Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I am a level 1 service tech for a major electronics retailer, one day while twiddling my thumbs at the tech bench, watching DFT's advanced test creep toward done, this really irate customer practically runs up to the tech bench. She just started yelling that for some reason her computer won't turn on. I plug it in, and sure enough it won't turn on. She says that she thinks it has a bug. I ask if she has a service plan, she says yes, so yay, great, we'll fix it. I quote her an estimated finish date, and she goes home happy. Her computer sits on the counter for a while, later on, myself and the other tech on duty decided that we were tired of looking at the thing, and we are going to fix it now, and get it out of the shop. We start taking off the side panel to check the power supply, and what do you know, she really did have a bug! As soon as we had the panel off, three cockroaches crawled out onto the counter! We looked inside the case to see chopped up insect parts all over the thing. No wonder the thing wouldn't turn on, the roaches were nesting inside the power supply!

I'm a lvl 1 service tech at a electronics retail store, and one day at the tech bench, a custoner walks over. Apparently he was referred to the tech bench by the computer sales department. I asked him to describe his problem, and he said that he had already told computers the problem, and they said for him to tell me that it was an "I D ten T" error, and that I would know what it meant. Write it out, and read it, it spells idiot.

Not really a computer story, it involves a DVD player. I am a lvl 1 service tech for a major electronics retailer, so I see lots of great, well meaning people, who qualify as walking PEBKAC errors (Problem Exhists Between Keyboard and Chair). One day, a woman walks in with a DVD player, and insists that the unit is defective! She just dosn't care about getting a working unit back, she just wants her dvds out of the machine. That right there should have tipped me off, but it was early, and I hadn't consumed any caffeine yet that day. Notice she said DVD's! Plural! I turn the thing on, and sure enough, it won't play, the disk tray won't even open. I removed the casing to get at the drive itself, and as I peer down into the innards of the dvd player, I see three disks in the drive! That woman finished watching one movie, put another in WITHOUT removing the first disk, and when that didn't play, put a THIRD disk in on top of the other two! And she wondered why it didn't work....

I love how people will try anything to save a dollar. I work for a major electronics retailer as a level 1 service technician. In addition to fixing, upgrading, and troubleshooting computers, it is our job to check returns to make sure there is no foul play going on. One day, one of our customer service reps came over to the tech bench with a sound card. She took a look at the card and thought something was up, the s/n on the card's sticker matched the one on the outside of the box, but the CS rep still thought that something was wrong. She asked me to check the card. I took a look, then I asked her to show me the box. Sure enough, the box says "$ound Blaster 4udigy 2 Gamer Edition." The chipset on the card identified the card as a "$ound Blaster Live." The customer had purchased the card, taken the free games and the card, put his old sound card in the box with the new card's serial number sticker, and expected us to give him his money back! When we obviously refused, he claimed that it had come from the factory that way. When I told him that we could not return his product, and that he would have to go to the manufacturer for assistance, he threatened to have his lawyer rip me limb from limb.

One day at my normal, fairly boring tech bench, in a mostly buisy electronics retail store, a customer walked up to the service counter. He said that his computer was broke, and he wanted us to fix it. The part that caught my attention was when he asked if I would give him his 700 dollar sound card back to him because he didn't trust us not to break it. (if you don't trust us, why the heck are you paying us to fix your computer?) I asked him where he had gotten his sound card, he replied that he had gotten it from a friend who works in the recording buisness. When I took that card out of the computer, I looked at it....it was a cheezy $ound Blaster Live card.....barely worth 15 bucks off the shelf. If he really paid 700 for that thing, he got RIPPED!

I run an IT conmsulting business, and most people understand what IT consultants do. I did however run across a case where someone really didn't "get it"

The company ws one of those I am contracted to provide basic internet technical support (making sure their internet access works, in other words), but I also have the right to try and do advanced IT support and network management for the clients to whom my contractee supplies internet (as well as developing my own client base)

tis company is a fast growing television production company, and I managed to convince them that i should be doing their IT work. I designed and installed their network, serviced their computers, etc. And with continual success.

The associate producer, however, is a fussy and prissy woman (witch but replace "b" for the "w")who rose real fast from receptionist to marketing exec to associate producer

in the space of five months.

