everyone sees me as free tech support...Never thought I'd ever meet lusers. Sorry this story is so long but it shows how stupid some people can be.

One day I get this call from a friend who thinks its funny calling me at 5:30 in the morning, especially after knowing the fact that I stayed up till 4am watching a bunch of movies and playing halo on my xbox...

(me= you know, me; her=my friend)

(cell phone rings...annoyingly loud)

her: hey jane can you fix my computer for me?

me: sure. right now?

her: right now. (wailing) the internet's broken and so is my computer!

me: (what the?) Okay, specifically what's wrong?

her: well, it says 'non-system disk or disk error' then when my brother takes out something from the box, it's okay. But that's not the problem. scandisk runs i exit it then my pictures come up. so i go to the aol picture and i go to aol, try to use the internet but it says 'no page to display'. then a whole bunch of error messages come up and i think the police are going to arrest me because my computer told me that I did something illegal. Then i went to get a cup of coffee and opened the coffee cup holder but it's really wobbly do you think i broke it??? (almost crying now)

me: Okay, i'll be there in a couple of minutes.

(click)

So i grab a whole bunch of hardware, boot disks and cd's (i hope i get to format her hard drive it's so fun) not to mention a really strong cup of really hot coffee, go to her house, which is only 15 minutes away, and knock on her door.

her: Jane! Hurry I think my computer's talking to me

me: (is she insane or what?) Okay... (run up to her room)

her: Look, it's saying ....

me: "Mary", it's just an mp3 file. come on. Music?

her: STOP IT! (totally hysterical) STOP IT!!!!

me: (end tasked windows media player) Okay, how bout this mary? first calm down. the police wouldn't want to arrest you they'd more likely arrest me for hacking into a computer. Don't worry about those error messages let me reinstall your programs...first let's back up your files

her: Okay.

(backed up her files using external cd burner-simple since she only had a 4gb hard drive (10mb free space!) and the files she needed were only 400mb)

me: Now, let me reformat your hard drive and do a clean install of windows...

her: Okay.

(formatted her hard drive, installed Windows)

me: Okay, now I'm going to install aol, trillian, norton systemworks, winzip, openoffice which is not microsoft office, and (some other programs). Got it?

her: Okay.

(installed a gazillion programs and restarted her computer)

her: Jane you have a nice coffee cup holder (pointing at iomega predator cd burner...nice cup holder?!?!) you never use it?

me: (splash!) NO!!!!! Mary! You just ruined my cd burner!!!!!

her: What? This is your cup holder!

me: Mary that's my cd burner! That's my ONLY external cd burner!!! WHAT DID YOU DO TO IT!!!!!

her: I just put your cup of coffee on it.

me: You...you!!!! YOU RUINED IT!!!!! (brown/black liquid trickling out of hardware)

her: I thought it was a cup holder...

me: A CD TRAY IS NOT A CUP HOLDER WOULD YOU USE YOUR BRAND NEW CD PLAYER AS A CUP HOLDER!?!?!?!

her: Sorry...

me: Now, everything should be nice...

her: What about my files?

me: Oops. I forgot.

her: You forgot?

me: I'll put your files on your computer's hard drive now.

her: Okay.

(insert cd into cd tray on computer, tray is sagging and it seems like there's some sticky brown stuff that smells like coffee on it)

me: what did you do to your drive?!??!!

her: Two words. Cup Holder.

me: (arrgh! what a moron! i felt like telling her Okay. You know what? give me your mom's car keys. I want to take her BRAND NEW BMW Z3 and drive it to fry's, get two new cd drives and come back. Of course I don't know how to drive therefore i will destroy new car) Okay. Wait here.(go to other computer downstairs, nice and new really expensive one too, rip out dvd drive and take it upstairs)

me: Okay I got a new drive. Move.

her: Okay.

(installed new drive)

me: I'm going to move the files into this folder. Okay?

her: Yeah sure.

me: (slipping cd between cracks in case) Oh man (making it up) the cd's damaged from all your coffee spilling. I guess we can't get those files.

her: WHAT???? (going insane) I NEED THOSE FILES HALF OF THEM ARE DUE TOMORROW FOR MY CLASSES AND THE OTHER HALF ARE UNSENT E-MAILS!!!!! I EVEN HAVE MY UNFINISHED (something) PROJECT RESEARCH REPORT THAT I WORKED MY A** OFF FOR THERE TOO!!!

me: Too bad. Sorry.

her: LET ME SEE

me: Here (screen says 'drive e:\ not accessible') See? You shouldn't have spilled coffee...

her: (really angry) Whatever. Get out.

me: fine. let me just finish my job-oh wait i have my titanium powerbook g4 with me now let me see if the cd works...

her: Fine. I'll be back in a couple minutes.

me: (opened case, fished out disk tried it in my TiBook) hey mary the disk works on my laptop!

her: What?

me: Maybe it's the drive or something.

her: So make it go back to normal!

me: Fine. I'll finish, put the dvd drive back where it came from then leave.

her: Good.

me: Okay. Can you get me a cuppa coffee?

her: Sure.

me: Great. (boot from disk, reformat drive, No OS!!! take out dvd drive turn off computer then go downstairs and replace dvd drive) Hey mary I don't need that cup of coffee. See you later!

her: Okay.

SO I run back to my place, then the phone rings.

I don't pick it up...answering machine says Hey whoever this is you've reached the residence of jane-i can't come to the phone right now because I'm trying to network 60 computers together...leave a message after the beep and i'll e-mail you in 24 Microsoft hours...(beep) JANE!!! GET YOUR (tons of expletives) BACK TO MY HOUSE!!!!! YOU (expletive) WITH MY COMPUTER!!!

the e-mail i sent to her:

Dear Mary,

I'm sorry but as I was turning off your computer, it encountered an eye-dee-ten-tee error. Didn't realize what it would do until I came back home...try calling Microsoft! i doubt any local tech can help you...

---

According to her brother, Mary did call Microsoft Tech Support (he was smart enough to understand what I meant by that error and didn't tell his sister what it really meant we both love techtales-keep up the good work!) and they told her that there was no cure for the eye-dee-ten-tee error and that maybe she should get her computer, wrap it up and return it to the store she bought it from, telling them that the reason was that SHE WAS TOO STUPID TO OWN ONE!!! You know, sometimes the techs at Microsoft will be your friends...

-jane

jane@windows-sucks.com

warning: not really a tech story but shows how dumb some CS majors/techs/geeks/nerds could be when it comes to e-mail attachments...

Yes the 13 year old girlgeek is back...have plenty of stories but not enough time to submit them

Thankfully I won't have to deal with dumb luser friends all the time...

I count myself lucky that I am the net admin for a network consisting of 60+ computers that belong to 7 people. All programmers/developers/other professional computer related jobs and they really know what they're talking about. However, you always get those annoying luser-type of people (even when they know a lot about computers) that you know-once in a while...but one of my geeky friends got this one...

her=geeky friend him=unauthorized person

him: Hi. Cool network you've got.

her: WHO are you?

him: Me. BTW, can I check out that hell...

her: I really don't know

him: Me. ...of a nice RAID that you have?

her: What? (meanwhile sending a virus via e-mail)

her: Who? What's your name?

him: ARRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!

her: (that yell was audible!) Oh lord I'm calling the police!

him: No! Jane-

her: (how did he know Jane's name?) I'm not Jane!

him: Jane! A virus! How dare you! (audible expletive)

her: (totally freaked out) I'm not jane! Who ARE you?

him: I'm Jason. (a friend)

her: Oh great. Now you're telling me.

him: Isn't this romantic? We're in Los Angeles. The City of Angels. The nicest place on earth. (pause) Jane, will you kiss me?

her: (silence) I told you I AM NOT JANE!!!!!

him: Oh, jane isn't this romantic? we're...

)Auto-Message from Marshall_Flinkman (Administrator) August 12 2002

Hey guys...I'm at Linuxworld (yes!) and my friend Jaimie needs to shut down everything for an hour or two...enjoy yourselves...it's really nice here in san francisco! -jane(

her: (smiles, then pulled the plug on the servers, computers, raids, printers, switches, everything)

Jason runs upstairs and she slams the door in his face then takes a pic of him...he kinda looks decent when his whole face is covered in shining red blood. The moron can't even understand what she was trying to tell him...I even thought he was really great with computers since he's a CS major at a university in los angeles...he'd know better than to open an attachment to an e-mail like that.

-jane

jane@windows-sucks.com

I am the administrator for the Computer Science Department at the university I go to. We have a UNIX server and a Windows NT domain with two labs.

Last year we upgraded the public lab to new computers with 21" monitors. After they were installed, one of the CS students is complaining in the lab that "the new monitors don't work."

After surveying the problem for about two seconds, I turned on the monitor and left.

Comforting to know the Computer Science students on campus know what they're doing.

This is a pretty typical story, but still mind boggling...

