Disclaimer: I'm not American so my English or some concepts might sound weird. Sorry?

My mother has worked with computers since the early 90s until she recently retired (self-employed, Law-related job), yet somehow in the last 30 years she has never managed to dominate Windows beyond the simplest notions.

I have always been "good with computers" so I am the de-facto computer and smartphone fixer for both my family and my in-laws. Since I was a teenager she's always come to me for help with her home office setup, only resorting to paid tech support when I was unable to fix her issues. Most of her issues have always been typical boomer issues such as accidentally deleting a shortcut and being unable to find the folder it pointed to, wondering if scam e-mails were scams or not, you know the deal.

However, about 5 years ago she came to me with an issue that I now think deserves to be shared. Her office had both a printer and a scanner, until the scanner died and since the printer was old she upgraded to a printer that could also scan. However, after the brand-new printer came and was installed (we were under COVID lockdown so I wasn't there) she called me so I could troubleshoot some issues she had. She told me that she was having trouble because the new printer wasn't scanning documents properly and she couldn't get work done.

Doing both Teamviewer and a phone call I managed to pinpoint the real issue: the previous scanner's default folder was called C:/OldBrandName and the new printer was sending the scanned files to My Documents/NewBrandName. So far so good, I replaced her desktop shortcut to the old folder with a new one to the current folder. But then, OH MY GOD GUYS, then I told her to test it doing a normal work related task to see if everything was right. My mother, God bless her, opened an e-mail with an attached PDF, printed it and then SCANNED it. Giving her and my sanity the benefit of doubt, I asked her if she was making a physical copy because it was legally required of her or something like that, but she told me she only did it so she could FIND IT with her Law practice management software.

Dying inside, I gently told her how she could just click download instead of print on Adobe Reader and then go to whichever folder she preferred to later use that file on her work. She had been doing this ridiculous print and scan thing for the last 30 years, wasting probably tons of paper (and toner, and time) while at it.

With this post I hope at least people on the Internet will have a laugh so something good comes from this.

I live in a part of the world which has mistakenly decided to remain on DST permanently. A user noted this morning that our primary scheduling platform had experienced a similar failure to Google whereby updating the given timezones caused all the scheduled activities to just forward an hour.

Unfortunately, not having Google's bottomless pockets, the vendor was unable to apply a wholesale fix, although they are assisting with our manual adjustments.

I was informed by several users that "our old software didn't have this problem". They were highly dismayed to discover that yes, our old software had exactly the same problem with changes to timezone applicability, and; packrat that I am; that I could provide them with time stamped proof from the last time my local government decided to play fast & loose with DST.

We finished their specific corrections about an hour ago. The team is taking bets on whether they at least bother to say "Thank you".

No resolution as of yet, I'm afraid, nor any humour to close with.

So I see a ticket about user wanting to set up her team's "shared mail group" and PST files on her new laptop. After clarifying that she meant their shared mailboxes and that the PSTs are on OneDrive, okay, I do it. Not sure why her computer did not do it automatically as it should have, but whatever.

Problem: The new computer only sees 3 month old PST files. Da hell? The user got it 2 weeks ago, how is it even seeing 3 month old versions? Check the old computer, it is seeing the correct, fresh files.

Fine, let's fiddle with it. What if I relog her on OneDrive? Nothing. Check the status... Apparently the synchronisation failed because the files are open? Okay, close Outlook on both PCs and retry. Yay. apparently if outlook is open, it does not allow them to be copied either. Whatever, can you do it now? No, it is perma-stuck on 0% download and crying about low bandwidth(a lie).

Okay... What if I manually download a file from her drive on the old PC, then copy it over to the new PC, and import it into Outlook? Okay, that works. But it is hardly ideal to do it for everything. sigh What followed was another 2 days of struggles and attempts by me, someone from the 365 team, and the "this guy knows everything" guy. I even tried to just copy the contents from her drive and was planning to axe the contents on the new PC and replace manually with the good stuff, but even the copying somehow managed to kill the file manager on the remote server from which I was working instead. Twice.