She kept treating me in the wierdest way. Demanding that I come in and do the work at her specific time only, even when the actual owner of the company told me something else(ie, he'd say come in at nine, but she'd leave me cooling my heels for long periods of time --sometimes as much aa three or four hours) before whe'd let me work on the computers, especially hers.

Also she'd demand specific completion times for rmy work, and when I'd patiently explain to her that I can only estimate, she demended in as forceful a voice as she could muster that she **needed** to know when I'd be finished.

She also frequently became mad at me when I'd tell them I'd come come in at 9 or 10 o'clock, since **they** started at 7:30 am, she kept asking me why I cou;dn't come in at that tiem. I'd explain to her that I often service rsidential customers, and I needed to be available for evenings, so I had to be awake enough to be able to work up til midnight; but she'd only snort at me dismissively. She even told me that she thoguht it was 'irresponsible" of me to not start when they did (my business is open 9 am to 12 am --yes, i work long hours; theirs goes 7:30 to 5 o'clock).

On the first comp I set up for her she insited I had set up the LAN "wrong" because she could not read her files on the server. I kept telling her to look in "my documents", which was mapped to the server, but she INSISTED that she look in "shared documents". go figure. It took four service calls (none of whcih were billable as she kep insisting it was my fault she kept looking in the "wrong" directory) before she relented and started using "my documents" as per my instructions.

She also refused to do any sort of data management but kept calling me in to do simple things like move files for her, or even print documents hse cou;dn't find. All non-billable as it fell within my warranty periods of previous work. grooooaaaannn.

Well, they bought a laptop, of a manufactire not of my choosing (HP/Compaq presario), which (a) didn't have the right type of dvd drive for the dvd's they were looking at (b) had a modem that didn't work right, and (c) a NIC I had to reinstall the drivers for twice. can we say "lemon"?

In trying to get the DVD drive to do the impossible, ie read dvd's for which the firmware had no support, I called HP support (big mistake) and they told me to install a script for winxp which would allow the dvd+r drive in the laptop to read dvd-r's (which it didn't, but it DID render the DVD utterly unusable)

Every single time I got onto hp chat support she nagged me to get the hell off, since she NEEDED her laptop. When I tried to explain taht she could use any of the other computers (since it was networked) she said no she had to have HER laptop.

Once the fit hit the shan, so to speak, I explained to her and the owner that the computer was a lemon, that HP support had been the cause of the DVD failure, and they should return the comp to Staples (after all, why buy wholesale from me when you can spend more and purchase retail?) Heturned to me and said those imortal words "you're fired".

When I tried to offer free warranty hours, big discounts, etc. to win the customer back,, I got the cold shoulder for two weeks, Couldn't figure out what ws going on, sicne usually, in the rare cases I had to offer such things, I won the custoemr back. Believe it or not THE NEXT DAY AFTER I WAS 'FIRED'they had had a new guy in there doing their network stuff!

Also, Lisa, the associate producer ws VERY FROSTY to me every tiem I encountered her. And she avoided my as though I had the plague.

I took me a while, but I finally figured it out. She didn't understand what a consultant was, so she thought I was a part time EMPLOYEE OF THEIR COMPANY!!!!

That's why I was snipped at by her, talked down to, treated as a subordinate to Lisa, and "spoken to" (though I couldn't ahve known it) about my "poor performance" as an employee!

I apparenty failed as an employee, so she lined up a new tech guy, and persuaded her boss that on my first big mistake, he should fire me.

Jsut like that seinfeld episode, I ws fired from a job I never had!

OK, I work tech support for an unnamed web hosting company that just so happens to have 24/7 support(Free for customers at that)I was working my standard shift on a Sunday afternoon when a lady calls in about her website being hacked. The conversation went a little like this:

Me: Thank you for calling support how may I help you.

Lady: My website has been hacked again.

Me: How do you know your site has been hacked ma'am?

Lady: Well I cannot get to my site today and I know they have hacked me again.

Me: (I tried to get to her site and I could fine) Ma'am the site seems to be fine from our end.