A little background: I work Tech Support for an Educational Center in Ohio. We have several offices, including 2 main offices in seperate towns with a server in each. I use terminal services to remotely connect to the servers from my workstation, allowing me to save up to 100 miles/day just to fix someone's account. This is a phone call I got from one of the offices the other day.

Me=Self explainitory...

U=(l)user

F=User's friend

Me: Computer lab.

U: Yes, I seem to have forgotten my password...

Me: Ok, can I get your information?

(gets information and resets password)

Me: Ok, when you log on next, your password will be "password" and it will ask you to change it.

U: Thanks. *click*

About lunch time, I get another call...

Me: Computer lab.

F: Yes, User called and lost her password.

Me: Yeah, I changed it for her.

F: Well it isn't working

Me: Ok, let me try again (runs through server changing info and trying to get her up and running)

Me: Ok, I should have it running, this time just don't put any password in at all.

F: It still isn't working.

Me: your not getting any screen that tells you to change the password?

F: No...wait, should I click on the link that says "change password"

Me: (thinking) Oh no.....

Me: You wouldn't happen to be trying to access her webmail, would you?

F: Yes.

Me: I don't take care of that, you will have to contact (ISP)

F: (in much lower voice) Well can't you do that?

Me: No, contact them to change it.

F: Ok *click*

The next day, I find a note from my boss who, before I got in, got a call from the same user that her password would not work. Gee, did I forget to mention that little piece of information? Sigh, people, please be specific. And tech support, NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING!!!

I have this quite regularly from a certain department - it sometimes seems like they drag these people in off the streets for a day.

Me: Good Morning Helpdesk Jen speaking, how can I help you?

User: Is that the Helpdesk?

Me: !!!

Got a call on our stack recently from a headmaster whose computer had detected a virus on the floppy he'd brought in from home. After reassuring him why he was OK, and what he should do to check his computer at home (hey, free advice!), the subject came round to where he got it from.

"Well....", he said, ".... we did have some friends over from Nigeria a few weeks back. Could it have been one of them?"

True story. And I don't know why you're laughing - he's teaching YOUR kids!

(Can't remember if I submitted this already... search??)

A co-worker and I worked at two different accounts at a tech support contracting agency. We learned not to tell customers to "right-click" because they would always double-left-click.

ok...

call starts--Thank you for calling X tech support, may I have your username please?

*C* Hi, uh, username, is that my home address?

*TS* Uh, no ma'am, that's your email address.

*C* Ok, ummm, I think it's XX but I don't really know.

**TS** Ok, what's the last name on the acct?

*C* Well, not sure if it's in my name or my husbands.

Well, needless to say, after playing 20 questions we finally got the right info.

Now comes the fun part...

*TS* What may I help you with ma'am?

*C* Well, for some reason I can't connect to that internet thing.

*TS* What kind of error messages are you getting?

*C* I have NO idea what you are talking about...error messages,am I supposed to get one?

*TS* Well, if you are getting an error then it would be easier to figure out what's going on.

*C* OH

*C* Let me tell you what I have done to try to connect, then maybe you can tell me what I have done wrong.

*TS* OK

*C* Well, I went and got a modem like the lady at the phone company told me to do. I hooked it all up...plugged the phone line in and everything.

*TS* ok, where did you plug the phone line into?

*C* The modem thingy I bought.

*TS* so you have an external modem. Did you install everything for the modem as far as the drivers and things go?

*C* INSTALL??? How do I install something?

*TS* Well, you have to put the disk that came with the modem into your computer.

*C* Computer??? I just went and bought a modem..had my husband hook it up to the TV and tried to get connected.

*TS* UH....TO THE TV???? WHY DID YOU DO THAT????

*C* well, all the lady told me I needed was a modem thing. She didn't say anything about having to get the WHOLE computer......

hmmm...there went my day....

I work for an ISP.

When a customer is cut off by the abuse team, you know you are in for a laugh.

The guy calls up my colleague and it gets "escalated" to a "manager" later.

Colleague (A): Good afternoon blah blah blah

Customer (B): Hi, I have been cut off by the abuse team but I want switched back on again.

A: I see, I don't know why you were cut off so don't know if I can get you reconnected.

B: Well you see, they thought I was downloading child porn, but the thing is it was for business purposes...

A: What??????

B: I run a theatre and needed some sex noises for a production we are doing, so had to download some pornographic material.

A: You were downloading child porn??

B: Yeah,(nonchelantely) for business. I have a business product and can do this, it's in the contract.

The manager had to take over after 10 minutes or so to say

"Sir, not only are you breaking the law by downloading pornographic material involving children but you are intending to make money from the material that you download, and also, you are openely admitting this to me. I suggest you hang up right now and do not call us back ever again."

That was a sicko, but recently I got a similar one myself.

Caller: Ive been cut off by the abuse team but they know I'm not doing anything wrong, it's the hackers, they are doing it. They are hacking my mobile too, sending out messages. (my isp also sells mobile phones so he thinks I can see his text messages too).

Me: Sir, if you have been cut off by the abuse team there is not much I can do for you.

Caller: You can switch me back on. Honestly, I spoke to the abuse desk and they admitted it wasn't me, it was the hackers....they went into my computer and put porn on it and broke into my mobile phone and sent text messages to women, now I can't get into my phone. You have to help me.

They get into everything nowadays. The abuse team told me to put on a firewall a couple of weeks ago, a friend did it for me but the hackers still got in. They are making phone calls from my mobile now....this is terrible. I live with my Mother and need internet access because I get so bored. You have to help me.

This call went off on one of those 30 minute tangents where you end up discussing where you are in the World and what the weather is like, and ended up with the guy not getting his access back.

I know it's not a tech tale as such, but it makes the mind boggle.

This has to be the sorriest story that any tech helpdesk person will ever hear... and (infinite sorrow) it is true.

I work for a broadband ISP who just had some new "managers" start, keen to mark out their territory.

As any good phone monkey knows, managers are very clever people who know the ins and outs of the business....

One of them has to take over a call that became quite abusive(We had sent out the wrong drivers for the hardware and had subsequently failed to send out a good one for over 2 weeks).

She goes nuts and decides that a driver CD needs to be FAXED to the customer. The poor girl who gets the CDs sent out had to explain that a) We don't post out 10,000+ discs a week from our call centre,

and b) it is not possible to fax a CD, even if they do fit in the machine.

The manager then makes her call the company that sends out the CDs for us and DEMAND that THEY fax out a CD immediately. The guy on the other end of the line laughed his arse off for a good 5 minutes and the girl told the manager that their fax machine wasn't working but they would post one out by courier right away!

I work as a nursing instructor at a community college in Houston.

The internet connection (LAN, T1, whatever it is called) at my computer is dead: no internet, no e-mail, so I phone Tech Support.

They tell me I have to send a work requisition and that they are going to mail me the form.

I use the next-door computer while I wait for the form via our internal snail-mail thing.

After three days I phone them again: "I haven't received the Work Requisition form."

"Are you sure?", the tech replies, "I've send it to you via e-mail the same day."

A few years ago I ran across a situation where for some reason my users could not print out pdf files using the Acrobat Reader plug-in in Netscape. However, if you saved the file to disk and then opened up Acrobat and opened the file from there, it printed. Rather than try to figure out why the plug-in wouldn't work, I figured I'd just have everybody save the file (which they had to do anyway) and then open it up from Acrobat Reader to print it.

I had one user who just didn't get it. I had to stand over her shoulder for about 20 minutes, going step-by-step. I explained not only the whole process of actually getting to the website she was downloading the file from, but then how to click on file, then save, then the pull down menu to choose the directory, then the drive, then the directory, then the sub-directory, then the save button, etc.

Then I had to explain how to click on Start, then programs, then Adobe, the Acrobat Reader (yes, I ended up putting a shortcut on her desktop). Then file, open, oh the horror of finding the file she had just saved!!! Finally, the file was opened and I told her she just needed to click on print.

When all is done, she turns to me and says, "Why does it have to be so complicated?!"

The saddest part is that she had been using a computer for ten years and still didn't know how to save, run, or open a file.

I just spent 45 minutes on the phone with a customer who considered himself an "expert" but didn't know the difference between having 2 phone jacks and having 2 phone lines! When I asked him to connect a phone to the back of his computer and hold the receiver up to the phone so I could hear the dialtone, he put his cell phone to the receiver and all I could hear was static. When I told him that there might be a problem with the static, he said that his service with his cell phone always had static when he was inside the house. I explained he needed to plug a "house phone" into the back of the computer, and we had a 5 minute discussion of which plug he was supposed to use and which one he actually used. When I asked him to plug the phone into the wall jack where the computer is plugged in, he said there was nothing there. He insisted that he had done all of the troubleshooting and diagnostics on the modem, but couldn't determine that we were on the line he was trying to dial with. After 15 minutes of going round and round, he asked me if this was his service provider's problem, because if it was he was going to switch to AOL... I should have known then!!!! It was only when I tried to get his telephone account information to report a dead phone line that I discovered that he only had one phone line, after insisting that he had two! It was apparent throughout the call that the customer assumed I was asking him to do things that he didn't feel neccesary so he lied about what he was actually doing.

