Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I have a friend who assists me frequently in repairs and maintenance of my motor cycles (I am a true beginner in these matters) and he is reasonably computer savvy. He called me one night, asking me if I could help him get his internet connection up and running. Sure thing, he helps and teaches me about engines a lot, so I was glad to do him a favour. I had one reservation though: at the time he called, I was working, so if he would have a little patience until I got home?

A full hour later he called me again.

"Don't bother coming over", he said with a sad voice.

"Why", I asked.

"I tried to fix the 'puter myself, and got angry.", he admitted, "So I kicked the box a couple of times."

My friend is 6'3", and weighs about 140 kg, so I expected the worst, when I got to his house later that night.

He managed to kick a hole (!) in the casing of the machine. Funny enough, no vital parts were touched, and I could get the machine up and running with little effort.

I distinctly requested him not to kick the tower again, because it could cause serious damage.

His response: "That's what I do to bikes as well, if them isn't runnin'".

Oh well...

At my former school, there were four computers connected to the internet for the students to use freely, supervised by a librarian (blonde) who thinks *anything and everything* that happens on the screen is wholly intended by the poor student at the keyboard. Including crashes and indecent popups.

I got in trouble once when she came over to look at my screen just when I got an illegal operation error in iexplore.exe. She thought I had broken the computer. Thank god (though I don't know why but) when I clicked ok IE did not shut down (normally when you get an illegal operation, the offending program shuts down when you click ok), so I could tell her I just hit the wrong key and it is all okay now.

I still count my blessings, since I've heard someone else had the computer bsod on him and ended up getting banned from the library for "sabotaging the computers". She knew he did it on purpose, because he had been pressing keys and moving the mouse when it bsoded.

It was around lunchtime,I was preparing to leave work, when the phone rang: (Tech: me, Office: secretary)

Tech:"Hello, this is Tech support. How may I help you?"

Office:"Hi, I'm calling from F334. I'm having a serious problem with my computer."

Tech:"Can you please describe it to me?"

Office:"Yes, I need to copy some files to my computer from a CD, but there seems to be no CD drive at the tower box."

I immediately thought there was no way for her computer not to have a cdrom drive, as we had recently checked all the pcs for possible hardware errors and mising parts.

Tech:"Can you look at the front of the tower? There have to be 3 buttons, one for the power, one for reset and one more smaller button, above the others."

Office:"Yes, I can see them."

Tech:"Press that small button. Does it do anything?"

Office:"Yes"

Tech:"So, that's your CD rom drive.."

Office:"Oh, really? I thought this was a stand for my coffee cup"...

Sometimes, it helps to be nice to the operators. Back when I was a mainframe computer operator, one system typically had a 2-3 DAY print backlog. One user bought the operators a pizza. After that, for some strange reason, her jobs started printing immediately instead of several days later. Can't figure out how that happened.

Bottom line: Be nice to the operators, for verily they control your fate!

I'm the "Help Desk" for the local Apple User group. One of our members rang me to complain that the printer I had installed for her about two years ago had stopped printing. I had recently (early 2004) upgraded her to Mac OS 8.1, so that she could run Explorer 5, and she was convinced that it was this upgrade that was the problem.

Unable to resolve her problem over the phone, I told her I'd come out and see her. I got there, and first up tested that the printer was connecting, meaning it was not a hardware problem. Everything worked fine, so I printed a test file. The printer started up, moved the paper into place, worked away busily for some time and finally produced a blank sheet of paper.

I admit that I sat there, staring at that printer for a minute or two, and then decided to open it up and check the ink cartridge. This was a HP printer, with one of those cartridges where you can clearly see how much ink is left in it. The cartridge wasn't just empty, it was bone dry obviously it had been empty for some time.

The owner was absolutely disgusted to find that, after only two years, her printer had run out of ink, and told me firmly that, had she known it, she would not have followed my suggestion to get this printer. Obviously, it's all HP's fault!

Part of my job is to take help desk calls. Unfortunately, our number is similar to a lot of other numbers. Imagine that our number is (800) GET-HELP. Well then...