Lady: No! No! No! I have been dealing with this for over 6 months now. I know I have a hacker stalking me. (She continues) Yesterday I updated my page and when I went to my site none of the changes I made were there.

Me: Have you tried emptying your temp...

Lady: No your not listening to me. I run a very important site about Gov't issues and this hacker is trying to shut me down. (She runs a site about Gov't conspiracies none of which are very intelligent ones.) This hacker has now hacked my computer directly over 6 times breaking my firewall forcing me to buy a new one each time and everytime I buy a new one he hacks it within 5 minutes of me installing it. I just installed my new one and now I cant get to any websites at all.

Me: Well ma'am have you configured the firewall properly?

Lady: I KNOW MY FIREWALLS!!! I just told you I have been through 6 of them... Were you not listening?

Me: I mean have you opened ports like 80, 8080 and 8088?

Lady: Ports?

Me: Yes, the sole purpose of a firewall is to block, open and maintain certain ports as necessary for security.(At this point the lady is very angry because I dont believe her. Every single person near me, being a Sunday and slow, is rolling on the floor laughing. I am doing everything in my power not to laugh.)

Lady: Well I don't think you know what your talking about. I have never heard of ports and I have been working with firewalls for some time.

Me: Well Ma'am your going to need to contact the firewall manufacturer because we do not support the configuration of them. I can help you clear your temp files so you can see the updated site but you have to shut your firewall off. She refused because it would let the hacker in. I explained then there is nothing I will be able to help you with. I read the pages of her site to her showing that it was updated and alive. I told her after she contacts the firewall manufacturer to get it configured to call us back and we will help her.

This woman had half my call center almost in tears. That was a Sunday I will never forget. I don't think they get much better than that.

This isn't strictly IT, but its good anyway.

My psychology teacher one day brought in a TV and VCR (Old School) so we could watch a movie. But, he had trouble. The TV and VCR were plugged in when he got it, so he just plugged them both into the wall. Still didn't work.

I volunteered to solve it.

Both worked fine and had power, but there was no image or sound. I knew it was a problem with the TV/VCR connection so I traced the wires from the front of the TV.

Round and round and round and round and... into the TV?!?

Some twat had plugged the TV into the TV, possibly for transportation purposes. If so, what about the winding?

I plugged the TV into the VCR and it worked!

Installing routers on new T1 lines can have it challenges. But when you are given completely wrong information and someone refuses to accept its wrong, you have to wonder if these people come from the same gene pool as yourself.

Working the install, via the phone, of a new router we got to the point of plugging in the router to the T1 line. The line had been extended (or so we were told) from the basement. So I informed the tech to run down to the basement to plug in the other end of the extension to the demarc ( telco endpoint ) of the T1. He came back and said he could not find it. I was verbally informed it had been installed so I requested he look again. Now there is only one telco closet on the basement so we could not have gotten the wrong closet. He again said he could not find it. I insisted it had to be there. I called the project manager to confirm again there could be no error in the install. She said not possible, she was firm it was installed. I should have asked for documentation but I was in a rush and did not.

After 6 hours and 5 people searching the closet, the tech who installed the extended demarc arrived. What luck, now he can how everyone where it was. Turns out he returned to complete the work we were all told had been completed. He never install the jack at the other end.

Now the project manager and her boss want a meeting to review our processes to prevent this from happening again. Where is that Darwin Award when you need it.

Why do the D*ll tech support think that noise from my cup fan will go away if I uppgrade my bios?

Does this bios upgrade shutdown the fan for good?

Well, I'll give it a try...

It's just like last time I called Hewlett P. My brand new inkjet printer was dead.

So they asked my to clean the wheels for the paper first...

Which I did... but nooooo, it didn't help the printer..

I normally work 2nd shift at an Internet Helpdesk, but occasionally I work 3rd for overtime when someone can't make it in. 3rd shift is usually fairly quiet, but this evening was a little more interesting than others.

I received a call from a woman who couldn't connect with her dial-up connection. I had a hard time understanding her. At first it seemed like she just couldn't read, but then a drunken slur became more and more evident. When I determined that her network components were corrupt, I led her to the network configuration on her 98 machine and had her try to tell me what was in there. After stuttering through the first few components, "Clint for Micro's Soft Networks," and "Dial-up Applicator," she read out, "Vir-vir- Virtuous [long pause] Primate Netweaving Advocator? What the f*ck is that?" I replied, "That, ma'am is a Virtual Private Networking ADAPTER." I didn't even attempt to explain to her what it was for.