Just a day in the life of a tech support rep!

Fellow techs, don?t you just love some of the things you hear in the background of the calls you take?

It seems people don?t call until their birds are wildly cawing at one another, their dog is barking obnoxiously, and, worst of all, their kids are screaming so loud it hurts your ears! I?ve even had a call where their cat just walked across the keyboard and I heard it meowing. (?oh, wait, my cat is on the keyboard! *pause, meow, meow* Ok, she?s off, what did you want me to do??)

I was once talking to a guy who was going insane because his audio player didn?t have the graphics that went with the music like it used to. He ended up spending 5 hours formatting and reinstalling because of that, but that?s not the point here. The entire time he kept arguing w/ the other man in the room. They wouldn?t stop! I wonder if they act like this in front of people or being that I am just a tech on the phone that I can be exposed to this!!!

It seems some people seem to think that us techs on the phone are not human, or can?t hear anything besides what they tell us about the computer!

Another guy I was talking to kept referring to his friend like I knew who he was talking about. He was doing this just to harass his friend who was in the room, hung over. Examples: ?Bob isn?t feeling so good today!? & ?Bob was out last night and drank a little to much.?

I don?t care about Bob, I don?t know who he is, and it is not going to help me fix your problem by telling me about how Bob got drunk and how he puked on himself last night!!!

Today I had a call that involved someone who moved and now they were getting a no dial tone error. After troubleshooting things for a while I hear a whisper in the background, ?Hang up the phone! I found the problem.? I waited for the person to tell me they found the problem, but she didn?t. I waited some more. She didn?t say anything and didn?t hang up. I finally said, ?Ok, why don?t we hang up and then you can go ahead and try to dial up again (1 phone line). Call back if there are still problems.? She said she would, and guess what, she didn?t call back. I don?t know what problem the guy in the background found, but it was the problem!

Why can?t these people just admit they found the problem? Really, and was I not supposed to hear the whisper. Here?s a secret: the phone can pick up a lot! Especially a cell phone! Did they wanted me to sit there and go on troubleshooting for a while so they don?t look stupid! Oh, some of these users!!!!

Before i am going to tell my story i must say i am not a real tech supporter.

I recently bought a IBM PS/2 Model 30 on a garage sale for $2.

When i started using the computer, i noticed the floppy drive not working. Upon opening the computer and the floppy drive i discovered someone put $500 in cash (fake money, of course) in the floppy drive. The heads were trashed, but everyone laughed his ass off!

I work at a small ISP. I just got a call from an old lady who was frustrated with her slow service. She has a 28.8 modem, but still thinks it?s our fault. She told me she?s been thinking about disconnecting her Internet service and just using email until she gets a new computer!! I was trying not to laugh so I couldn?t even correct her error, but I think she was not telling the truth anyway.

She also had only 1 phone line, so every time she called me back after recieving an error trying to dial up, she had shut down her computer! It?s a Windows 95 machine, so it of course took a long time to boot it back up (which she also thought was our fault).

What is this, a curse!! About 10 minutes after writing this, before I posted it, I took yet another call where every time he called back he would tell me that he still couldn?t connect to the Internet. I?d ask him to click on something and he?d say, ?Ok, but I have to start the computer first.?

I can?t figure out what's worse, people who NEVER restart their computer, or people who shut it down ALL the time!

Okay, I understand that some people don't quite grasp the concept of how computers work, but what's really bad is when you fix a problem that they considered to be "catastrophic" and they suddenly think you can do anything, even defy physics!

Case and point: My Great Grandmother is a great woman, very nice, kind, and patient. I usually handle any tech support problems she has with her computer, and this day was no exception. She called me and told me that her internet was going really slow. I decided to head over there (it's only a few blocks away) and see what was up.

It only took me a second to realize what was wrong: The dial-up connection status window said "Connected at 33600" bps or something like that, basically it was connected at a poor speed. This happens sometimes, I told her, and the easiest way to fix it is to just re-connect to the ISP and chances are you'll get a better connection.

Fine. So, a week later she calls me again:

Her: Your grandmother (her daughter) just called me and said her internet is running slow. Send her an E-Mail and tell her how to speed up her modem.

Me: Speed up her modem? What do you mean?

Her: Like you did with mine. Set the speed higher.

Me: I didn't do that. All I did was reconnect to the internet because you got a bad connection. Tell her to do the same.

Her: No, she says it's always slow. Can't you just speed hers up like you did mine?

(Apparently she doesn't understand that I didn't "speed up" the modem)

Me: You can't just "Speed up" a modem. Believe me, I wish you could. If her connection is always that poor, she might need to get a new modem or check with her ISP and/or phone company. She could have line noise or all sorts of other problems. I couldn't know for sure without checking the computer myself.

Her: Oh, well that's just great. I told her you could make her modem faster, I guess I lied.

(Yeah, Grandma...I guess so. Sheesh)

I do tech support at my university. This incident occured while I wasn't even at work - I was just walking across campus on my way home - so understand I was a little irked to be asked for help at that time to begin with.

User: Excuse me, do you know what the PIN number is for the OSAP site? [OSAP is a student loan program]

Me: Sorry, I don't know anything about OSAP, I've never been involved with them. Maybe you should contact them to find your pin number.

U: But when I go to the OSAP site and I try to apply online, it says that I have an incorrect PIN number. Is there something wrong with the internet?

M: I haven't heard of any problems reported today. And if the error message does say that the pin number is incorrect, it is likely that you just need a new PIN number and you should contact OSAP for that.

U: Aren't there any computers somewhere else I can use that will connect to the OSAP site?

M: Oh, does your computer not connect at all?

U: No, it doesn't

M: Does it give you a specific error message?

U: Yes, when I try to log on to the "Apply online" page it says "Incorrect PIN number"! You guys should fix your internet!

M: Does it get to the front page of the OSAP site, where it asks you to choose a language?

U: Yes, but then it says I have an incorrect PIN number! Aren't there any other computers I can use?

M: There are computer labs in rooms W, X, Y, Z which you can use any time, but it seems to me that the problem is not with the computer but with the PIN number. OSAP should be able to help you reset your PIN number.

U: No, it MUST be a problem with the internet!

M: But the computer does get to the main OSAP page, where it asks you to choose a language?

U: Yes, but then it won't let me apply online!

M: If it gets to the main page, that means that the connection between your machine and the OSAP server works. This would mean that the problem is either with the OSAP web site or with your logon information, so you need to contact OSAP about that.

Gotta love how people think that any problem that they see on a computer is automatically our fault.

Quickie, and some background:

I was involved with a group just learning how to use the Internet and email, (it's what's called a "job-finding" club) but given my considerably greater comp skills (I have been a PC tech for 10 years and a LAN admin for five), I was called on constantly to help my fellow club members.

One fellow in particular was not too quick with the ideas behind the internet. Episode (a):

"Is the reason I can't send this woman an email to her AOL account because I have to join AOL as well?"

Turns out he had, in fact, sent email successfully to her WITHOUT joining AOL!

Episode (b), same day & time: He complained to me that he couldn't send her an email since he couldn't find her email address in his hotmail account --until I clicked on the "contacts" tab, and there it was, plain as day.

Amazing! Whodathunkit?

I have a wonderfully irascible and thoroughly bd tempered client who is shall we say, high strung and very tempermental. Add to that the fact that she is Parisian French and finds herself among laid back Canadians here in British Columbia, and it is an explosive mix. She is my client, G-d help me.

1) I agreed to buy a 486 from her, which she **insisted** was worth $1000, since she paid $1200 for it ten years ago. I bought it for a very generous $200.

2) She insisted that she "does not need" backup files, since they confuse her.

3) Did not see the need to give filenames to anything, since "I am joost goeeng to preent zem out anyway!"

4) Did not understand why her black and white documents printed in black and white. "Why could zey not be preented out een coloeur?". Hmmm........

5) She insisted that she did not need me to make digital backups, since she was going to "preent out zee 'ard copee, aneeway". Oh yes, and she does not have a scanner.

6) Panicked every time I opened a file for her (I ended up being her secretary, as well as her tech), since she believed that I was destroying the original, even if I gave the new file a new name and SHOWED her that the original file still existed.

7) Insisted that it was easier for her to re-type a file (a la the typewriter) rather than open a new file save it with a new name, and make the changes she wanted. After all, why spend five minutes when you can spend an hour?

8) Insisted on correcting my spelling, despite my having shown her almost every day for two weeks, that MS Word already HAS a spellchecker.

9) To this day, cannot distinguish between files and folders, either conceptually, or in fact; she got very mad at me because she could not create a folder in MS Word. There is a way, by going File|Save As|Create New Folder, but she didn't know about it, and anyway, I asked her, why was she trying to save her docment as a folder in the first place? She got mad at me for the impertinence of such a "stewpeed kesteeon" -- (stupid question)-- as that.