(800) HEL-PGET is the number for FED-Ex Ground's support desk.

(888) GET-HELP used to be the number for AT&T's internal help desk. Thank God they've changed that (I think they lost it in a spin-off). At one point we were getting about 30% of our calls from people looking for AT&T.

(814) GET-HELP is the help desk for a hospital in the 814 area code. Unfortunately, they use the same mainframe and personnel apps that we do, so sometimes it take a while to figure out they shouldn't be talking to us.

And worst of all...

(314) GET-HELP is a help center in the St. Louis area. I don't mind rerouting the calls for food stamps and housing assistance, but I really hate hanging up on someone who is suicidal. "Sir, I would really like to help you, but I'm just a computer nerd. The number you want is ....; PLEASE tell me that you will call them now."

I've also heard from people looking for the DMV in Nova Scotia. How they wound up with a help desk in Los Angeles I have NO idea.

Part of my job is providing phone support for one particular application at our company. One weekend out of four I am on call to provide support evenings and over the weekend.

Today is one of those days.

It is Labor Day weekend, and things were going well. Two calls yesterday, only one today. But that was pretty bad. The account rep says the user can't send their order. Are they using our software? I don't see them as an account on the server. "I know what these people use." Call the customer. What he describes sounds nothing like our software. Call back the account rep. As I'm talking to him he tells me that his mainframe screen just locked up. Was I doing something in the "server?"

I don't have any responsibility for the mainframe. Thank God, because, yes, that was our mainframe abending. Well, mainframe support will handle it. Except that our servers have now lost connection to the mainframe. The Win2K ones are OK, they will find the mainframe again no problem. It's the OS/2 ones that have to be bounced in order to reconnect. (Yes, I said OS/2.)

No problem to bounce thirty-four servers. That is why God invented VPN's. Except mine suddenly won't work. So I dial into the RAS. Miracle of miracles, I get a 26K connection (I've had 8K) and I proceed to bounce servers. Meanwhile, I call our internal help desk to get some support for our VPN.

I tell the woman who answers the phone that I am from the (application) support desk, that I am on call, and that my VPN is not authenticating and I need to open a ticket. I hear her say to someone that I'm reporting a VPN problem, but that I probably mean that I can't send orders. When she comes back on the line, I inform her that I am not sending orders, that I am a tech unable to log into the network over the VPN. She tells me that the mainframe is down and that.... I inform her that my VPN was bad BEFORE the mainframe went down, and that I am well aware that the mainframe is down, but VPN has nothing to do with the mainframe. She is ARGUING with me, and I am getting more and more restrained in my attempt to not SCREAM at her. Finally I just tell her to open a ticket for the WAN guys.

(The WAN guy called about 30 minutes later and determined that it's an authenticating server sync error. We get those about once a month.)

What breaks my heart is that we right now provide all support, from level 0 (you've called the wrong help desk) to "You're right, ma'am. Let me talk to the programmers about that." But starting January, these morons are going to be doing our level 1 support. God help us all.

A little background, I do tech support an American ISP. And let me tell you get get some of the most clueless people around. Here is a shot sample of their intelligence. More tales to come. I have blanked out my name.

donna> i am trying to send them through an attachment

*****> What the not able to preview message means is that it can not show you what photo is being sent. But if you hit send they should still send like normal.

donna> i don't want the pictures to be a part of my e-mail

Doesn't want the pictures to be a part of her e-mail. How else is she suppose to e-mail pictures?

Me> Thank you for contacting ISP, my name is *. How can I help you today?

Me> Am I chatting with Paul?

Paul> Yes.

Paul> My username and password are suddenly not working. I used them just about 3 or 4 days ago last. What's up with that?

Me> I do apologize for any inconvenience or frustration that you may have experienced with your username and password. I would be happy to look into this situation immediately and to help you with this issue.

Paul> Username: ********

Paul> Great! Thanks!

Me> Is that your ISP username that is not working?

Paul> I don't know; either the username or password, not sure.

Me> Do you know what your ISP username is?