I'm not a tech person, but I help my family out now and then because I'm the most computer-literate person of all of them.

My boyfriend just called me because he wanted to know how to copy some songs from an audio-cd to his MP3-player. Just copying them from the cd doesn't work, so I told him to copy them to his windows media player, then go into "my music" and copy them from there unto his mp3-drive.

Him: Do I have to put my cd into the computer?

Me: (silence)

Him: I'm stupid.

Me: I love you honey :D

I've been on both sides.

(L)User, and support.

When I tell a Cable provider DOCSIS is not establishing on the ATM layer and the providers S1 tech support says "What is your OS", don't I have a right to get irritated?

When I get to S2 and get "Yes you're right, whats your EMail?" Shouldn't my bloodpressure go up a touch more.

When I get to S3 and get "We'll send a cable tech out to replace your cable", shouldn't I just start laying waste to everyone?

I did. Switched to DSL. Three outages in 12 months on DSL (2-3 minutes each) vs 12 in a month on cable (average of 1 hour each).

Gd0c

Caller: Hi, I can't connect to the internet!

Me: OK, is you modem turned on ?

Caller: How do I know this ?

Me: Are there any lights on the front?

Caller: No, we've got a power cut!

Customer: Hi I have a laptop with a wireless network card and I cant get it to connect to the internet.

Me: Have ou got a Wireless router sir?

Customer: umm... Whats a wireless router.

Me: Its the device that will let you acces the internet using the wireless card.

Customer: Where do I connect the wireless router then?

Me: What internet service have you got?

Customer: What do you mean?

Me: Who is your ISP?

Customer: I dont have an ISP.

Me: hmm.. How were you planning to connect to the internet sir?

Customer: Well using the wireless card of course.

Me: Sir Internet is not a free service. You need to open an account with an ISP.

Does that mean I cant use the wireless internet when im travelling?

Me: :-(

OK, this was so amazing I have to share it with you guys- happened to Me and my collegue Mike yesterday. We went to one of the local uni's on a support contract after complaints of some 'funny errors' on one of the routers.

Now 3 months ago they'd had a pipe burst and soaked the thing, but their old admin guy had had it looked at and tested and said it was working fine so we didn't need to replace it. And indeed until now it'd been fine.

We ran the standard tests, came up with some very strange memory issues, powered it down and opened it up to swap out the memory as a test. Inside was a maze of threadlike fungus, turning it into the most technologically advanced bonsai garden in the world.

What's more, when we disposed of it, by dropping it in at their botanical section on floor D on our way out as a joke, the guy there went nuts over it as it's a certain type that supposedly is almost impossible to grow this far north. Evidentally the Cisco watsit created the perfect conditions for it!

Twas fun, yesterday...

Thee End User was seting up his DSL for the first time, and was asking why he can't speak on the fone when he is on the net. That he hears what all dial up ISP have, yet he says he has DSL. He was complaining and complaining. He only had two phone and one satilite. So I have asked him this real simple question. "Did you install the filters that were provided in the kit" And the man goes "I am not going to install any %@#$@# @# @#$@#% @#$@#%@# filter. What you think I am stupid. I am not going to @(*&@#$@ filter it. How else would I connect to de net. "Sir..." and explain the setup of how to use the DSL filters, and he keeps on going using anologies to back his so called knowledge. Then I mention to him this "Sir, put white tape around each filter and write noise blocker on it" expecting him to get all pist off. And guess what, he actually did it. Then I instructed him how to install (DSL filter) noise blocker on each phone. Then I ask him to test it out and he was quite proud of his side, he went, "I told you so." Then I ask if there was anything I could do for him. "He went on about using a router, and I informed him that 3rd party equiptment will not be supported. He got pist at that too and used other anologies. I then told the guy my anology, if you own a chevy and went to ford to have the engine replaced, would you complain to chevey for not supporting it or for the warrenty to void on all equiptment or parts because you wanted a better engine." This made him quite, for about a minute when he gets back. "I don't know how to do this stuff, I just want help and your going to help." I continued "Sir, like I said before since we did not make this router, I can not help you." He scream and rant about how I am suppose to help him. "Until I made this next anology to simple for him, yet he still did not get it. "If you bought the Sony playstation and it broke in one week, do you call Nintendo." The man goes "yes, everybody knows that Sony and Nintendo are brothers."