10) Every time she cannot find a file (she cannot grasp that you can nest folders one inside the other), she claims she has "lost" the file. She never has yet. She has BEEN lost in Win98 Explorer, but has never lost any data.

11) Most fascinating of all is her insistence of the following:

a) E-mail is a "minor" communication tool. So is the Web.

b) People do not like to receive or send e-mail (Receive I can understand. But send?)

c) Like so many, she insists that e-mail is not part of the Internet. According to her, neither is the World Wide Web.

d) There IS such a thing as an "information superhighway". But the Internet has nothing to do with it.

She told me that as soon as her business gets going, she will hire a scretary to take care of the computer matters, since she hates them and they frustrate her to no end. And I think that's a good idea. She makes no pretence about loving working with computers. What frightens me is, she treats me abysmally at times, and I am a consultant.

Can you imagine what hell this poor secretary will go through?

Quickie, and some background:

I was involved with a group just learning how to use the Internet and email, (it's what's called a "job-finding" club) but given my considerably greater comp skills (I have been a PC tech for 10 years and a LAN admin for five), I was called on constantly to help my fellow club members.

One fellow in particular was not too quick with the ideas behind the internet, and computers. in general.

He kept wanting to send attachments in emails, and his "technique" (which for some reason didn't work; hmmm, I wonder why) consisted of clicking on an intersting web page, finding something interesting to send, opening up his hotmail account in another window of IE, starting a new e-mail, AND THEN TRYING TO DOWNLOAD THE FILE DIRECTLY TO THE NEWLY CREATED E-MAIL.

It took me three times, before I could convince him that it was necessary to save the file to his hard drive first, THEN use the attachment feature in Hotmail to send the now-downloaded file to his buddies back home.

Not a tech tale, but fascinating all the same. A friend of mine who is very sweet, and fairly intelligent, but doesn't always put her brain in gear, told me of an email problem which she herself realized wasn't in fact a problem. She had simply made a "fopa". I asked her via email, if she meant "faux pas"? Still waiting for the answer.

I work as IT support for a number of schools. In one school Jill (not her real name) thinks she knows more that she actually does and I usually dread finding a support request from her.

I originally was going to type this whole thing out but it was getting very lengthy. So here are the main points:

* Jill decides that the professional website isn't good enough but can't build one herself.

* Finds and has school pay for webhosting when we already have webspace.

* Webhost provides a site builder.

* I have to install it on three machines that Jill wanted.

* We have a proxy that requires authentication. Standard install program downloads files as needed but can't be used with a proxy.

* Download seperate troubleshooting PDF and get exact addresses for all files and download them with browser.

* Install builder

* Download and install Java VM updater.

* Builder takes about 5 minutes to start.

* Click to say you are connected to internet and wait another minute before you can enter proxy info.

* Builder always fails to log you in on the first go and you have to restart the builder.

* Builder than logs you on and downloads your enitre site to the local drive.

* Have to change access rights to builder install folder so non-admins can make changes to site.

* Number of other people start adding to site.

* Site grows to 18meg, not helped by 10 images at about 1meg each but resized on screen.

* Jill wants builder on all computers. Keep in mind that it downloads the entire site to each computer.

* Jill decides that I'm not installing builder fast enough (I'm busy with real problems), finds install files on network drive and tries it herself.

* Complains that she couldn't install builder. I tell her Yes, that's right. You don't have an admin login. No you can't have one.

* Jill gets login of another admin and uses that.

* Jill doesn't change access rights or know how.

* I get to fix all the computers that she installed builder on.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse...

* Jill informs me of a required update for the builder.

* To install update I have to uninstall previous version and start again.

One day in class, we went online using the school's network to take this online quiz. The instructor, showing us which site the quiz was on, started at a search engine and told us which links to click. There were about seven links, so when he was finished I just memorized the url and used that (he obviously didn't know that pages were accessible by their url).

Now, we started towards the end of the period and this quiz was about 100 questions long. The way the website was organized was there were two frames, one around the edges of the screen which was loaded with advertisements. The other frame in the center of the screen, would have a single question and a "next question" link. Well, I wanted to break out of that stupid ad frame, so I hover over the "next question" link and find out that each question is on a page named questx.html where x is the question number. So, I type in the url for the question and continue with the quiz outside of the frames.

Well, the period ends and I've gotten up to about question 79. No one was finished yet.

The next class period, we were instructed to pick up where we left off, so I enter the url for quest79.html and finish the test in about ten minutes. After being finished for some time, I hear the instructor talking to one of the other students. Apparently, the other students had started over and had been instructed to keep hitting "next question" until they were where they had left off. I turn around, ask which question they were on and enter the url for them. The instructor was awe struck and confused apparently. He wanted to know what the ".html" meant. I just told him that meant it was a webpage. He muttered something about not understanding "all this computer stuff." After that, the rest of the period finds me going around and entering urls for every single student!

I got a call from a small boy. He wanted me to put Windows 95 on his computer

(ME) Hello, *********

(Boy) I want to install Windows 95 on my computer

(Me) '95? isn't that very old?

(Boy) I need it for my game.

(Me) OK, what OS are you running now?

(Boy) 486

(Me) No, the Operating System

(Boy) 486

(Me) What does your screen look like?

(Boy) Well, it is beige and it has two buttons

(Me) I mean the image the screen is displaying.

(Boy) I see a gray background and a box. It says 'Program Manager' 'File Options Help' ' (program groups) '.

(Me) OK, put the Windows 95 CD in the CD-ROM drive.

(Boy) OK,

(Me) Click with your mouse on 'File', then click 'Run', and type WINFILE, then click OK.

(Boy) I now hhave a box saying 'File Manager' on the screen

(Me) OK, click the icon looking like a CD drive.

(Boy) There is no icon looking like a CD drive.

(Me) Do you see an icon with 'D:'?

(Boy) No.

(Me) Are you sure you have a CD-Romdrive?

(Boy) Yes

(Ofcourse you all think he put the CD in a 5 1/4" Floppy drive, but he didn't.

(Me) What does your CD drive look like?

(Boy) It has a hole, a button and a volume knob. It says '4x' on it.

(Sure enough, that IS the discription of a CD drive. He just didn't had CD-Rom drivers installed.)

(Me) It sounds like you don't have CD drivers installed.

(Boy) What is a CD driver?

(Me) It is a program that makes your PC see your CD-rom drive.

(Me) It should be on a floppy disk

(Boy) I have floppy disks. one says 'Win 3.11 disk 1' and another 'Win 3.11 disk 2', ...., and one saying 'DOS 6.22 installation disk 1', and another saying 'DOS 6.22 installation disk 2', ...., and one saying 'Police Quest PC'.

(Me) All right, i'll come over with a driver and install it for you.

(So i go over there and just when it booted up and i wanted to install the driver, i needed URGENTLY to go to the bathroom. When i come back, the screen said:

C:\) A:, then it should say A:\), and then type SETUP and press ENTER.

Bad command or file name.

C:\)

The installation instructions said: Type A:, then it sould say A:\), then type SETUP and press ENTER.

he LITERALLY TYPED OVER EVERYTHING AFTER THE WORD 'type'!!!)

(Boy) It doesn't work!

(I installed it the right way, and then, magically, the drive came to life. When i tried to install Win '95, it said: Error: Can't upgrade. Operating System too old. (typical microsoft, of course the OS is old, why would i else want to upgrade it?!).

The boy handed me the game box. It could also work with Win 3.11 if the Win 32s extension was installed. Win32s was included on the CD.)

(Me) There is a program on your game CD that can make Windows 95 programs work under Windows 3.11.

(So i installed it, it worked fine, the boy began playing with his game, and i went home.)

Three days later, i got a call from the same boy saying his game wouldn't work. Sure enough, it was uninstalled.

This happenend: His father tried to install Windows 95, got an error, and typed FDISK (what he thought meant Fix Disk), and reloaded his system. (No CD driver, no mouse driver)

(Boy) It won't work, it's uninstalled, and i can't get my CD to work, and the mouse is broken too!

(Me) It seems that somebody deleted your game, the CD driver, and the mouse driver. I'll come over with the drivers.

So i install the drivers, and then i realized he was using DOS 3.3! Installed DOS 6.22, the drivers, Windows 95, his game, and a couple of hundred old DOS games he had, AND a program that protected the HD against formatting. He never called me ever since. His father didn't realize what you could do with a Windows 95 boot disk...

It's a sad, true story.

One day at the field we were explaining to a costumer how our applications work (I work in a software development firm in Europe).

S: "... So you see, you have to double-click on this window here"

(while pointing finger on the display)

C: "Uh-huh. Here then..."