Paul> . Is that what you mean?

Me> I mean what do you use to sign into the ISP webmail, or homepage.

Paul> this is what i use when i log in to e-mail

Me> Ok, I am not showing that e-mail address in our database.

Me> What is your ISP e-mail address?

Paul> I'm sorry, I'm very embarrassed right now. I just realized that that is my password, and I've been using it as my username. Duh! my username is *************

Me> Ok, could you try using *********** as the username, and your password, and let me know if it works?

Paul> I think I'll just go crawl back into bed now.

Paul> Yes, I'll do that. Just a minute

Me> Sure, no problem.

Paul> It works just fine. Thanks for your patience.

I blanked out the e-mail and password for obvious reasons

Kinda funny he thought his password was his username.

I work for a ISP in the states and I do chats, one day I get a chat and the customer has forgotten her password. In order for us to reset a password we need to verify security. There are 3 things they can give us, account number, last 4 digits of their social security number, or the last ammount paid. This is how it ended.

JENNIFER> great

JENNIFER> ok

JENNIFER> well hold on then I have to grab a bill

Me> Sure, no problem.

Me> Are you still there?

JENNIFER> :-) lol

JENNIFER> found my password on the bill

WINBenG> Ok.

So I get a guy who can not view a one webpage, and wants me to fix it, this is how it went.

Colin> i get the "page cannot be displayed" error when trying to view a certain site...all other sites work fine for me...also i tryed the site on a different computer in my hous and does not work either...i know site is working becuase my friend was able to access it

Me> Ok, what is the website?

Colin> www.wifelovers.com

At this point it time, I posted the site to my co-worker with the message "I don't think i'm going to check that site out"

Turns out there was a problem with the server, major packet loss when it was pinged. Told the customer to try back again in the morning.

I was once called out on a tech support issue at a local college. It seems one of the cd drives has failed and the disk is stuck in it. I get there and look at the drive. Someone had managed to shove a cd into a 5.25" drive. We then solved this problem for the future brainchildren of America. We took a label machine and labeled every 5.25" drive with the following : NOT A COMPACT DISK DRIVE

two weeks later I had to go back and remove another cd, when I asked the girl why she had stuck it in that drive and showed her the new label she replied: but that is now a compact disk that is a cd.

Remind me why I went to college or how these people got in?

Damashkin

My former university had two main libraries which were, unsurprisingly, always busy and understaffed. In order to cut down on queue time, both had machines that allowed you to check out your own books - these machines worked by scanning a bar code on the first page of the book and then printing out a ticket with a return date. The older of the two libraries, being rather famous and heavily subscribed, had a particularly flashy machine with a computer screen which gave step-by-step instructions accompanied by animations.

On this occasion I was standing in line to check out a pile of six extremely heavy books. The only person in front of me was a mature student (a woman who looked about fifty and had grey hair) who was repeatedly putting her book on the scanner, taking it off, putting it on... By this stage I was convinced my arms were getting longer so I put the pile down on the table and asked her if she needed any help.

"Yes - do you know how to work this? I can't get it to work."

She looked up at the screen, which was demonstrating the scanning process by showing an animation of a book going on to the scanner, bar code aloft. She then plonked her book down onto the machine again.

"Well, that SHOULD work," she said irritably.

I nearly fell over backwards. The animation was clear enough - you had to have the bar code visible for it to scan - but the book on the screen had no front cover hanging down - it was just flat. The woman was putting her book on the scanner CLOSED, thereby hiding the bar code.

After explaining this, she went away happy.

Anyone who starts a life of technical support will attest to how our working lives wiggles it way into our every conscious thought - particularly if we haven't always done technical support.

When I started doing technical support for a major US broadband provider, some of the people in our class had effectively no technical background; Cheryl, we'll call her, was one of them.

Nearing the end of our training, she tells our instructor, Bob, whose Jeep was always breaking down, about a dream that she'd had the night before.

The following is a transcript of that dream:

Cheryl: Thank you for calling the Jeep Help Desk. My name is Cheryl, how may I help you?

