Tales From Technical Support Content
Spouse does not like "wasting" time taking computer to a desk with an external hard drive to make a back up.
Spouse does not want me "messing with" their computer - doing things like updating software, running anti virus and anti malware software, or backing up the files for them.
Spouse has the computer start giving lots of error messages - "Your copy of Microsoft is not activated due to not being a legal copy", various other codes show up suggesting "memory issues", and I get told to make a back up copy NOW!
Back up does not work. Running Repair and then trying to back up again gives a new error message - but the back up did not get everything. It didn't even get half of everything. Computer no longer boots.
It's my fault because I didn't do something earlier?
You mean I didn't do anything that you specifically requested that I *NOT* do?
Well, that worked out rather well for us - the recovery disk set is ordered (apparently one didn't get made or it got lost) and we'll see what NEW error codes show up and what they mean when I try to run a Repair.
In the meantime, he's using my spare...
I work at a software support help desk for Restaurant/Hospitality systems. Most of these restaurants use a nightly polling program from a 3rd party software company for sales reporting purposes. When the software fails to poll at a site, it sends an email to one of the site managers and they call us. This is one of those calls
m = me, sm = site manager, G = General manager
m - Hello, how can I help you today
sm - Our system hasn't polled for 3 days
m - Ok, I can help you, give me a moment to connect remotely with your system
(After a few unsuccessful tries)
m - Ma'am, I am having difficulty connecting, is your system on?
sm - I'm not sure, I'm not in the office, let me transfer you to the GM
m - alright????
GM - Why are you calling me?
m - Your site manager called to tell me you haven't polled for 3 days
GM - yes. and?
m- she wanted me to fix that
GM - did she tell you we are remodeling?
m - no
GM - well, we've been closed for 3 days with no power remodeling and not open for business.
m - oh ok. so with you being closed, that's why you didn't poll. So why did she(sm) call for support?
In the background I hear the conversation between the sm and the gm before they end the call
GM - why did you call support?
sm - I got the email saying we didn't poll and "IT'S MY JOB TO CALL THEM WHEN WE DONT POLL SO THEY CAN FIX IT!!!!!"
GM - Sigh, (facepalm)
GM - (to me) Sorry, our mistake, Goodbye!
So we finally went through the process of upgrading all the computers in our office to Windows 7 (a full year after Windows 8 was released) due to the latest update of our inventory software requiring it. Entirely too much song and dance later, everyone's hooked up and running fine... Until the users start using it.
Apparently, every single machine has several toolbars installed, some have 2 separate installations of Chrome somehow, and various other bits and pieces of bloatware. Norton and McAffe virus scanner "trials" run rampant. Bing is just... Everywhere. Dozens of helpdesk tickets are entered within an hour of the office opening.
Later that day I bump into one of the IT guys, and ask why all these things were installed that are pretty obviously all things that were "YOU'RE INSTALLING THIS SOFTWARE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO ALSO INSTALL THESE FOUR OTHER BITS OF UNRELATED SOFTWARE!?" options... Apparently, they "didn't have time" to just unclick the options while setting up the new systems, installed them all over the weekend, and just left.
Seems they didn't have a spare second or two to unclick some options, but they had hours and hours to go around to nearly every desk in the building to uninstall things. Best part? About a week later, after all of that was finally taken care of, they had to go around to everyone *again* and disable all the Adobe and other auto-updaters, since they all required admin privileges...
"Client" (okay, family member) lost a computer due to insisting that running updates to the operating system and antivirus scans BROKE the computer.
After a while, it quit working...
No back ups of personal files made and no recovery disks.
Computer quits booting before I can make a GOOD backup and the generic repair disk is NOT working.
New computer bought, because there is no real option (new hard drive in computer #1 and recovery disk set from manufacturer still gives only error messages - not a working computer).
So - out comes the data recovery programs and an external hard drive caddy.
It takes three hours, minimum, to run the recovery software, so I get nagged the entire time to "check if it found this ONE file yet" - which means I would be cancelling, checking the partial results, and (most likely) restarting the three hour scan.
This is going to be the fifth or sixth partial scan, looking for "just this one (or two) files that HAVE to be found".
I'm getting them an external back up drive for the holidays AND doing the first backup myself...then getting into the eggnog.
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