(picking up the mouse pushing it against the display and clicking on it wildly)

*'nough said we were choking from laughter*

I was working with a user upgrading them from NT 4.0 to 2000, I had just finished when I was approached by another user. This user was yelling about losing sound and what did we do to the PC to cause the sound to be lost. So I go over and take a look at the PC. First I check device manager to see if the driver is loaded, then I check to see if the wires are connected. Then I check if the speaker is actually on which it is not, I turn it on and the user has sound again. The user then asks what was wrong and all I tell the person "It's complicated." As long as there are people like that in this world I got a job.

Here's one of the bad tech support tales:

Had a call from a friend's father a couple of weeks ago. He got a new scanner and could not get it working. Actually, it had worked when he installed it but would not respond the next day. So he called HP tech support, no toll-free number. They kept him on the line for at least 2 hours, trying all sorts of configuration changes, uninstalling and reinstalling drivers, etc. After this 2 hour call, all they could come up with was "it must be a Windows problem".

So I start troubleshooting...he still had the drivers installed, so we booted the PC and he tried to scan and got scanner not responding. So I told him to disconnect the USB and power cables from the scanner (most of these newer USB interface models no longer have a power switch). He replied, "hmm...they didn't have me disconnect power when I called them". I told him to go ahead and reconnect power, but leave the USB cable connected. Nothing happened, no light, no sounds, no motion. I asked him if he remembered the first time he plugged it in, whether the scan light came on and whether it made any noise (as every scanner I've ever used does). He said it did. But now nothing, no POST, nothing. He checked the power supply (wall transformer type AC adapter) and found it to be a little warm. He still had the supply from his previous scanner (which was defective out of the box, but we never worked on it until it was out of warranty...). Checked, and all the ratings (voltage, current, polarity) matched, and the plug fit. So we tried it. The scanner was still dead. So I commented to him that it was a safe bet the scanner itself had died. He exchanged it the next morning, plugged the new one in, and it worked perfectly (with the same drivers and "Windows problem" that HP tech support had left him with). TWO HOURS at long distance rates (fortunately only 5 cents a minute) and support didn't even think to do the most obvious first step...power cycle the scanner! No wonder they don't have toll free support, it would cost them a fortune with that kind of incompetence. (I'm surprised that it wasn't a 900 number though, maybe they haven't thought of that yet.)

I am a tech who owns my on consulting firm. One day I had to call mindspring technical support for a clients password. The technician explained that the password was all numbers (eg.1234567) then reminded me that when entering them they must be lower cased.

I did a little freelance tutoring work to make a little money while in school. I would teach people to write documents, copy files, get on the internet, etc.

There was one middle-aged couple that hired me, and one of the things they wanted was sound. I first asked if they plugged the speakers in correct, and since the desk was fixed to the wall and I didnt want to crawl behind to check, I took their word for it - big mistake.

I searched all over every related control panel and tweak I could find, verified that there were no driver conflicts, everything appeared to be fine. They told me that it wasn't a big deal, and that they wanted to get on to other things (I charged by the hour).

A couple months later they hired me again. When I got there I commented that the sound was working. The husband blushed, murmured that the speakers were not plugged in to the computer correctly, and changed the subject.

Dont trust users. =P

One day I get a call from a user whos "floppy drive wont work - why doesnt anything ever work in here!!!" I go to take a look to see what the problem might be. Arriving at the users desk i notice there is what appears to be a floppy disk wedged into a 100Mb ZIP DRIVE!! Eventually managed to retrieve the floppy disk and spent the next 15 minutes explaining the difference between zip disks and floppy disks, and the damage that can be done to drives by forcing incorrect disks into them, to the user.

I was assured that it would "never happen again...i understand everything you said, im sorry". I say ok accidents happen from time to time, and not to worry about it etc. - only to watch the user do exactly the same thing again!!!!!!!!!!!! It was too much, what a ******.

Thanks for all the laughs i get from reading all the other stories on the site - its great!!

I work on a help desk and received this email from an user this morning.

Hello,

I was wonderring if I could get a firewire PCI card to put in one of our computers to be able to connect a USB cable..

My Response:

Your system has two USB ports in the back. Firewire is something completely different than USB. Do you need to be able to run Firewire or USB? Please let us know.

User Response:

Hello,

We need to be able to run a firewall.....

Sorry getting two things involved with one....all I need is a firewall set-up

excuse my bad english it's not my first language...

I'm working for a big ISP company in canada,i'm at the technical support departement.

ME= myself , CU = CUSTOMER

ME:Internet support,how can i help you ?

CU: Yes hello,i'm at one of your customer's home,i'm a computer technicien and i'm trying to install your high speed modem on the new computer and it's not working.

(opening customer's account, Modem is ONLINE,problem is in PC)

ME:ok, are you trying via the USB port or The ethernet card ?

CU:i'm not sure, let me look...heu how can i tell ?

ME:(sigh)..by the cable between the modem and computer?

CU:witch one ? i see 3 cables

ME:(again)the cable between the modem and computer.

CU: heu...ha ,ok its in the network card

ME: is it properly installed and configured ?

CU: bah..Yeah of course, i'm a technicien you know.

ME:(Mute button).And a crapy one...

ME:what OS is installed ??

CU:WINDOWS XP,

ME:In french or in english ?

CU:i dont know , not sure..

at this point , i'm not sure if i'm not still sleeping

ME:What is written on the lower left button ? Start or demarrer ?

CU:Demarrer (with a proud tone of voice)

(in system properties)

ME:do you see any yellow dots anywere ?

CU:yes ,3 in network adapters.

ME:sir,your network card in badly installed 3 times.

CU:impossible the card worked in another computer.

ME:(sigh)(i ask a co-worker to listen to this)

ME:sir,did you reboot the USB port on the power supply ?

CU:no i didn't ,is their one ??

ME:Never mind sir , i think i got the solution.delete

network cards and reboot computer.

CU:how do i do that ?

ME(mute button ) hahaha...

(explain.and reboot)

ME: did it work ?

CU:no

ME:ok unplug the cable behind the computer and tell me what it look's like

CU:witch one ?

ME:(sigh)modem'S cable

CU:it look like a little black wire

ME:(mute)damn,its a USB connection?

ME:sir i have never seen a USB cable pluged in a network card before,change the cable for the one like a big phone line.

CU:but sir ,i'm not using the phone line, i have cable

access.

ME:i know sir,(sigh),any firewall,anti-virus ? installed ?

CU:not sure..

ME:never mind,

after a reboot,it's finally working.

we call these 2$ wannabe-technicien.

Background Info: I am the IT Director for a medium-sized construction management company with several offices throughout the country. There are people that work for me that normally handle simple tech. support calls but for whatever reason, this person decided that her problem was important enough to contact me directly.

Sometimes we have fairly large construction projects where we take some office people out to the field and set them up in a rented office trailer with a computer so that they can type documents and send e-mails for the job. This is one such case:

--------

On a very busy day dealing with some large company problems I receive this call from a secretary, let's call her Kelle, in our Las Vegas office:

Kelle: "Chris, I really need your help. I can't see my 'H' drive any more! (referring to her mapped network drive). It just disappeared".

Chris: "Ok, I don't think it just 'disappeared', did your network cable get disconnected? Did you log in correctly? Is your file server down?"

k: "No, everything is hooked up"

c: "ok, when exactly did you start having trouble? What did you do right before that?"

k: "well, we started this large project and I was asked to move out of the office to this temporary construction trailer that I'm in. So I took my computer out with me and I called up (insert lec for vegas) and got myself all setup on the internet. But now I can't see my 'h' drive any more!"

C: "So.... ummm (totally astounded at this point)... let me get this straight and make sure I understand you. You took your computer from the office, where it was on your network, and set it up in the field. You setup an internet connection with your local provider. And now you are wondering where your network drive is?"

K: "I think so. I un-plugged the phone line looking thingy from the office (referring to the Ethernet cable) and hooked up the one here and then the guy with (insert lec again) talked me through setting up the internet. But I'm online and I still can't see my 'h' drive or any of my files - where did I lose it? I didn't delete anything, I swear!"

C: "Kelle, ummm.... it's just not that simple. Being on the internet does not place you on your office's LOCAL AREA network. I don't think you guys have RAS running on your server do you?"

(RAS in this instance stands for remote access services - it also happens to be an abbreviated version of our company's name)

K: "RAS? That's my password! How'd you know that?"

(toying with her now)

C: "well it is the name of the company, after all. Kelle - in order to get your h drive back you either need to move back into the office or you need to get someone to run a special wire all the way out to the job trailer from the office building."

K: "I can't do that, the office is 20 miles away and they need me here! why can't I just see it?!? I'm hooked up to the 'net, right?"

C: "Right - it's not the same. Trust me... Please."

K: "What will I do to get my files?"

C: "Go back to the office and get on someone else's computer and e-mail them to yourself"

**** Conversation continues like this for about another 10 minutes until I think I've finally convinced Kelle that maybe I'm right. She continues to believe, however, that I'm just being lazy and not helping her correctly. After another 5 minutes of frustration I hang up the phone on her and then call my poor IT assistant in our Los Angeles office and direct him to help her. It's nice to be boss! :)

1.