Bob: My Jeep is smoking.

Cheryl: Ok, I can help you with that.

Bob: Yeah, it's caught on fire and it's melting into a puddle.

Cheryl: Would you say that you're having a meltdown?

Bob: That's it.

Cheryl: Ok, I'll get you to go ahead and go to the front of the vehicle and tell me what the lights are doing.

Bob: They're not on. Any my Jeep is completely melted.

Cheryl: Sir, were you delivering any packages at the time that your Jeep broke down?

Bob: Why, yes, I was!

Cheryl : Well sir, I am afraid that you are experiencing some packet loss.

-=-=-

More to come, I am sure.

Just a one liner

How many T's in winipcfg. the record customer had 3.

I do second and third level support for most of the UK (that is what it seems like).

This call made me almost shout at the user to "STOP, AND STEP BACK FROM THE SERVER!".

The technician had just put the CD for Micro$oft Exchange Server 2003 in the drive of a Exchnage 5.5 server and was just going to perform an updrade and wanted talking through the process. No planning, just going to do an updrade / install off the bat.

I finally persuaded the tech to stop, and go away and plan the install, before they went any further.

For the uninformed, the training course for this is five days long, and part of it is the planning stage of this process which can take a few DAYS for even the smallest of companies and involves several steps that the untrained should not go near.

I'm the webmaster for college in Georgia. After receiving an email from someone on campus wanting to use website space for storage of documents, PowerPoint presentations and several other things for the faculty at the college, I emailed her back and expressed my concern for space on the web server and explained that the files she was referring to were very large files and would take up a lot of disk space on the server. Her reply was as follows:

"I don't think we need a lot of space. The photocopies currently fit in 2 short drawers with room to spare."

"But they told me this printer came with a satellite account!"

(of course. See that little dish antenna on your printer?)

"I put a disk in and my Ferrari disappeared!"

(autorun played and the program covered his desktop)

"My computer has no computer anymore!"

(some clown had dragged My Computer partially under the taskbar)

This story is from the other side of the help desk. I am the caller.

I do on-site installations for my company which develops software for PDAs to be used in schools. I work in one of the smaller offices located in Dallas, Tx (the location is important for later in the story): We have about 10 people here with the main office in NY. As such, I also serve as local tech support.

Being a company that produces software for Palms, the company provides them to most of the employees for obvious reasons. The director brought hers to me complaining that it wouldn't sync. I test it out and sure enough it doesn't work. So now I have to call support to get an RMA number (return merchandise approval) and an address to send the broken equipment to. After navigating the phone system, I finally get connected to a woman with extremely broken english in an Indian accent. (I can also actually here Indian music in the background, as if they have the radio on, so I know that I have been connected to the other side of the world. Great!) I have left out the "Could you repeat that" and "What was that, again" that I had to keep asking because I could not understand her. My thoughts are in ()

Palm: Can I help you?

Me: Yes, I have a Palm that is not syncing. I have already tested it and just need an RMA number and address to send it to. It is still within its manufacturer warrenty.

P: Can I have your name please?

M: ...Um... OK. (Thinking maybe she needs for records or something. I give her all my contact info.)

P: Now what can I help you with?

M: (What!) My palm is not syncing. I would like to return it for repair.

P: OK, I would be glad to help you with that. What kind of message do you get when you try to sync?

M: (Stay calm, she doesn't understand that you actuallly know what you're talking about) I see nothing on the computer and the palm eventually times out saying it cannot connect to the computer.

P: Make sure that the palm is resting firmly in the cradle and is connected to the computer.

M: (Deep breath) I have done that. I have already tested this palm on 3 different cradles connected to 2 different machines. I have tested against 2 other palms of the same model and the others work fine. It's only this one that doesn't work.

P: (getting a little snippy) Sir, if you would only work with me, I would be happy to assist you. Would you try to hotsync again?

M: (Not very happy but deciding to humor her for a while; a very short while) OK

*push button, wait, times out*

M: Same thing.

P: OK, we are going to check the settings on the palm.

