Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

My daughter has a friend who very recently got his driving licence and purchased his first car. He had some battery issues, so purchased a battery charger and removed the battery for charging, then reinstalled the battery. Everything was fine for a while, then one day the car would not even turn over. The symptoms seemed to indicate a poor electrical connection or low battery voltage. After several days without the car, my daughter told me her friend would be most appreciative if I would take a look. I gathered some tools and made the hour long drive to the friend's house. He popped the hood and I checked the battery leads, even tracing them to their contact points on the engine/body of the car. I also checked the battery connections for corrosion, but they looked clean. Noticing the battery clamp bolt seemed loose, I asked if he had tightened them. He said he had, but when I applied some pressure, the clamp moved. I tightened them both. He said he hoped that was not the entirety of the problem, and turned the key to prove it. The car started up immediately and when I glanced up his face was in his hand. Hoping to spare him some embarrassment over fixing the problem in such short order, on the way home I stopped off for an hour or so in order not to return home too soon.

Sold a computer to a "friend" from a social group. Went over to install it a couple of years ago and then again last year to move it (too heavy & too many confusing cables with printer, keyboard, monitor, mouse, Ethernet to router, etc.),

Got a phone call last week during an ice storm...it won't work. Won't even turn on...

Start putting together a repair pack to look at it later, after the ice storms are over and things are thawed enough to drive safely.

Got a phone call last night. Their daughter had been over to their hosue over the weekend & looked at it. Then had an idea once they got home. Called and asked them to check the surge protector to see if it was working.

The surge protector turned out to have burned out at least ONE socket(plugged in a lamp that wouldn't light while in that socket). So they swapped to another surge protector and the computer booted up just fine.

So all is well and their XP computer will work a little longer...I did suggest that they run Windows Update, as the last time it was run was last year, the last time I was over there...and the anti-virus...

At least it was a simple fix.