This happened when i worked at a small computer store.

Someone called me that his joystick won't work.

When i come over and see, i see that he has put a Sega Master System controller into the serial port.

2.

(From the same computer store)

Someone had a Mac and a Mac printer, but he didn't had a cable for it. So he came over and asked a printer cable. I didn't know he had a mac, so i sold him a PC parallel printer cable. (These look the same as SCSI cables) This is what he did: He plugged one end in the SCSI port of the printer and the other end in the SCSI port of his mac. Now, this was a serial printer and the SCSI port was for installing HD's to the printer for font storage. And, these parallel cables can't be used as a SCSI cable because the wires are differently connected.

I provide tech support for a small manufacturing company in Scotland and in my 7 years of working with users this is the funniest one I've heard.

User (via email): The lights on my keyboard under the Num Lock & Caps Lock are not working - can we get new bulbs for this or is it a new keyboard ????

Me(via email): 60W or 100W, screw-in or bayonet?

Two or three years ago I with chatting with a neighbour of

ours about the internet. She was complaining that the

internet was useless and she could never find anything she

wanted. When she typed in a companies name, it came back

with hundreds of returns.

I told her if she knew the companies web site address she

could enter that and go straight to it. She replied that

that's what she was doing already!

It was then that I realised that she was typing the URL into

the search box on the ISP homepage. She hadn't even

realised there was an address bar above.

My mum is not un-intelligent. In fact she's most of her way

towards a (UK) Open University degree. When it comes to

matters of technology she is, however, clueless.

My wife and I had been to visit at Christmas. My dad was in

Saudi so while we there mum asked me to check for any e-mail

from him. Sure enought there was so I printed it off, then

logged off and as is my habit powered everything down.

About a week later I got a call from her, and it went

something along these lines:-

Her: What have you done to the computer?

Me: I don't know, what's wrong?

Her: I turned the computer on and followed your fathers

instructions a nothings happening. I can here the computers

on.

Me: What's on the screen?

Her: Nothing

Me: Move the mouse around?

Her: Still nothing.

Me: Is the power on the monitor on?

Her: What's a monitor?

Me: The TV on top of the computer.

Her: How do I tell?

Me: Is the green light on at the bottom right?

Her: No.

Me: Press the button.

I then got a berating for "messing around with the computer"

so that she could not follow my fathers instructions to the

letter.

Many of our customers run their reports on a nightly schedule,

with the output either sent to a file or printed. The daily

backup can be scheduled to run as a report as well, with the

output directed to tape. A new customer opened a help desk

call because their daily backup failed. After reviewing error

logs, I asked the customer to check that a tape was inserted

in the tape drive. It was in there, but half-way out rather

than fully seated. I explained the obvious to the customer --

the backup report failed because it could not direct its

output to the tape drive.

"Oh!" said the customer. "That makes sense. But how come all

my other reports ran ok?"

First off, I'd like to say that I do not wish to get the Tech Tales "TechTale of the month", because this story is in no way hilarious. I was a big pain in the rear end.

I'm a college student and over the past 2 summers, I've worked for my local school system (which I also graduated from) as a computer technician. Keeps me from just vegitating in front of my computer.

Anyways, this school district decided to make a huge system upgrade over the summer. Over 370 identical Compaq computers were purchased for the buildings throughout the city. Nice machines, I have no problem with them. The company we purchased them through had a special offer. We were sent 2 machines, and we assembled the software we wanted on them, then sent them back. Then the company would use those 2 machines as the basis for the Hard drive setups for the rest...almost. 50 computers were not done this way. Instead, they came with the manufacturers setup.

Over the course of approximately 1 month, myself and another technician had the task of setting up these 50 machines in a lab at the high school. I'll try to go over this step by step:

Step 0: We have do move some 100 old machines (monitors, computers and printers) in this lab off of desks so we would have room for the new computers.

Step 1: 1st group of 25 machines (with monitors) are delivered. We have to move them from the main loading dock to a lab 4 floors up. This process alone took us the better part of a 6.5 hour day.

Step 2: We setup the computers on decks. Another tech began to build a prototype machine for us to Ghost off of. We then Ghosted.

We also were required to make severla BIOS changes during this time.

(Touch count: 25 machines- 1 time each)

Step 3: Next 24 machines arrive (we were shorted one). We have to move these machines the same 4 floors.

Step 4: We begin ghosting the second set. Same BIOS changes.

(Touch count: 49 machines- 1 time each)

Step 5: We are told that for the DHCP setup, the machines need to have their serial number and Mac address recorded. There goes another day of work.

(Touch count: 49 machines- 2 times each)

Step 6: After doing the serial numbers and Mac addresses we are told we should remove the Windows OEM stickers from every machine, so kids can't use the Windows XP and Windows 2000 keys.

(Touch count: 49 machines- 3 times each)

Step 7: The company doing the ghosting delivers 51 more computers for the lab. We now have to do serial numbers, Mac addresses, stickers and BIOS changes for each of these machines.

(Touch count: 49 machines- 3 times each)

(Touch count: 51 machines- 1 time each)

Step 8: The teacher that will actually be teaching in the lab comes in, and tells us we have more software that was not installed before that must be on every machine in the lab.

Also, in the process of Ghosting the first 49 machines, a program called SysPrep was placed on the initial machine. It is designed to strip something away from Windows 2000 that if discovered could allow a user to hack into any machine in the district. It also does something that incrases sound playback by 10%, so music is too fast and high pitched, and any speech sounds like the person was sucking on a helium balloon.

To make this long step short, we have to Ghost all the machines all over again.

(Touch count: 49 machines- 4 times each)

(Touch count: 51 machines- 2 times each)

Note: I go back to college soon, so the step's listed below I will not be able to participate in, but I know they must happen.

Step 9: Not all the software we needed to install could be installed. 2 pieces were missing serial numbers, and one was on order. So, if I was still working there, I would most likely have to Ghost all these machines again

(Touch count: 49 machines- 5 times each)

(Touch count: 51 machines- 3 times each)

Step 10: An all new networking system was put into place for this lab, and the delivery of several hubs was pending when I left, so someone is going to have to go to every machine, and set it up with a name on the network.

(Touch count: 49 machines- 6 times each)

(Touch count: 51 machines- 4 times each)

Tell me, do you see something wrong with this picture??

7:15 am Sunday morning

Me: Thanx for calling tech support how may i help you

Customer: Is the system down?

Me: which system m'am?

Customer: digital cable for computer internet

Me: Well there are no reported problems with the service this morning. Which lights are on?

(Hear liquid being poured)

Customer: I don't know it is too early let me check, i haven't even had my coffee yet.

Me: ok, please check for me

Customer: they are all on. data light is flashing.

Me: ok, what version of windows are you running?

Customer: Windows? office 97.

Me: what operationg system win 95,98 etc..

Customer: I don't know.. I just want to know why my internet is not on.

(hear more liquid being poured)

Me: Ok, if you will right click on my computer and go to properties.

(hear spoon banging against inside of cup as if coffee being stirred)

Customer: I can't my computer is not on.

Me: ok if you will please turn on the computer.

(hear coffee still being stirred)

Cutstomer: I can't it won't turn on. I haven't had my coffee yet. I just want to know if the system is down and why i cannot get on the internet.

Me: ok, you will first need to turn the computer on, so we can see if you can get online or not.

Customer: I can't the computer won't turn on. I haven't had my coffee yet. I will have to call you back.

I'm not a tech support but I know a thing or two about computer and technology.

I was in the bus the other day and I met two friend of mine and started talking with them about new technology. We ended up talking about electronic books. So one them said : (he was joking) yeah, it's pretty cool, you can actually turn the pages like a real book. Just before I started laughing my other friend asked if this was real. I told her : "of course, it's because they don't want to confuse the user." I succeeded keeping my face straight for 10 seconds but it was just too much.

I work for a large software development company, and I support a product called Magic. We don't do end user support, only DBA's and network admins call us, and I wonder how these people got their jobs sometimes.

The other day, I had a user call who had received a zipped file from a fellow tech, who had apparently password protected the file. She called in wanting to know what the password was. As the name of our product is 'Magic', the standard password (when one is required) is 'magic'.

The conversation went like this:

Me - me

DBA - the DBA who called

DBA - "I just received this file and don't know the password"

Me - "Try 'magic'"

DBA - (long pause) - "How do I do that? I don't know how to do magic!"

Me - (trying hard not to laugh) - "No, I mean try the WORD 'magic' as the password"

DBA - "Oh. It worked! Thanks!"

She actually thought I meant to wave a wand and say abracadabra!

I work as a hardware geek for a Major Law Firm. As such a Major Law Firm, all of the lawyers and legal assistants think they should have the biggest and best equipment around, when all they really know how to do, and really need to do, is type a doc, send and receive e-mail, and look up info on the Internet.