M: I have already checked the connection settings on the palm and the computer. I have checked that the usernames match and I have check that all the conduits are set to synchronize. It still doesn't work.

P: (continues as if she didn't hear me) At the hotsync screen, do you see where it says Local and Modem...

M: (getting impatient) I have already checked the settings and they are fine. Look, I'm a tech. I work with about a thousand of these things every month (no joke, i set up about 700 in 4 days once). I don't need more trouble shooting tips. What I need is an RMA number and an address. Can you get that for me, please?

P: I'm sorry sir, but I can't issue that until we have exhausted all possibilities.

M: (incredibily frustrated, but realizing there is not much I can do at this point) Fine!

I then spend about another 40 min. finding myself in a Dilbert cartoon, where I am sitting on the phone twiddling my thumbs, answering her questions in whatever way will get me to my goal fastest. She tells me to check everything that I have already told her I checked. Finally she relents and sends me to a second tier support line. Unfortunately, 2nd tier support sounds like he sits in the next cube over. I can still (faintly) hear the music in the background.

2nd tier support: Hello Mr. sdb. I understand you are having problems syncing.

Me: Yes, I just need an RMA number and address so I can return for warrenty repair.

2: OK, we are going to walk thru some steps that will try to solve this problem. Download the latest version of Palm Desktop(tm) by following these steps...

M: (interuppting him, rather rudely I might add) I have the latest version already, I don't need to download it again! And that wouldn't have anything to do with the issue I'm having anyway!

2: Sir, if you would just follow the steps with me...

M: (completely frustrated at this point) Can you give me an RMA number!?

2: No sir, I can't. Not without...

M: Then transfer me to someone who can!

2: Sir, I can transfer you to my supervisor, but....

M: Then do it!

*click*

*static*

*about a minute and a half of silence*

*click*

An english-as-a-native-language person picks up the phone.

Him: I understand you want to have your palm repaired?

Me: (a little more civil, but no less frustrated. speaking thru gritted teeth) Yes. All I need is an RMA number and an address. Can you give that to me?

H: Sure, if you can hold for a few seconds I'll get that number for you.

How easy was that! He got my info and emailed me what I needed. I know that not everyone that says they are techs and call into support can be trusted, but, My God people, if the person calling has already run through your troubleshooting tips, give him the benefit of the doubt.

Oh and the address they gave me to return to: Waco, TX. About a 3 hour drive from Dallas. Made me so mad!

I do tech support for a major IP, nuff said. Last friday I was instructing a user to go to www.cnn.com to test his connection. Imagine... He asked me:

"How do you spell CNN?"

Once my teacher at computer lessons told me a story.He was helping a military base installing software on their computers.And he was teaching an intellignet major how to do some simple things.He wrote a help which guided the major how to install a program which was on three floppy discs.And the majo called him saying the software doesn't work.My teacher asked him that's impossible and how did he installed the program.Than mr intelligence said I put in the first floppyd disc and isnatlled it next it asked for the second floppy and i put it after that it asked for the thirth floppy and when i tried to put it in it just didn't go in.When my teacher heard that he was amazed.He went to check the problem and saw the brilliance of the military man.All three discs were in the floppy drive at the same time.But my teacher said - the major was right I didn't wrote in the help file remove the first floppy and then place the second :).

This happened some years ago.

The manager of the marketing department of the company I was working for at the time got a new laptop, a Compaq LTE Elite 486/50, state of the art back then. It was supplied with the most advanced docking station including a built in network card. I set up the computer in his office on a Friday and verified that everything was working.

Monday comes, and he's on the phone screaming that he can't connect to the network. So I go to his office. His department's self-appointed computer expert meets me on the way and starts telling me all his theories on what I've done wrong. We enter the office, I shut down the computer that's sitting by itself on the desk running from its battery, insert it into the docking station, power it up, and (surprise, surprise...) everything works.

This happened last year when I helped my friend set up his internet connection. He wanted a p2p program, so we downloaded K***a Lite (third party hacked version of K***a without the spyware). But when we ran the installer, the license agreement started off with 'INSTALLATION OF THIS PROGRAM IS ILLEGAL AND IN VIOLATION OF THE K***A TOS (...)'...