Gee, what a nimrod. Give me a break. So my next thing I did was something he did understood, yet I got fired for it.

"Sir, if your causin bob came to your house and got your wife pregunant, does he pay for the child, or do you." The man goes, "I am sorry, I am very stupid and your right and hung up the phone." Yes that was a little mean, yet I did get him to understand the concept of 3rd party equiptment. Like if you own a I Mac, and want to use a IBM CPU, does MAC help you. Anyway MAC sucks or MAC -- > Must Aquire Catalog

Disco Subscriber Line

This guy needed to join us in the 21st century

Direct Satellite Link

This one argued with me when I told him that DSL had nothing to do with Satellite

there are a few others but I cannot for the life of me remember them...oh well....must have blocked out those painful memories

I'm working for an important canadian cable company offering internet by cable modem. One day I had a call from a angry customer saying "I always have problems with you guys and your cable service. I have a message on my monitor telling me "cable not connected" ans when I move my mouse, nothing happens".. "Sir, could you look if your monitor is hooked on your pc tower?" I heird him swear for few seconds then he hang up on me.. lol ;-)

Me:

Hello, I've just used your restore disc to re-install my system, but it does not have any drivers on it.

Support desk:

That's no problem Sir, just download them from our website.

Me:

And how will I do that.

Support desk:

Just connect to the internet and go to outr site, www.theirsite.com.

Me:

I think I need to talk to your Supervisor.

This tale of stupidity is brought to you by something that I did.

A Certificate of Deposit of mine had matured at a large national bank (think of people inquiring about the contents of your wallet). Before I could call the bank up and properly close the account, I needed to have the account number (I was about a hundred miles from the forms which contained my account number). So I went to the bank's Web site and plugged in my username (let's call it "QWERTY") and password...and got an error message saying that my username or password were invalid. I tried again, same error message. I typed "QWERTY" in again and clicked on the "Forget Password?" link, and I get another error message. I assumed they were having computer problems at their end, but then I remembered that I changed my password when I logged in a few days earlier. But I made sure I was using my new password to log in, so I tried to use my old password. Nothing.

A scary thought then occurred to me: was the "Change Password" page a fake? Did I inadvertently give somebody my bank password? Did somebody log into my account and change my password, so I couldn't get back in? Did this person clean out all my savings there?

I called the bank's tech support and told them I could not log into my bank account. I told him my username was "QWERTY" the username , and he said he couldn't find it...but then he said there is an account in my name, and it was called "ASDFGH".

I realized what happened: I was using the wrong username! "ASDFGH" was my account name for this bank, "QWERTY" is my username for my local bank!

I apologized, hung up and tried again. Sure enough, I was able to log in using "ASDFGH". I called my bank (got a different person, whew!) and was able to close out my account.

I actually have my username and password written down; if I had looked at that beforehand, you would not be reading this.

The phone rings and I answer it, a lady tells me that her son has sent her a small cdrom with photos on it, he has also put in a not telling her that it is a cd so do not put it in the floppy disk drive.

The problem is that she has got the cd stuck in the floppy drive, and what should she do. I tell her to stand it up on its front and gentley shake the computer and maybe she will be able to reach the cd with a pair of tweezers. She must turn off the computer first though.

After telling her this she once again tels me how her son sent the cd rom and the not saying not to put it in the floppy drive. her next staement was "You must really thibk I am stupid?"

I managed to not answer the question or laugh ou loud

OK, so I'm not a tech or even a Computer Person, but this was still funny:

An otherwise intelligent friend of mine was complaining that he'd have to get a new computer, as he couldn't run MS Word on his current one. Imagining he had an ancient Commodore or something like that, I asked how old the computer was and what was the OS. It was several years old, Windows 95...but you see all he had was WordPerfect, so it was "incompatible" with MS Office.