One particularly loud legal assistant felt he should have a new computer, so to shut him up we gave him a newer model (but not the brand new model he was demanding we buy for him). As I was installing it, he came over to ask me a question: "So...does this computer have more gigahertz?"

I don't try to talk legalese to them; they shouldn't try to talk computerese to me. I replied, "So...do you know what a gigahertz is?"

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

He looked at me, then blinked. "No," he admitted.

"It has more gigahertz," I told him.

This was sometime last year. Earlier today, he asked me for some advice about buying a computer for his home, and I've discovered he still doesn't know how to use the word "gigahertz" correctly in a sentence.

My mom just sent me an article on a program you can install to prevent computer crashes and wanted to know if it was something she could use. Never mind that she's never installed anything in her life. If I asked her whether or not she's ever seen a BSOD she'd say, "A WHAT??"

Aside from that one small detail, though, the article said, "The program is so simplified, it is especially good for people who would never think of trying to fix a computer problem themselves." Just one small detail she's overlooking. The article specifically states this program is for XP. She's running 95. I refuse to reply if she doesn't even know what OS she has! If her computer ever crashes, I'm going to *insist* she go back to using WebTV!!

I'm a secretary at a small computer store and sometimes I get stuck taking tech support calls. Here is one of my most recent 'eye rollers':

One of our customers called and said, "My computer just shut off! I keep turning it on and it shuts right off again."

ME: Are you referring to your laptop computer?

Customer: Yes.

ME: Are you operating the laptop on battery power only, or do you have the AC power cord plugged in, also?

C: Well, I never took the battery out...I don't even know how, and I have this other little box about the size of a playing card plugged into it.

ME: Is the other little box connected to an electrical outlet?

C: Yes, but there is a printer and a scanner in between.

ME: Start at the electrical outlet and tell me everything that the "little box" cord is connected to.

C: Well, it goes from the outlet to the box and then kind of veers off to the printer and the scanner, and it has another tail that goes to my computer.

ME: Can you tell me what the end of the tail that plugs into your computer looks like?

C: It's a little flat thingy.

ME: You must be describing a USB switchbox that allows you to plug both printer and scanner into your laptop's one and only USB port. (OK, back to square one.) Do you have a power cord for your laptop?

C: Well, I'm a little ignorant about these things (Der...ya think?). What does a power cord look like?

ME: ( I describe the power cord for the customer )

C: Well, I guess I'll have to look for it. Why do I need that if I have a battery?

ME: Well, I believe that your laptop is shutting itself off because your battery is dead, and needs to be plugged into AC power to recharge the battery.

C: OH !!!... there was a little message that kept popping up that said "Warning, your battery is getting low..." (Really!! and you're mentioning this now instead of when you first called me, why...???!!!!)

ME: Well, I don't believe there is anything wrong with your computer. If you find the power cord and plug it in, it should recharge battery and operate just fine.

C: Just in case there IS something wrong with my computer, is it still under warranty?

ME: Well, no. According to our records you purchased this computer 5 years ago, and it had a one year warranty. Hmm...you've been operating this laptop on this battery for 5 years, and how long has the power cord been missing?

( That must be one hell of a battery! I have to get one of those for my own laptop ! )

once i asked a lady if she sees my computer on her desktop , she shouted back and told me yes ofcourse its my computer , do you think im a thief

First of all; My mother toungue is not english, so bare over with me here ;)

I just got a call from a woman who had not logged onto the specific program in a half a year, thus her account was pretty much locked due to the long time of inactivity. We have that application (we are talking about connection to a tird party supercomputer here), so I asked for her username...

Me; Yes ma'am, we can change your password, one second while I open my tool here...

Her; Ok.

...short wait while I log on...

Me; OK, I'm in, what is your username?

Her; It's XXXXXXXXXX

Me; (thinking; Hmmm. That username has waaaay too many characters) Uhm, ma'am, are you sure that is your username?

Her; Yes, that is the one I have been using.

Me; Are you sure it's not XXXXXX???

Her; Yes. It is; XXXXXXXXXX

Me; Ma'am, where do you work?

Her; I work at XXXXXXX

Me; But that is not a part of XXXXXX, is it?

Her; No.

Me; Well, since you do not work with us, I am unabløe to help you, ma'am, so I would advice you to call your own techsupport....

Her; OK.

Can you believe it? This woman actually phoned another company's internal support for help!!! Honestly!

When I was in high school, a friend once asked me to copy a game, that took up three 1.4 meg floppies compressed, onto just one 1.4 meg disk. When I told him that it it wouldn't fit, he told me to compress it over and over until it did fit. When I told him that file compression didn't work that way, and that you would only get at most 2% compression on the second compression and then none after that, he gave me that pathetic whimpering "I don't beleive it, I think I'm gonna cry" look.

My old home computer was getting a little long in the tooth, so I decided it was time to upgrade to a speedy (at the time) 133MHz Pentium machine. I browsed the local computer ads and found one that fit my requirements for a pretty reasonable price.

Episode 1:

Within a few weeks of purchasing the computer, the hard drive started making a fairly loud whining noise (like the spindle bearing was about to fail). Here is a rough outline of the events:

I call ‘em:

Me: “Can you do an in-store warrantee replacement of my hard drive, I think mine is on its death bed”

Them (Very Broken English): “Sure! No problem”

I drive to store with drive in hand

Me: “Please replace this”

Them: “Ok. Gimme your drive and wait two weeks for the replacement”

Me: “Ummm.. You guys said on the phone that I could just swap drives in the store; I can’t go two weeks without my computer”

Them: “well, that’s the way it works”

I leave the store and discover the Maxtor Warrantee swap program (They send me refurbished drive, I then send them bad drive).

Episode 2:

I get my shiny ‘like new’ drive from Maxtor.

I pull out old drive and replaced with new drive

Start computer, New Drive is NOT recognized!

After a little investigation, discover that drive cable is PLUGGED INTO THE MOTHERBOARD BACKWARDS!

They actually forced the KEYED drive cable into both the hard drive AND CD-ROM drive BACKWARDS so they would work.

Episode 3:

My ViewSonic monitor started to intermittently lose the green color component.

After determining that the video card/cable/connectors were Ok, I brought in the monitor to the same place.

They noted that the power cord was not the same one that came with the monitor.

They tried to convince me that was the problem.

I tried not to do a spit-take.

Eventually they also determined that it was a bad monitor.

They sent it off to be repaired/replaced

When they got it back, they waited 4 days before they notified me!

AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!

They are now out of business.

Thanx for listening..

My caller had problems with her keyboard. It took me 20min to expalin it to him that there was nothing aol tech could do to repair her keyboard other than just checking the physical connection. Atlast when she was convinced she wanted to know whom should she report this to. To find out her computer brand name i asked her "Which computer do u have?"

She said "A white one"

I have a friend who has a P.C. and he knows absolutly nothing about the use of a P.C.

I suggested that if he would take the time to familiarize himself with Windows that it would make computing much easier.

He looks me straight in the eyes and says "I DON'T NEED TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WINDOWS BECAUSE THATS JUST FOR BOOK KEEPING"

I work on at the call center for a large insurance company. When a computer has a problem, I am the guy that says reboot, which fixes about 65% of the problems we encounter. But I just got off a call that left me speechless (not an easy thing to do).

Me: ******* Call center, this is Dave speaking.

User: can you guys back up files if I deleted one.

Me: sure, I just have to get information about where this file was. Can you tell me what server you had this file stored on so that I can spell out the path for the guys who will actually do this.

User: what do you mean.

Me: Left me break this down. Where did you save this file.

User: I don't remember.

Me: OK, what was the name of the folder.

User: no idea.

Me: what was the name of the file.

User: I don't remember.

Me: Can you give any info at all.

User: I don't remember much, you see... I deleted it last summer and now I need it.

UUUUUUGGGGGG!!!!

I work internet tech support for a large ISP and I am an integrated agent, which means that I take calls for both dial up and DSL support. This is how my last call went.

Me: Thank you for calling....

Okay, now is this a dial up account, or a DSL account?

EU: Well I just moved and I think it's Ethernet.

Me: Okay, so which DSL modem do you have?

EU: Ethernet.

Me: I'm sorry, but which modem did we send you for the DSL?

EU: What do you mean? I just moved.

Me: ....? Okay, sir, I just checked our records and we show you have a dial up account, do you have DSL with some one else?

EU: My new appartment complex provides free Ethernet and I want to use it.

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

EU: Hello??

Me: I'm here. Sir, Ethernet is a piece of equipment that you physically install in the computer. It is not an internet speed.

EU: But it makes it faster!

Me: No, it doesn't.

EU: Yes it does.

Me: No, I'm sorry, but it doesn't make it faster. DSL is a faster service, and the DSL modem does use the Ethernet, but without DSL service, with regular 56k service, you don't even use the ethernet card.

EU: But I plugged it into the wall!

Me: Sir, it is impossible to plug an Ethernet card into the phone jack in your wall.