He said he didn't want any illegal stuff on his computer, so he canceled the installation and dled the original K***a instead.

Let this be a lesson, boys and girls. Only use *legal* software to download pirated music, or you're breaking the law.

Not a computer tech story, but a DVD story.

My mother, who isn't too bright when it comes to anything electronic, asked for a DVD player for her birthday. Ok, no problem. I buy the DVD player, hook it up, and show her how to work it. About a week later, when she finally gets around to using it, she watched her movie, and then came to me and said "How do you rewind it?"

I almost wet myself!

I work in a retirement home that's just gotten it's first set of computers outside of the Admin office, and since I'm interessted in computers, I get asked for help alot.

One time one of the elderly physiotherapists asked me for help.

They had just gotten their computer hooked up to the net but she couldn't get to the site she wanted.

Since I was buzy at the time, I asked her if she got the "Server wasn't found" message. She simply replied that after entering the adress NOTHING had happened. No error message, nothing. The computer simply wasn't responding.

So we went to the office, and she showed me how she typed in the adress. Nothing happened.

I typed in the adress myself thinking she had misstyped and the site came up. I went back and told her to type in the adress again. No response from the computer.

Very puzzled I asked her to type in a very simple adress, Again, nothing. I told her to do it again, and this time I WATCHED her type.

I almost kicked myself when I realized that all this time she'd never pressed Enter after the adress. Of course the computer wasn't responding!

I barely could stop my friend and co-worker who was a little bit drunk (Birthday party) and tried to fix a corrupted linux filesystem of an IMPORTANT coroprate server.

He was happily typing mkfs instead of fschk when I grabbed his hand.

I was in the tech support biz for approximately 3 years and it can be just as stressful on the tech's as it is for the customers. My longest tech support job was for a certain cable monopoly (I won't mention any names but they cover Pennsilvania, New Jersy, and a lage percentage of the eastern seaboard. They also bought out customers from another large company last year..). Anyways I'm up in Northern Ontario, and quite frankly, we were the best. We would get calls transferred to us from other call centers after they were working on a problem for half an hour and it would come down to powercycling the modem, or we would see that there was a router down somewhere. Anyways, this certain monopoly decided that they would streamline the troublshooting, so what they did was they took "20 of the best techs" from a certain centre in Florida (where we got the majority of those calls from), and use their "troubleshooting techniques". Then what they did was they locked down our ticketting system so that we could ONLY use those questions. They also locked it down so that we couldn't do any documentation. They did this because they wanted to "standardize" the troubleshooting. Now this centre that I used to work at that used to be the best, has a similar success rate to the centre in florida.

Thank you Large unnamed cable monopoly!

:-)

(I ended up leaving shortly before this got implemented. I know how it works and why it was done, because I was "trained" on the new system before leaving...)

I am not a techie, but I am well versed in the ways of I.T.

Anyway, onto my story.

One day, in Drama (I am an Avondale College Student [NZ])

the dude in charge of the script (Shall remain nameless) forgot to print it out. However, he did bring a saved version of the script so we asked the teacher to print it out. He agreed and here is where the humor begins:

1. The teacher returns to his desk and proceeds to put the floppy in. Just before he does, he FLIPS THE DISK OVER. It works this way better!

NOTE: The umm... tall bit (it can be called many names, but the less literate may become confused) was sideways, so it is understandable.

Fault: The Teacher

2. After putting in the floppy, the teacher realises that the computer needs to be ON in order to read the floppy.

He ejects the floppy, turns on the computer, then, once XP has loaded, re-inserts the CD.

Fault: The Teacher

3. Once the floppy has been read, the teacher opens up the disk (not literally, he isn't THAT stupid... yet) and tries to open up the file. That 'What do you want to open it up with?' window opens up. As I am standing in the doorway facing the computer at the time, I ask the script guy what he used to type it out.