Yesterday, we finally reached a breakthrough! OneDrive was starting to sync things on the new laptop! Oh happy day! The struggle is over! Hey user, check the folders and see if they are good! What do you mean they are still missing stuff? It says it synced. Let me see the old PC, what are you missing? Wait... Even I can tell this is wrong... Oh no...

So as it turns out, OneDrive managed to sync up the bad files from the new PC into the cloud, and in the process removed a whole bunch of folders and overwrote good files...

And that is where my patience and abilities finally ran out. Threw the ticket over to the relevant team to roll back and exorcise her drive before I completely lose my mind.

The customer's laptop screen goes pitch black the exact second the graphics driver loads. Oh, and BitLocker is enabled.

Naturally, I ask, "Where is the recovery key?"
Customer: "I don’t have one."
Me: "Is it backed up to your Microsoft Account?"
Customer: "It’s a local user. No Microsoft account."

Fantastic. Welcome to Hard Mode. Without that key, booting into Safe Mode, using a recovery USB, or dropping into Command Prompt from a boot disk is entirely out of the question.

Time to brainstorm. After the screen dies, the laptop goes totally mute no audio feedback either. My first thought slam an HDMI cable into an external monitor. Nothing. Second thought maybe I can enable Remote Desktop or PowerShell remoting? I plug it into a DHCP network and wait for an IP to pop up. Nothing. I plug in a USB network adapter the link lights blink, but the network completely ignores it. This machine is fighting back.

But here’s the silver lining the keyboard still works, and I can technically log in blindly by typing the PIN. Once logged in, the screen dies, but the OS is alive.

That’s when I had a vision: What if I use a USB flash drive as my only output interface?

I decided to blindly navigate the Windows UI.

• Type PIN -> Press Enter -> Wait -> Win + R -> Type 'cmd' -> Ctrl + Shift + Enter (for Admin) -> Wait -> Hit Left Arrow -> Hit Enter (to blindly defeat the UAC prompt).

I’m in. Now, how to get the BitLocker key? I blindly type a command to export the key, guessing the flash drive letter and running it across D:, E:, and F: just to be safe. I pull the drive, plug it into my bench PC... nothing. empty.

Round two. I modify the command to pipe the CMD output into a text file so I can actually "see" what’s happening. I plug the drive back into the blind laptop, run the script, and plug it back into my PC. Success! It's Drive D! But the log file reveals bad news.The BitLocker service is not running.

What followed was a high-stakes game of IT ping-pong.

• Plug USB into laptop -> blindly type commands to force-start the BitLocker service and check ipconfig -> Plug USB into PC to read the text file.

The log results? The BitLocker service is completely corrupted, and the network stack is totally shredded. I blindly try to force-uninstall the graphics driver to trick Windows into using the basic Microsoft Display Adapter. No dice.

At this point, I’m looking at the customer, preparing to deliver the "You are royally doomed" speech and recommend a total wipe.

The customer looks back at me, pale. "My entire life is on that laptop. 700 gigabytes of data. Documents, irreplaceable family photos, videos. Everything." He tells me it's spread across the C: drive and his user profile.

Challenge accepted. I wasn't going to let BitLocker win.

Since I couldn't guess his exact username structure, I used my text-file-piping trick to map out the entire folder directory onto the USB drive. I found the target folders. I plugged the USB back into the blind laptop one last time and fired off a massive robocopy command directed at my external Samsung T9 SSD.

Then, I sat there. Watching the status light on the Samsung drive blink furiously in the dark. Just waiting. Praying.

Finally, the blinking stopped.

I plugged the SSD into my bench PC, and there it was: 700 GB of perfectly preserved data. I handed the customer his data, wiped the laptop, reinstalled a fresh copy of Windows, and now it runs flawlessly.

Twenty years in IT, and I never thought I'd have to use a flash drive as a computer monitor. Took me quite some time to solve this copy data not included at least 2 hours. Also I do this tech support for privat customers for fun on the side, i usually do servers and network only. So maybe someone can tell me how it could be solveable in another way.