EU: No, it's not, I did it.

Me: Sir, and Ethernet card uses a CAT5 cable with an RJ45 connector and a regular phone jack uses a regular phone cable which is an RJ11 connection. It is physically impossible to plug an Ethernet card into your phone jack.

EU: So I have to have DSL?

Me: Do you want DSL?

EU: Is it more expensive?

Me: Yes.

EU: But I already have Ethernet.

Me: *SIGH* Sir, we've been over this, Ethernet is a piece of equipment in your computer. Most computers now a days come with it. Do you want me to help you get connected with your dial up service?

EU: ............I'll call you back. *click*

The agents sitting around me were laughing so hard they couldn't take their own calls.

Just some background info for you. My first tech job was an internship for a certian major hotel chain in Chicago. We had about 250 computer users (that number doesn't include guests). At that time we didn't have any remote control software or anything like that so I was constantly running around the hotel. We didn't have cell phones at that time (this hotel was REALLY cheap), so we had voice pagers. If a customer needed a tech, they would call our pager number and tell us who they were and their extension. Mind you, these were VOICE pagers so when they went off everyone can hear the page, including guests, so it was stressed to everyone to maintain a professional attitude when paging someone.

I had one user that was always impatient, very picky and just downright mean. One day, I was standing in the elevator on my way to troubleshoot a guest's laptop. I'm in the elevator with both the President and VP of the hotel as well as about 5 guests. Beep, Beep, Beep goes my pager and everyone stands there in silence as they hear this voice message come through, "Call extension 5505 NOW, not in 5 or 10 minutes, RIGHT NOW!!!" I stood there stunned. It was that mean, impatient user I was just telling you about. After about 5-10 seconds of silence the President turned to me and asks, "Who was that?" I told him the user's name and he just nodded his head and both he and the VP left the elevator on the next stop. Lets just say, this once mean and impatient user was as sweet as sugar to me and the rest of the IS staff from then on....and all her pages ended in a please and thank-you. :-)

Recently a friend of mine found an old Apple II E computer in a garage sale for $20.00 bucks. He calls me over to his house and he has in hand a brand new copy of Windows XP and he would like me to help me install Windows XP into this dinosaur of a computer. I try to explain to him that this computer is not even an IBM compatable P.C. let alone this machine does not even read CD ROM's, it does not have a hard drive and etc, etc.

So my friend confidently replies to me "this cd can fit into the drive so therefore it MUST work, it has to work cause I just spent an arm and a leg on this CD"

I reinterated the fact that there is no way this is going to happen. So he says he will just have to find someone who really knows what he is doing to accomplish this.

As far as I know he is still waiting for this person who knows what he is doing.

Working as a internet tech support agent I have encountered each and every of the crazy stories personally, but one still stands out in my mind.

Attempting to review the information in a customers dialer I asked him to double click on 'my computer' ... he sharply responds, "And how am I supposed to click on your computer miss?"

Just another 'know it all' customer who really doesn't know it all.

))TECH: Welcome to Etch A Sketch Tech Support

))

))CALLER: I just left my Etch A Sketch for a moment to take

)). the roast out of the oven and to set the table for my husband

)). before he comes home from work and put the clothes from the washer

)). into the dryer and put the clothes from the dryer into the basket

)). after I folded them and took them upstairs and put them into the

)). right drawers and...

))

))TECH: AND SO WHAT PROBLEM ARE YOU HAVING WITH YOUR ETCH A SKETCH???

))

))CALLER: Oh.......I can't remember....oh,oh,oh....my sceen is mostly dark

)). beacuse the kids were playing with it and drew and drew and drew

and

)). they're only 5 and 3 years old and don't know yet that you can't

just

)). draw and draw and draw and....

))

))TECH: SO YOU SAY YOUR SCREEN IS DARK...

)). When was the last time you "shook it"?

))

))CALLER: Two weeks ago...we only hardly ever rarely use it so we just

leave it

)). on top of the table and we...

))

))TECH: SHAKE IT now, please.

))

))CALLER: ......What?

))

))TECH: Shake it.

))

))CALLER: What do you mean?

))

))TECH: S H A K E I T.

))

))CALLER: I don't understand what you want me to do...

)). (+++SCREAMING 3 year old KID IN BACKGROUND+++)

))(Louder now since she puts kid on her knee & now kid screaming into phone)

))

))TECH: PICK UP the ETCH A SKETCH and SHAKE IT NOW....please.

))

))CALLER: OK

))

))TECH: .........How does it look, now? Is that better?

))

))CALLER: Oh....you mean you want me to do that NOW???

))

))TECH: Um....yes, please.

))

))CALLER: Oh, I'm not at my Etch A Sketch right now...I'll have to

)). go downstairs...can you hold on a minute please?

))

))TECH: Sure.

))

))CALLER: J#@!*& C*&%$, shut-up I'm on the &$%#ing phone to the Etch A Sketch

)). (**SMACK**) (Even MORE Crying...from 5 year old kid, now)

)). to fix the thing you %$#@ed up on Mommy.

))

))CALLER: Ok...I'm here...now what was it I'm supposed to do?

))

))TECH: Pick it up and shake it.

))

))CALLER: You mean "right off the table"?

))

))TECH: Yes.

))

))CALLER: ok

))

))TECH: Did that work for us?

))

))CALLER: Nothing happend.

))

))TECH: How many times did you shake it?

))

))CALLER: Once.

))

))TECH: Give it TWO MORE HARD SHAKES.

))

))CALLER: "Double Shake" ??

))

))TECH: Yes...please "Double Shake" your Etch A Sketch.

))

))CALLER: Ok...just stay with me a minute whie I test it...ok?

))

))TECH: .....Sure.

))

))CALLER: Now my line won't move left to right!

))

))TECH: Are you using both knobs???

))

))CALLER: No. I'm supposed to use both???

))

))TECH: Yes - one moves it up and down - you found that one.

)). The other one makes it move left and right.

)). Try it.

))

))CALLER: Wow! - that's so cool. I thought the other knob was for show.

)). I was afraid to touch it.

))

))TECH: Have you read the owners manual???

))

))CALLER: No - I just opened the box and started drawing.

)). Who can understand those things anyway...

))

))TECH: You should be ok now, then. "Thank-you for choosing Etch A Sketch

))te....."

))

))CALLER: Now my back and forth stopped working completely!!!

))

))TECH: Where was it when it stopped?

))

))CALLER: Well, I made a line all the way across the screen, but it won't

)). make another one, no matter how much I turn it !!! Fix it!!!

))

))TECH: So you made a horizontal line all the way across the screen??

)). Well, you now need to move it "up" to make another line.

)). You keep going over and over the same line if you don't move it up.

))

))CALLER: Wow, why didn't the clerk tell me you had to know so much to use

)). this damn thing... All I wanna do is draw. Why won't it just draw??

))

))TECH: Well, the ONE PAGE owners manual has all the information you need.

)). Give it a look-see.

))

))CALLER: Nah - I got a friend - he's an etch-a-sketch genius who'll set it

)). all up on my table here so I can use it better. He knows even more

)). than YOU!!. I'll call him 'when he gets home from day-care.

))

))TECH: Ok..."Thank you for choosing Etch A Ske..."

))

))CALLER: ...My friend has an Etch a Sketch too and hers seems to

)). Draw Faster than mine and....

))

))TECH: Where does you friend live?

))

))CALLER: Right in the big city.

))

))TECH: And where do you live?

))

))CALLER: 40 miles past Nowhere.

))

))TECH: What does your friend draw?

))

))CALLER: Mostly pictures of her Dogs and Cats.

))

))TECH: And what do YOU draw?

))

))CALLER: Mostly pictures of my Horses and Cows.

))

))TECH: Well there's your problem. Country animals are a lot bigger

)). than city animals...therefor, country animals take longer

)). to draw than city animals.

))

))CALLER: Isn't there soething you can give me to make it faster?

))

))TECH: Sure...my advise to "Draw Smaller" and thank you

)). for choosing Etch A Sketch.[RLS]

))

I've been reading this site for years and never had anything interesting to add up until today.

I got an internship-type job at an office in NYC, besides me there is another tech working here. My last day here, before I go back to college, I'm sitting at my desk reading some Techtales when our mailserver crashes. After a while of working on it we decide to notify the users that the mail isn't working (in case they're sending something out and can't figure out why there is no replys). I go over to the front desk and ask the receptionist to announce that mail server is DOWN and that WE'RE WORKING ON IT. As I'm walking back to our server room I get stoped by one of the users. Now keep in mind that this is 40-50 seconds after the announcment was made. This is what he tells me, -"Hey, when you got a minute, could you help me out. My *E-MAIL* has been acting strangely." After of 10 seconds of staring at him, I decide to just explain that everyone's e-mail is acting strangely and that we're working on it.

I'm not sure if I should be sad for wasting a minute of my life or be happy that I got my first TechTale.

Keep up the good work Techies!