His answer: AbilityWrite

Me: ABILITYWRITE?!? What the hell is that? Why don't you just use Word?

His Answer: I don't have Word.

WHO THE BLOODY HELL, OTHER THAN HIM, HASN'T GOT WORD?

Fault: Us for trusting him with the script. Him mostly, though.

I do believe that AbilityWrite was the best word processing program ever at some stage. Then, Acorns were common place.

Working in a UK secondary school where not all the kids appear to have all the lights on, we've always had a bit of a problem with them forgetting their user passwords to log onto computers in the IT suites.

Then one day, while we were all moaning about it, my junior tech hits upon a solution in a kind of tongue-in-cheek suggestion: make them harder each time they forget them.

For want of something better to try, we gave it a go. Actually it was probably more of a BOFH moment than anything else.

But in a backwards sort of way it works pretty well. They start off with something simple like "password" initially, then move up the scale right the way to "rhinoceros", "chrysanthemum" or "manoeuvre" and so on into wierd and wonderful combinations of latin and biology.

After a few harsh lessons were learned by the students (and some staff!) early on, they got the message.

Requests for new passwords are down and literacy is up in school too, strangely.

I used to work as a web programmer, and I was also in charge of fielding technical support email. One of the sites we created is an internet portal where the first time you go there, it asks "Would you like to make www.xxx.com your home page?"

One day, I got an email from a very frustrated person:

"I need help. I am stuck in your website and I can't get out! How do I get back to my MSN?"

My day job supporting UNIX systems in libraries usually provides my TechTales contributions, but my students help out from time to time...

My intro to PCs class was assembling basic systems last night -- just a board, floppy, hard drive with a power supply. Many of them have never touched hardware before and need some handholding, but they have just finished disassembling/reassembling 4 PC's each, so they should have a clue as to what goes where. This lady goes beyond inexperienced all the way to brain dead. She calls me over because her system won't power up. I notice several errors and suggest she check her cabling and memory. Half an hour later, she managed to get the IDE cables corrected (floppy cable still reversed) and get the stick of RAM moved to the first slot. Still no power. Again, I look at the system and tell her I still see two critical errors. After staring at it for another half hour, she decides she has a bad power supply and gets a new one. Same result, and when she calls me over, I tell her there's still one critical connection missing. (She's managed to notice and correct the floppy cable by now.) She goes and gets a *third* power supply, hooks it up, same results. Again I come over, and again I tell her she's missing one critical connection. She's quite frustrated by this point and insists everything is correct. SO I ask her to go over all the connections from the power supply, one by one... she follows connectors to the floppy, the hard drive, and the mother board. Yep, they're all good. I ask her to keep looking, and she says there are no more connections. Finally I give up, turn the power supply on its side, and ask her what should go in the big empty hole there... she still doesn't get it, so I reach in back of the PC she assembled the night before, pull the power cord, and hand it to her, and suggest that she try plugging it in. Yep, three power supplies, none connected to a power cord.

I work for a large software company in their European Tech Support dept. Lets just say, its the company responsible for the PDF file format ;)

One day we get this e-mail from an obviosuly cheesed off customer. His exact words were:

"I have loaded your 6.0 onto my computer twice- two different machines- and it has demolished my software.

I took an online class and we all had problems with this software.

Who can I contact to put you folks out of business.

Windows Word is a perfectly applicable software.

You folks are a a poor clone and a bad software option to MS Word.

There is absolutely no reason for your software to exist or your company to function.

Customer X"

6.0 what I wonder? Oh well, one idiot born every minute

Simpleton: "Hey IT3, this is (name protected), I'm having trouble downloading to my D drive. My A drive is too small for it"

Me: D drive is your CD drive (name protected)

Simpleton: "oh, well it tells me there I can't download it, can you fix it for me?"

Me: you have to download it to your hard drive, put a blank CD in your CD burner, and then use software to copy your data to CD.

Simpleton: "ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh thanks IT3"

*click*

Just been on the phone with a man who wanted to know why his hard copy of a document (from last year) didn't correspond with the copy on our web page (which has AMENDED SEPT 2004 on it).

