Post your favorite Help Desk story here.

Enjoy these:

From the middle age.
(Sorry, the language is Norwegian, but it should be understandable for non-Norwegians)
(Might not work with Quick Time)


From the Star Wars.


And, of course, Foamy's tech supports:

Tech-Support

Tech-Support II

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"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

Post your favorite Help Desk story here.

A couple experiences from my life as a FE and/or help desk person:

An emergency page at 02:00 from a customer stating "There's a snake in our disk drive, what should we do???" This was 200 miles away so I handed it off to our onsite guy, and sure enough, a large bull snake had bedded down for the night in the lower cabinet of an old CDC Phoenix drive. Fred (Ain't she a beaut, mate?!), the onsite guy, was able to pull the snake out unharmed and release it in a nearby creek bed. (Snake charming was part of the old Honeywell training courses I think)

An onsite call where a secretary was complaining that when using MS-Word on one of the new computer we recently sold the company was randomly adding spaces as she typed, where no spaces should be. Onsite, I typed 'the quick brown fox" and the lyrics to as many Beatles songs as I could remember until my fingers hurt, all without a single unwanted space. I had the secretary come back to her desk and go about her normal work to see if something she was doing might be behind the ghost spaces. As she sat down, and pulled the keyboard drawer out and close to her, I began to see the problem. She was a rather large lady, with certain attributes not unlike Dolly Parton.
During her typing, as she moved a bit, those attributes came in contact with the space bar adding one or more spaces. Now I'm not necessarily a bashful sort of guy, but I'm sure I was blushing as I explained the apparent cause. A slight adjustment to the keyboard drawer cured the problem...well, at least the problem of extraneous spaces stopped.

An emergency call from a local Air Force Base about a 'mission critical' printer that had 'just gone dead' Again, in the wee hours of the morning I gathered up as many spare parts as I had and headed to the base. At 3 or 4 in the morning, I'm not nearly as handsome as I am during normal hours, so it took a little extra time at the gate to be verified and confirmed that I was one of the 'good guys'. At the location was a very dead Printronics line printer. Behind it was a large 55 gallon cardboard drum that was used as a trash can. Moving it so I could get into the guts of the printer, I noted the power cable was unplugged from the wall. Just for fun, I plugged the cord in and hit the power switch. BRRRRRRRRRR.... the printer sprung to life amidst the surprised faces of 4 or 5 airmen that were in the room. Apparently one of them had taken the trash can out to empty into the dumpster. Upon returning he gave the container a shove and let it slide into place, hitting the cord and unplugging it in the process. Lots of laughing and finger pointing at that point. As I left I saluted smartly and told them I'd sleep a lot easier knowing they were on duty. (Fortunately this wasn't one of those "Use of Deadly Force is Authorized" areas)

When I was stationed in Germany a friend was called in the middle of the night to drive 4 miles north in a jeep during the winter. It seems a field radio van was dead. The operators insisted they knew what was wrong,but the 2nd. Lt. on the scene demanded that Battalon Maintenence be called.

My friend entered the van and 15 minutes later left the van. It was once again communicating.

When the Lt. asked my friend what was wrong my friend in his normal sarcastic voice stated very loudly and smartly. The O. N. slash O. F. F. switch was in the O. F. F. position SIR!!!!

Got in his jeep and fumed all the way back home...

Glad it was him that got called as I would have told the Lt. to fix it his own damn self!!!!

You mean you could've fixed that in less than 15 minutes?

You mean you could've fixed that in less than 15 minutes?

No it took 15 minutes for the filament voltage to warm up the tubes and make sure it was working.. and for my friend to cool down enough to NOT assault a superior officer..

The actual fix took all of 15 seconds..

The O. N. / O. F. F. button reminds me of a similar call at an Army field station (for civilians, a 'field station' is like a 'fort' but there's no one within a hundred miles who speaks English except the soldiers at the field station).

A call came in to us that a "scope would lose power in Official Mode." Sure enough, this particular oscilloscope was dead when the tech arrived. He reset the scope and asked the lieutenant to re-create the problem. The scope was in a whole rack full of equipment controlled by a maddeningly complex rat's nest of cords on a patch panel, so there was no telling what the operators had meant by "Official Mode."

The lieutenant pushed the button on the scope labeled "OFF" and the scope dutifully lost power again.