I always suspected the tales of users using Tipex or writing directly on the screen with a pen might be apocryphal, but no. A laptop just came in with biro text on the (non-touch) screen. User said they had been asked to sign a document. They knew it wasn't a touch screen too. First one in 40 years. Came off easily with IPA (Isopropyl Alcohol).

They're not stupid, though I have to admit it does boggle my mind a bit, but we've got to remind ourselves just how little knowledge some have of how the magic machine does what it does. Our lives would be easier if computers came manuals like they once did, perhaps with a few pages of computer fundamentals. That said it amazes me how many struggle on without ever considering buying a book or doing a bit of Googling.

Edit: Biro = Bic, TipEx = Whiteout

A long time ago (Windows Vista being new days), I was working as a tech in a small computer shop (<10 employees), fixing computers / dealing with walk-ins / phone /etc. I was the newest employee, 3 weeks working and 1 week in school every month. Our customers were like 80% local very small businesses and 20% regular people.

One day a guy shows up absolutely panicking, covered in black stuff from head to toes. He tells me he is from the local rubber plant (making tires or something) and he "broke" a computer that controls a machine the whole plant depends on, they're all stuck, asking if I can look at it right now. The guy was bricking it, he honestly looked like he could cry.

Before bringing the computer, he tells me to cover the desk with news paper or something. He brings the computer, also covered in black stuff, I've never seen anything this dirty. He shows me a bunch of instructions he was told to follow to update a piece of software, that's how he "broke" the thing. He says he tried to follow them but they're in italian, neither of us is italian or speaks it.

Couldn't read most of it but the instructions were about editing the autoexec.bat and there was a very obvious typo in the commands that were supposed to go in there. I don't remember what it was but it was extremely obvious to anyone who would have known about DOS at all. I fix it instantly, reboot the thing, it's back booting to their proprietary software. He looks at me like I'm a mix between Neo and a superhero who just saved his life. I give him a standard 1h intervention invoice and he is on his way, relieved as fuck. He is now laughing that it only cost 60€ to get the factory back to working and jokes that I could have put a much bigger number on the invoice.

I'm like cool I have a funny story to tell the others when they ask WTF that black stuff is all over the store. Manager and boss come back, I start explaining. They go o_O instantly when I tell them where the guy was from. Turns out they'd been trying to get this plant/company as clients for a long time but they weren't interested. We were in a very sparsely populated area and it was one of the biggest employers around (50 people). About a month later, someone from the plant called and asked my manager/boss to come have a look at ALL their shit and make them an offer about what we thought they would need to update/upgrade/change/etc. Like a new server, maybe new accounting software, new laptops for all their employees, etc.

My manager came to see and and he was like "you're coming with me to do the assessment, they weren't even talking to us a month ago, well done".

The customer called in regarding an ongoing ISP webmail issue. I informed him that the issue is currently being investigated and we are awaiting a response from Tier 2 support. Upon hearing this, the customer became highly agitated and began shouting, stating he did not want to wait for Tier 2 and demanded immediate escalation to a supervisor. I explained that an escalation ticket was already active. However, the customer continued to demand a supervisor ticket transfer. I advised him that as a third-party technical support center, we do not have a direct internal routing path to escalate this specific ticket to a supervisor. The customer stated that this issue was disrupting his business operations, used profanity, and stated he was going to hang up before he said something he would regret. The customer then disconnected the call. Maybe have a backup email if you’re gonna act like this issue is World War 3.

A recent XSLT change in a couple of web browsers caused us some grief at work recently. People were get red boxes where they should have seen their data, and there was a link telling you to install some extension to the web browser to fix the problem. While this resolved the red boxes, it caused an error in our main search tool, where you didn't see any criteria fields.

Corporate IT figured out that a registry change would have to be made, and set up a package to go quickly to the affected users. I sent out an announcement about this, and how someone could use the policy list in their web browser to verify that the change was made on their system, along with extra steps to make sure their computer was checking for the latest updates, and removing the extension which wasn't needed.