Oh God.

I work in a small IT department for a rent-to-own company, but my story is about family members. My brother-in-law set up a system for his in-laws and they are real works of art. Every now and then, they'll get some new piece of equipment for their computer and have my brother-in-law come over and hook it up for them. One time, they bought a web cam and had it hooked up. They like to take pictures of themselves while they are playing solitaire. Well, my brother-in-law went over there for something and noticed the camera was facing the wall.

"Why is the camera facing the wall?" he asked, as if he really wanted to know.

His father-in-law says, "We heard that people can hack into your computer and watch you while you are at home."

My brother-in-law was speechless for a few moments. The reason why: "But, you aren't hooked up to the Internet," he said.

However, it still didn't sink in. On another occasion, my brother-in-law was visiting their house and he asked to use the phone. They said okay, but first they turned off the computer.

"Why did you do that?" my brother-in-law asked.

"We don't want to get one of those computer viruses," replied forementioned father-in-law.

This time my brother-in-law was even more precise. "But, you don't even have a modem for your computer to hook into the phone line."

But, I guess we all get stupid with computers. I live in Mississippi, so just the other week, we were getting everything at work ready for Hurricane Ivan. We had moved as much computer equipment and important paperwork and such as we could to the tops of desks. In the server room, we have a couple of safes that store some important stuff, like tape back ups. After getting everything taken care of, we were making one final walkthrough. I walked into the server room and saw a big black box on the floor. I called the head of the IT department over.

"What about that safe?" I asked.

He gave me the weirdest look. "That's a battery backup," he said.

Caller: My Hard Drive isn't working any more

me: are you receiving an error

Caller: I sure am, and everytime I restart, it shows again.

me: What does the error say

Caller: I dunno, something about Invalid and system disk, we need to fix this fast, I have reports to finish.

me: can you see the screen now?

Caller: no, I turned it off again

me: could you start it up again?

I heard the monitor beep as though he must've thought that was how you reboot. I hoped not, or this would be a long day.

Caller: that damn message is there again.

me: which button did you press?

Caller: the one on the monitor.

me: uh...ok, what does the screen say?

Caller: Invalid System Disk. Replace the disk and the press any key. Does that mean I have to buy another hard drive?

me: no, please eject your floppy disk.

Caller: now what?

me: now press any key

Caller: I dont have an "NE" key.

me: uh..right, it's just a nickname for the space bar.

caller: hey it's working fine now, thanks

This guys is lucky I already had my first cup of coffee in the morning.

I used to work developer support for a very large software company in Puget Sound, in the networking area. A customer called with a problem. He had a special piece of instrumentation that had a hard-wired IP address something like 192.168.1.120. He had a standard hub plugged into his DSL modem, and a computer connected to the same hub. When he compiled and ran the sample code that came with the device, his computer connected fine. If he unplugged his DSL modem, the program couldn't find his device. I asked if he was using synamic IP addressing or static, and he rsponded: "Well, I'm using dynamic with the DSL modem, but I change to a static IP address on my computer when I unplug the hub from the modem."

Darn--there went my simple solution. My next question was: "What IP address and mask are you using on the computer?"

He answered: "1.2.3.4 and 255.255.255.0." Anybody who's ever configured an IP network has already jumped to the punchline. I told him: "OK. What you've done is put your device and your computer on completely different subnets; you computer has no idea how to reach the IP address of your device."

His response was "What's a subnet?"

I explained, and he responded with "I don't think that's it. If I don't change the IP address of the computer but plug back into the modem, it works fine." I responded that that's because his ISP's router was probably intelligent enough to route the packets for him. I asked him to change the IP address of his computer to 192.168.1.1 and see if the program worked when it wasn't plugged into the modem. It did. I pointed him to several RFC's that explained subnets, routing, etc. He thanked me for my help, and wanted to know if he could get his incident refunded because this was "obviously a bug in Windows." I explained that that's how the Internet Protocol is supposed to work, and that, no; I would not refund his incident. I still wonder if he's out there somewhere trying to figure it out.