The tech had the presence of mind to (1) not strike the officer and (2) explain the function of the OFF button out of earshot of the lieutenant's crew.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

To Scarecrow

For a collegue of mine it was a mainframe terminal that printed gibberish on the screen each time the user picked up her phone. She reckoned that the phone system must have been interfering with the mainframe comms. Not having the guts to tell that her generous anatomy was sweeping across the keyboard when she reached for the reciever the collegue implied some transient crosstalk error ( see BOFH excuse generator )and moved the phone to a " safer location ".
Problem solved.

This is from when I worked the helldesk for a 4500+ users company.
I've had a user call me asking if we could recover a failed floppy of hers. I said we would try but she'd need to send us the floppy so we could work on it and she refused on ground of her not wanting us to see her files. She was saving all of her work on floppies because she didnt trust the networked storage. I explained to her that floppies were unreliable, slow, didnt have the capacity required to her her work and so on, she wouldnt have it. I advised her to put her stuff on her fileshare ( yo we have SANs and robotized tape libraries for your enjoyement here ) so it would at least be backed up to tape, didnt trust that either. These were HER files and no one was going to have access to HER work. I clamly explained to her that documents produced on company time, on company equipement, for company business, while she was being payed by the company, were actually owned by the company...not her. She didnt agree and then stated that she wished to end the conversation, asked me to " forget about the whole thing " and nevermind the failed floppy and she hung up.

I'm a swell guy so I called her back ( yay caller-id and logs ) to try and reason with her, no-go. I then called the nice people from security/internal conformity >:D.

Floppies rule, man !

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mambo

• Customer: "The computer boots up without any warning beeps, but nothing shows up on the screen."
  
• Tech Support: "Is the monitor connected."
  
• Customer: "Yes, but there is no display."
  
• Tech Support: "Did you install the drivers for the VGA card?"
  
• Customer: "How can I install them before I'm in DOS?"
  
• Tech Support: "You have to install the drivers first before you can get a display."
  
• Customer: "You don't need VGA drivers to boot to DOS like you do for Windows. I should be able to boot to DOS."
  
• Tech Support: "Well, insert the floppy you received with your card. Go to the A:\\Utilities directory. Type 'readme.com'."
  
• Customer: "I cannot see anything. How do you expect me to read a file on the screen?"
  
• Tech Support: "Read the file, and it will explain everything."
  

In the end it turned out the monitor was broken.

• Tech Support: "Ok, so your monitor is not working, the screen is blank, and no matter what you do it stays blank? Do you see that button on the bottom right hand side of the screen? Press it. . . . Great, talk to you next time!"
  

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Life on earth is the global equivalent of not storing things in the fridge.

From the days when 3.5" drives were new technology.

Our manual stated "remove the floppy from the jacket and insert into the drive." Would you believe that several people removed the 3.5" platter from the shell?

"My printer is not working."
"Is it plugged in?"
"Of course it is."
"Would you please check?"
Click.

One that I read one time:

The technician was called out because the terminals were printing gibberish.
The technician arrives, pulls the terminals away from the wall, inspects all of the connections, runs all of the tests, finds no problems, pushes the terminals back against the wall and leaves.

Next day, the technician is called to the same place for the same problem.
He pulls the terminals away from the wall, inspects all of the connections, runs all of the tests, finds no problems, pushes the terminals back against the wall and leaves.

This continues for a couple more cycles until a senior technician is called out to try and figure out what is wrong.

The senior technician just sits and watches to see what happens. He notices that when the elevator runs the terminals spit out junk. He then asks for a plan for the building and discovers that the power main for the elevator is separated from the data cables of the terminals by only the thickness of the sheetrock...

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BOINC WIKI

The senior technician just sits and watches to see what happens. He notices that when the elevator runs the terminals spit out junk. He then asks for a plan for the building and discovers that the power main for the elevator is separated from the data cables of the terminals by only the thickness of the sheetrock...

I did have one call for a guy at a home office who said his computer would go nuts for a second and freeze whenever his phone rang. Turned out he had a long coil of printer cable behind his computer that became an induction coil. I figured that he "cheated" by cutting off the third prong of a plug to get it in a two-prong outlet, but he wanted to be up and running as soon as possible. I had him uncoil the printer cable, hung up and called back. Computer still running. All fixed.

Of course, in the five or so years since then, he's probably burned down his house by cutting corners on some other electrical setup.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

Post your favorite Help Desk story here.