...Luckily, having picked up a trojan, he's staying off the Internet and really has no intentions to get it fixed, so he'll never see this...

this is from the other side of the table i was calling for tech support:

Anyways my dsl package arrives from major phone company (james earl jones is the spokesperson) and the software cd doesnt really like my computer (software was unable to initialize) so i call in to tech support. I basicly know what im doing just really needed the user name and password but anyways he insists on walking me through the complete setup, first we cant get it to connect to the modem (forgot to reenable my local area connection had broadband previously but using dial up the past few weeks) okay that was really my fault but eventually we get it all squared away and then the real problems begin. for some reason the user id and password he gives me dont work, so he keeps changing, and changing the password and i keep typing it in (being very careful to type it correctly mind you) and then all of a sudden...

TECH> uh the 1 in your user id try changing that to an l

ME> wonderful Im connected (thinking about how nice it would be to reach thru the phone and strangle him right now weve been at this password thing for nearly 20 minutes now!)

TECH> sorry about that it looked like a 1 have a nice evening

ME> thats okay bye bye (AFTER HANGING UP) Jack A**

I had this roomate/friend (Jim)years ago who constantly bragged (his number one skill) about how he was a computer genius. In fact he bragged to have an IQ of 140. Of course no evidence to support this.

First off I was always teaching him computer tricks. Some of which any REAL computer genius would know.

My favorite was his story of how he patched some game so that he would get a real high score. He always told this story over and over.

Well one day I installed a game and decided to edit the high score file so I would have an insanely huge high score. Not only did he fall for it but actually got excited at "how good I was" at this game. He was actually impressed.

Hmmmm... Perhaps there was a misplaced decimal in his IQ? 14.0 was more like it.

AL

It was just your average night on the phones, sorta. I got a call for a user to change her email address, normal enough. What I was not expecting, though, was a life story. Not only did I find out why she needed the change, but was exposed to some very serious family problems. I was trying to move past the subject, but she would not let it pass with not much conversation about it. I guess the fine print of this job description includes "Personal Counselor".

I end up doing tech support for my friends and family and usually it is pretty basic. "My printer won't work.", "How do I install this program.", etc. Sometimes it involves something bad. This is one of those "bad" calls.

I got a call a while back from my friend Tim. Apparently, his computer was acting strange. He had DSL and the ISP was kind enough to provide him with "protection" software (Firewall and Antivirus). I start walking him through various tests and while we're waiting for a test to finish, I ask him the usual questions. "When did this start happening?", "Did you receive any weird emails?", "Did you download anything?" He answered no to all but the last question. It turned out that his wife was taking full advantage of their high-speed access to download a bunch of freebie games. It was after she started doing that that the computer went on the fritz. DING! It was at this point that I realized that I had a possible virus/spyware (in my mind they are the same thing...bad news) issue. I instruct him to check his computer for viruses and download a spyware scanner . I can't remember the total number of bad files, but it was somewhere in the 70 or more range. He also had a couple viruses floating around. It took awhile, but he finally got his computer clean and running smoothly. I had him install a different virus scanner and firewall (I didn't trust the one that he had gotten from his ISP and the ones I had him install were the same ones I use on my computer...that and they are free...legitimately). Well, a few months went by and I didn't hear anything. Tim happened to be at my brother's house one day and when I was talking with my brother, I asked him how Tim was.

"Pretty Good...his computer doesn't work."

"What?!"

"Apparently, his wife thought all those programs you had him install were affecting the computer's performance, so she uninstalled them."

Wow, it's just amazing. I guess that's why I didn't get a call. He didn't want to admit that his spouse blew up the computer...again...

While working at a Computer repair shop, I received a call from a customer who was having some problems with a program he had recently purchased. During our conversation, I instructed him to "right-click" on a particular object, to which he quickly replied "Which button is that?"

A training company was trying to get me to buy into some MS training courses for Exchange 2003 and SMS 2003 so I agreed to let them email me some course outlines and pricing.

A couple of days go by and nothing arrives, and when the sales rep rings up to see what I thought of the pricing, I tell him I haven't seen anything.

