"Friedhelm Redlich" said in
Hi Vanguard,
of course I 've tried this.
<snip>
You'd get a good laugh at what sometimes gets overlooked.
- Compaq is considering changing the command "Press Any Key" to "Press Return Key" because of the flood of calls asking where the "Any" key is.
- AST technical support had a caller complaining that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.
- Another Compaq technician received a call from a man complaining that the system wouldn't read word processing files from his old 5-1/4 diskettes. After trouble-shooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, it was found that the customer had labeled the diskettes, then rolled them into the typewriter to type the labels.
- Another AST customer was asked to send a copy of her defective diskettes. A few days later a letter arrived from the customer along with photocopies of the floppies.
- A Dell technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door. The customer asked the tech to hold on, and was heard putting the phone down, getting up and crossing the room to close the door to his room.
- Another Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of trouble shooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the "send" key.
- Yet another Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it by filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking the keyboard for a day, then removing all the keys and washing them individually.
- A Dell technician received a call from a customer who was enraged because his computer had told him that he was "bad and an invalid". The tech explained that the computer's "bad command" and "invalid" responses shouldn't be taken personally.
- A confused caller to IBM was having troubles printing documents. He told the technician that the computer had said it "couldn't find printer." The user had even tried turning the computer screen to face the printer--but his computer still couldn't "see" the printer.
- An exasperated caller to Dell Computer Tech Support couldn't get her new Dell Computer to turn on. After ensuring the computer was plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button. Her response, "I pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happened." The " foot pedal" turned out to be the computer's mouse.
- Another customer called Compaq tech support to say her brand-new computer wouldn't work. She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked "What power switch?"
- An employee called their help desk to report that her monitor went completely and instantly blank. She couldn't see anything of her Windows desktop or applications. Eventually it was revealed the power LED on the monitor was not lit, so the tech had her check on the back to see if the power cord wiggled loose. That was okay so the tech said to check under the desk to check the cord had not been kicked out of the power socket. She couldn't see the outlet which was behind her desk because it was too dark. When asked to for her to turn on the lights, she reported there was a power outage and all the lights were out and why it was too dark to see behind the desk. No, she didn't have a UPS.
- True story from a Novell NetWire SysOp: Caller: "Hello, is this Tech Support?" Tech: "Yes, it is. How may I help you?" Caller: "The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my warranty period. How do I go about getting it fixed?" Tech: "I'm sorry, but did you say a cup holder?" Caller: "Yes, it's attached to the front of my computer." Tech: "Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped, it's because I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotion, at a trade show? How did you get this cup holder? Does it have any trademark on it?" Caller: "It came with my computer, I don't know anything about a promotion. It just has '4X' on it." At this point the Tech Rep had to mute the caller, because he couldn't stand it. He was laughing too hard. The caller had been using the load drawer of the CD-RoM drive as a cup holder, and snapped it off the drive.
- Another IBM customer had troubles installing software and rang for support. "I put in the first disk, and that was OK. It said to put in the second disk, and I had some problems with the disk. When it said to put in the third disk-I couldn't even fit it in..." The user hadn't realized that "Insert Disk2" meant to remove Disk 1 first.
- A customer to Gateway called to say that she could not remove any of the 5-1/4" floppies she had inserted. She would insert the floppy but couldn't get it back out. Nor could the operating system read the floppies. Now the drive was full and she couldn't insert any more floppies. It was discovered she was inserting the floppies in the space between the floppy drive and the next drive bay (i.e., she was shoving them into the case in the gap between the drives).
- In a similar incident, a customer had followed the instructions for installing software. The instructions said to remove the disk from its cover and insert it into the drive. The user had physically removed the casing of the disk and wondered why there were problems.
- A coworker was seen hitting the keys hard on his keyboard which became progressively into just banging on the keyboard. He claimed his keyboard was going bad and keystrokes were becoming increasingly lost. It was a cordless keyboard. It needed new batteries.
- A computer user wanted to get better video than what the onboard video controller on the motherboard would provide. He bought the new AGP video card, installed it, installed its drivers and software, but the video was not any better than before. He also could not get rid of his old video controller in Device Manager. Turns out he had still left the monitor connected to the backpanel connector for the onboard video controller (so it would not automatically disable) instead of plugging it into his brand new video card. Zen cabling does not work well with computers.