I have a friend that used to work for the for a Government as a high level computer tech. He was working on a network that was not communicating and had been working on it all night. The symptom was that a message typed in one location was not transmitted to another location. My friend and his co-worker started putting things in the messages just so each message would be different and after a VERY long evening and night and early next morning my friend type "terminate with extreme prejudice so and so". The "so and so" was the name of an actual co-worker. Wouldn't you know it, the network worked! AND as it turned out the Head of a VERY powerfull agency was reading all the messages that went over this network on a daily basis. YES he read EVERY message. My friend was called onto the carpet of a man that at one time decided he was "in charge" of the Country! It WAS NOT a pleasant meeting and my friend NEVER did anything like that again! Yes my friend kept his job, some people are just too valuable no matter what they do. I have not included the names for OBVIOUS reasons.

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a few years ago, while I was still working as onsite helldesk for a client, I got a call one morning.

"yeah, eh, hi, errrr, this is <xxxx>, my monitor says ehhhh 'no signal', err help?"
"did you switch on the PC?" (speaker on) (evil smile)
"errr, yes, errr, I think so"
"ok, could you check if the cable between the monitor and the PC is connected?"
"errr, sure, let me check"
...
"yes, all the cables are in"
"ok, on the PC, can you see the powerlight burning?"
"errrrrrrr"
"front of the PC, top-righthand corner, just beneath the powerbutton"
"oh, ok, let me check"
....
....
"err, uhm, ehhhh, I can't see it"
"eh?"
"errrr, uhm, ehhhh, I uhhh have uhhhh a confession to make uhhhh"
....
"ehhhh, there is uhhhhh no computer on my uhhh desk, just uhhhh a monitor"
"one sec"
....
"errrr, a collegue just told me you guys picked it up for maintenance yesterday"
"ow ok, so that was your computer, ok, I'll have it ready for you this afternoon"
>> click <<

we were in stitches for about 10 minutes.

One of the staff in my office complained that the keyboard wasn't working. Sure enough, when I took a look it was as dead as a dodo (yeh, it WAS plugged in). I connected a new one and stood back, with the old unit hanging by one end from my hand, to make sure the replacement was working OK. I felt something wet on my leg, and looked down to see about a pint of cola running out of the old keyboard, down my leg and onto the floor. The look on the staff-members face was priceless. I advised her to remove the drain-plugs from the bottom of the new keyboard one per week to keep everything working tickety-boo.

Another user phoned in to say that couldn't access their files:

ME: "OK, are you logged-on to the network?"
THEM: "I'm not sure. How do I tell?"
ME: (silent sigh) "Tell me what it says at the top of your screen."
THEM: (pause) "Viewsonic"
ME: "OK, lets start at the beginning..."

This turned into quite a long call...

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...for dark is the suede that mows like a harvest.

One of the staff in my office complained that the keyboard wasn't working. Sure enough, when I took a look it was as dead as a dodo (yeh, it WAS plugged in). I connected a new one and stood back, with the old unit hanging by one end from my hand, to make sure the replacement was working OK. I felt something wet on my leg, and looked down to see about a pint of cola running out of the old keyboard, down my leg and onto the floor. The look on the staff-members face was priceless. I advised her to remove the drain-plugs from the bottom of the new keyboard one per week to keep everything working tickety-boo.

Actual problem description from an Air Force field technician (I was working for the civilian contractor in charge of supporting the system):

SPILLED A LARGE BURGER KING DIET COKE INTO KEYBOARD. END.

Oh well, I'm glad they cleared that up. You know, if had been a McDonald's soda or a Wendy's soda, I would have approached the problem in a completely different manner.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

• Tech Support: "Have you made backups of your software and data?"
  
• Customer: "I didn't know it had a reverse."
  

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Life on earth is the global equivalent of not storing things in the fridge.

the elevator is separated from the data cables of the terminals by only the thickness of the sheetrock...

I ran into the same thing, only it was a very large Xerox machine just on the other side of the wall. When ever someone was making copies, the monitor's display looked like a Picaso painting.

• Tech Support: "Ok, when the machine reboots, hit the 'del' key a few times. You should see a blue screen."
  
• Customer: "Ok, it tells me that I am in the Cosmos setup."
  

• Tech Support: "How fast is your modem?"
  
• Customer: "I don't know, it's got a Pentium chip in it."
  

• Tech Support: "What operating system are you running?"
  
• Customer: "Pentium."
  

• Tech Support: "What operating system do you use?"
  
• Customer: "Umm, electricity i think..."
  