So he sends them again - and when I speak to him next is rather surprised to find that I haven't received any email from him. I know our mail is fine as everyone else has no problems - just this guy.

So anyway, he decides to fax the stuff to me. I give him my fax number and wait with baited breath.

The fax rings and after a moment out pops a single lonely-looking sheet.

The sales rep had printed off his original email to me from Outlook, which showed the attachments as pretty little word icons, and faxed it through rather than print and fax the attachments seperately.

What got me, and everyone else in the department was the tiny scribble on the header that said - "Hope you get it this time - what do you think of the attachments?"

But the best thing of all, was that he did it again with two seperate attachments he forgot to email me the first time!!!!!

Somehow I don't think we'll be using this company for our MS training.

So in my early tech days, before I escaped from the end-users (I now only work on Enterprise-level Linux servers), I was asked to look into a user's machine that stopped working.

The user's box wouldn't power on at all. The Power Supply Unit wouldn't do anything - the PSU fan wouldn't even spin, and no power got to the motherboard. I busted out my multimeter, and sure enough, no power at all.

To get the part replaced, I had to call support for the manufactorer. They had me troubleshoot darn near everything on the box, which upset me since it was obviously the PSU.

So finally, a good hour and a half later, the manufactorer's tech decided the motherboard was bad. I couldn't convince him otherwise, but finally he agreed to next-day ship me a new PSU. He insisted on sending me a replacement mobo as well.

In the meantime, I replaced the user's machine with my own machine, (swapping hard drives) to ensure she could work. The next day, the new mobo and PSU arrived. I replaced both.

The PSU worked fine, but the box still wouldn't even POST the BIOS. I put the old mobo back in, and the box powered up just fine. So not only was the manufactorer's tech wrong about the mobo being bad, but they sent me a bad replacement mobo!

I waited until the user was at lunch, and went down to swap our machines and hard drives back out. Her machine just finished booting back up as she returned from lunch.

She asks me, "So is my computer fixed now?" Of course I reply that it was indeed fixed.

Instead of receiving a "thank you" for handling this very quickly and even giving up my own machine for a day, she actually has the nerve to say with a sneer...

"Good, now don't let this happen again!"

Don't let this happen again?!? Don't let this happen again?!?!?!?!

I am so happy I don't deal directly with end-users anymore.

My co worker just got done taking his Win98se hard drive and moved it to a new pc. The network card on this one was the same as the last case. Why does 98 have to reinstall the network card again and again ? Why could it not detect the card and plug an play ?(It was a plug an play card) Instead it detected it and refused to enable it. So we removed it and rebooted and it detects it and asks for the driver. We install the driver and it goes to the desktop..and the network card does not work. We go into the network properties and it has 2 network adapters and 2 tcp/ips. We remove those reboot it installs the proper adapter and stuff. We then have to setup the IP and netmask an gateway. Another reboot later, everything is on the net.

Now we have to enable file sharing.....Reboot!

I just hate the fact that networking tries to recopy the network files on every little change. Every little change means another reboot of the pc.

ARRGG!

I bought a new Compaq computer, but it went back to

Costco (they will accept computers back for up to 6 months!) I had the computer for a month and had installed all the programs I wanted on it by then. The Compaq Tech Support had me do a "non-destruct recovery" repair for a ONE TIME problem. (The phone modem would never dial out, to register the computer, but it had dialed out to register other programs. One idiot Tech AND his supervisor, both East Indians, living in India, insisted I had to have a Dial-up Internet Service Provider just to dial out! I have Cable Internet! The phone modem was properly hooked up to the phone line, and had registered other programs by phone.

Then after the "non-destruct recovery" repair is all done, and Windows is starting to load in, The computer is asking for this special file. It will NOT continue loading at all with out it.

The Compaq needed a special file to patch between the MS SP1 Update and the Compaq Operating System. It took 30 DAYS of hassling on the phone with their DUMB-DUMB tech support idiots. "You must be downloading SP1 from the Windows Update website." I tell them, "I already have SP1, I need a patch between SP1 and the COMPAQ operating system!" They tell me, "If you are not doing what we are telling you to do, there is nothing we can do to help you"

After I finally get directed to the website (on another computer of course, the Compaq has been a "large paper weight" for a month.) that will get me the patch, I turns out after I try to install it, that this is the WRONG PATCH!