- A user calls the computer maker to report that they must use "percussive maintainence" to get their computer to come up. This was a term told to them by a friend. When the power was turned on, the system could not find the hard drive. It was found the hard drive wasn't spinning if it had been left to sit for several hours and then started when cold. The "percussive maintenance" was slapping the case hard with the palm of the hand to get the hard drive spinning. The time for a new drive was long past due. The customer had been doing this for almost 2 months.
- Customer asks why the display on their monitor is upside down. It's been that way for several weeks during which time the customer had to physically rotate the monitor to see the screen right side up. The customer had hit a hotkey provided by their video card's software to rotate the screen, so hitting the hotkey again rotated back to a normal orientation. The customer then disabled that hotkey function.
- A techie that actually knew computer hardware very well was having difficulty when he decided to replace his old PCI video card with an AGP video card. After installing the new AGP video card, his system would not boot. He could revert to the PCI card which worked okay. The motherboard was new, just a little older than the AGP card he bought to put in it. He returned the motherboard for an exhange but the maker said the motherboard tested out okay. On return of an exhange unit, he encountered the same problem when trying to use the AGP board. A buddy listening to his month-long tribulations decided to wander by the lab when this guy decided to start using company resources to fix his home computer. This friend walked over, contemplated a short bit, and then got the system working in under a minute. Why? The AGP video card takes more force to insert into its slot than for PCI slots (i.e., more resistance plus there is an indent past which you must push the AGP card). In short, the AGP card had never been fully seated in its slot. This friend quickly left the lab as the volcano of swear words erupted from the thoroughly irate techie. After that, an occasional smirk, a nasal snort, and roll of the eyes by the friend would illicit a "Shut up!" from the burned techie.
- When told that a SCSI card was need to support a particular tape drive, the user asked why they would want to use scuzzy hardware instead of good hardware.
- A user calls in to report that paper is going into the printer but never coming out. Reams have been inserted and they are awed that so much paper could somehow get stored up inside the laser printer. This printer has a panel on the back that can be lowered for backside ejection (to eliminate warp in the paper when it gets rolled back forward). The paper was ejecting out the back and dropping off to fall behind the desk.
- Windows 2000 had been operating well for over a year and then suddenly the message "ntldr not found" appeared when the system was booted. The user had left a non-bootable diskette in the floppy drive.
- A user sometimes could not get their system to boot unless they vigorously shook the system case to rattle it enough to get it to boot. The rattling was from the kids sliding pennies through the front air grill thinking it was a big piggy bank.
- A user of a cordless mouse complained that it was very hard to see exactly where the cursor on the screen was positioned when moving the mouse around. They also found it difficult to drag the mouse cursor across the screen. The user was sliding the cordless mouse on the monitor's glass front and thus covering part of the desktop screen. Maybe they thought the mouse cursor on the screen was drawn magnetically by the mouse device.
- Another user calls in to report movement of the mouse is very erratic. This was a male mouse (i.e., it had a ball rather than a female mouse which is optical [no balls]). The user noted the ball was black in color. It should be grey but was coated with filth all over. The insides of the mouse were packed with lint, filth, and scum on the rollers and blocking the sensors. Rather than clean the ball and insides, the customer bought a new mouse. Yeah, when the ashtrays get full, buy a new car.
- A user asks why his keyboard is screwed up. When hitting one key, a different character appears on the screen; i.e., hitting "a" results in getting "q". This only occurs for the keys at the far left and right ends of the keyboard (the alphabetic and punctuation characters). Turns out his kids had knocked the keyboard off his desk, several keys popped off, and they put them on wherever they chose. Apparently this user had no other experience with other keyboards or couldn't remember the correct layout to realize that many of the key caps didn't match up with where they were physically before.
- A user noticed that there was available a newer version of the BIOS for their motherboard. So they downloaded the file and was then told to flash the BIOS. So he unzipped his fly and flashed ... okay, so this one didn't happen. Had you going there for a moment.