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Life on earth is the global equivalent of not storing things in the fridge.

Years ago in my previous life as an IT Manager, I received a call from a woman claiming her laptop was making strange noises. I walked over to her desk, and it seemed the hard drive was indeed making a quiet, but non-normal, whirring noise. She immediately claimed she had not done anything to it - but her regular work... MS Word, ppt, spreadsheets...

The first thing I did was backup her data files to an external drive.

I powered the laptop down and removed the keyboard mounting screws to get to the hard drive. When I lifted the hard drive a bunch of white powder fell off the IC solder connections. Before I could say anything, she said she didn't do anything... she wanted to know what the powder was.

After a few probing questions, it seems that her cat spilled a soft-drink on the keyboard (yup... and the dog ate her kid's homework). Carbonic acid and solder points don't get along very well - or really well, depending on your point of view.

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I know, the hard drive story was boring.

It was a dark and stormy night and our corporate lawyer, living in the high-end part of town, called me in a panic because "the stupid laptop was broken" and she needed to get a bunch of work she had done posted... this being the days before cable modems and DSL, she used dial-up. The transcript below is edited - rest assured that getting the information out of her over the phone was like pulling teeth.

Why do you say the laptop is broken?
Because I can't connect to the office.
So... the laptop starts up?
Yes.
Then what happens?
I do what I normally do - and that noise comes out of the speakers.
Oh... when the modem is dialing and connects to the office?
Yes.
What happens?
Nothing.
Do you hear the modem dial?
No.
Well, it won't make noise if it isn't connected to a phone line.
It IS connected to a phone line. I've done this many times. And I get a message that it can't dial out or connect.
I know you have done this many time - but since I can't see what you see, I need you to be my eyes. Can you unplug the modem from the phone cord and plug it back in?
OK - did that. Same message.
Can you unplug the phone cord from the wall and plug it back in?
OK... rustling... crap - I can't see down here. Hold on, I need my flashlight... the power went out last night during the storm and is not back yet.
(my first clue!)
OK - did that... same message... and now this other message is popping up saying the battery is really low and I need to plug it in - what is that about?
Well, the power went out...
Oh crap - now my phone is running out of power.
Your phone?
Yes, this is my cell phone. The storm took out the power and the phone line last night... So when are you going to fix my computer - I have to get these reports in.
There is nothing wrong with your computer - you just said the powere and phone lines are down in your neighborhood.
BUT I'M A LAWYER!
Then call the phone company and the electric company - in the meantime, you'll have to drive into the office to deliver you...

She hung up on me, complained (screaming and yelling) to my boss that I was incompetant when she drove in... I told my boss why she complained about me - my boss told the lawyer she was the incompetant one... the lawyer left the company (to the relief of a LOT of people) two weeks later...

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She hung up on me, complained (screaming and yelling) to my boss that I was incompetant when she drove in... I told my boss why she complained about me - my boss told the lawyer she was the incompetant one... the lawyer left the company (to the relief of a LOT of people) two weeks later...

Hmmmmm I think she had a sex change and became a nuclear engineer in Rochester NY...

OK OK here is the story!!!

One day he called me and asked that most stupid of all questions: "Where in the 'fire truck' is the ANY key". He got real indigent when I told him.

30 seconds later he calls back and says "I am pushing a key and nothing is happening". Which key I asked.. The one that says "CTRL". I said see that really long key on the bottom of the keyboard.. "YES" Push that one.. "THAT WORKS, WHY IN THE 'FIRE TRUCK' DIDN'T YOU SAY THAT BEFORE".. (my attitude kicked in" BECAUSE I THOUGHT A NUCLEAR ENGINEER HAD A BRAIN" (yes we were shouting)

My IBM counter part was rolling on the floor. I looked at him and asked "WHAT IN THE 'FIRE TRUCK' is so funny"..

He told me that this particular Nuclear Engineer was the only one in the company who could get a certian error on his terminal. He further told me that he had reprogramed that error to say "TURN OFF YOUR TERMINAL AND WAIT FOR A MESSAGE TO TURN IT BACK ON".. Still laughing like a hyenna he says He called me one day and asked "WHEN IN THE 'FIRE TRUCK' AM I GOING TO GET THE MESSAGE TO TURN IT BACK ON"

I left that company and moved outside the NRC mandated 50 mile safety zone...

OHH for you nuclear engineer lawyers remove the 'IRE TR' from 'FIRE TRUCK'