Back on the phone AGAIN! That is when find out no patch is available.

So now the only option I was given was to do a Totally-Destructive-Recovery (back to the "fresh out-of-the-box state". Which means: No Other Programs. All those programs I had JUST installed would be GONE!

So I finally told Compaq that with out this file, I would not do a T-D-R with out them having this file available, because if I ever needed to do a Recovery AGAIN it would be once again: "T-D-R - fresh out-of-the-box". Then you have all the hassles of reloading all of those other programs. AGAIN! I told the Tech Supervisor that they would have to send me another, BETTER computer, one with the patch available. They would not go for that, at all, and insisted my ONLY option was to do the T-D-R.

So I told the Tech Supervisor, "Can you say, 'Dude, Your Getting a Dell!!'?"

Im 15 and do part-time PC repair, I have come upon many a wrecked PC but these 2 take the cake.

#1

I got a call one evening in the summer, seems a friends cousin has been having some trouble with his Windows 98 machine and could I go look at it. I agree to a price of $50 as when shit person gets near a PC baaad things happen. I arrived at his farmhouse a little after 7pm, only to smell a strong scent of gunpowder. I walked inside to a spraypainted lime-green PC with two gaping holes in both the tower and monitor. Beside them lay a 12 gauge side-by-side shotgun. I stood there for a second, jaw on the floor. I gathered myself enough to ask him what had the thing done to warrant being shot. He responded;"I was playing DOOM95 and it froze, I threatened to beat it up if it didnt unfreeze, it didnt so I got the gun, said it again, still nothing so I shot it."

I said there was nothing I could do and to take the machine outback and set it free.

#2

I arrived home to a message on my familys answering machine, a neighbor had had some problems with her new Compaq PC and opted to call me instead of tech support. So down the road I went. (Her husband is from England and is a huge football [soccer] fan and really gets into the games with the kickng and such) I walked knocked and was usherd in to the machine. I bent down to take a look at it. Right side was fine, but when I turned it to the left there was a giant hole in the case, clear though to the MoBo. I inquired as to what had happened. She repiled; "David was watching another footy game and wearing his big workboots, he kicked the machine and got his foot stuck, he then tore apart the thing to remove the boot." I looked inside the hole with a light, sure enoough, the hard drive and all the cabling was gone. Seems David thought it was "useless junk" and tossed it in the trash bin. I told them they would be best off calling Compaq and telling them and I left.

THose 2 are the worst/best calls Ive ever been on.

I was working for EarthLink.net as a systems engineer within the Enterprise Services department. One group, dedicated to create webpages called web spin-weavers, called me to find out what was the problem with a web server that was too slow. This was a RedHat 7.3 web server running Apache, and users where complaining since their installation of slow response. The web-spinners group had already spent countless hours attempting to figure out what the problem was, from their desks, changing configurations to the Apache server, even chaning the ethernet adapter card, etc., Their manager, a respectable IT professional, was upset, having daily meetings at 9:00AM with them, over the phone, and with other IT groups, attempting to troubleshoot this issue. They had even changed the patch cable, but none could find out the problem. They were so immersed into it, that the trees did not allow them to see the forest.

When I was summoned to help, I went to the server room, and noticed multiple servers. I did not want to repeat the many "tests" they have done before, I only verified the patch cable, and pinged the IP address from another server. I notice a level of latency, even though it was the same subnet. I checked the IP, and kind of looked familiar. When I checked the IP's of the servers there, this group had made the mistake of choosing an IP already assigned to another Apache server. They did not configure this server to "complain" if the IP was already taken by another server... A change on the IP resolved the situation.

I was helping some friends out with their first computer, and I got a call from her 9 year old son a couple weeks after it was set up. "The CD drive is broken". So I went over with my tools and an old spare drive that worked. I pry open their CD drive and there are 3 CDs in it. So I open the case and there's another couple of CDs INSIDE the computer. They must have shoved the drawer in so hard with so many CDs that some actually slid out the back of the player. No wonder it was broken!