So, I got an e-mail from a user in Europe the next day after I sent the announcement, telling me how he had done all the steps in the announcement, removed the extension, and he doesn't have the error in the search anymore.

He then asked what else he should do.

Um...get back to work? Sounds like you are good to go.

I also told him to contact our helpline with such questions in the future, as they are staffed during the workday, while I have meetings and vacations and things.

We just got new printers at my office, as well as switched the software we were using for these new printers, new drivers, new company etc.

User asks me to come over, her excel document isn't printing correctly. It's an older user and they set their computer theme to this dark background, with yellow text for everything, she's an older user so I think this theme is supposed to help her see. I looked at the piece of paper she gave me, its perfectly white, no text is visible, might be an issue with the new printers I'm thinking.

So I look at the print selection, everything looks right, we're printing the correct information. I don't see what's causing the issue. Print preview looks like it's showing text correctly on a page.

The user sees me looking everything over and said something about changing the font coloring, I looked at her and blinked a few times. Looked back at the paper she handed me as proof that it wasn't printing, and against the white paper I can barely, faintly see that the text is being printed, white font on white paper.

Changed font to black.

Hit print.

Print job comes out correct.

Close ticket.

Earlier today I read someone else's recollection of the worlds dumbest DDOS and was reminded of another dumb DDOS.

The company had a job estimation tool that ran on a Linux box. Visit a web page, feed it a list and a customer name, 30 seconds later you got a link to a properly written quote in the format that customer preferred.

We'd had it six years and it never gave us any trouble, not even when we moved from Redhat to Debian.

Well, until September of one year, when it started throwing up "Your three year software license is about to expire! Please call us at 1-976-.." whenever the administrator uploaded a new quote template or updated pricing.

A whole lot of money had been paid for what was supposed to be a perpetual license, so we called and complained. The vendor blamed it on version checking nonsense and told us that if you just clicked "Okay" on the pop-up a few times it would go away.

A few it was not. It took clicking ten or twenty times, really quick, before the pop-up finally vanished and everything worked again.

About a month later the dialog started popping up on a different group of users, managers, whenever they tried to edit an existing quote.

This caused a small bit of concern, a dozen tickets, and fourteen phone calls before we stopped trying to explain "Just go to town on the button" and sent people around to furiously click.

We called the vendor again, they asked us to change a setting in the config file and assured us it wouldn't recur.

And it didn't, until January 3rd, when everyone started getting the pop-up.

By the time the first support person made it into work at 7am there were 100 tickets and 40 voicemails from users that started at 6.

An hour later, when the bulk of the company arrived, the voicemail was full, there were 400 tickets and climbing, and the 6am people started opening tickets with the main help desk as well so they were calling directly.

There was a quick conference where it was decided to go with the nuclear option. Ticketing was shut down company-wide and the support phones were taken off the hook.

The mass email blamed it all on the vendor, with the perfectly BOFH explanation that computers are dumb and sometimes they think zero is greater than nine, like back in Y2K, and that we'd be sending people around to fix it.

Three days later, after thousands of clicks and nothing else being accomplished by any one from any tech support team, we got a root-cause back from the vendor.

They'd changed how their software was versioned. They used to release one major version every year, as sort of a checkpoint, and they were stopping that. Their next version, instead of being 9.0, was 8.2.0. And they'd changed the code that tracked licenses as a result, adding the minor to the major to determine how old the software was and clipping numbers.

Our perpetually licensed version was 66.66. The license server was barfing on it.

The thread I made yesterday about a "Ddos" storm our employees created got me reminiscing about some other fun episodes I saw in tech over the years. There was one humorous event, it was around a decade ago, and it included a bored pm on a boring meeting, an ethernet cable, and an open socket sticking out of the wall. Those who know can already see how this thing will play out.

At that point in time I was still in software testing, but I knew the guy in question, and later on my IT buddies told me more about the whole thing.

Well, as every IT company would have it, we had switches in every conference room, but they were positioned under the table for better optics and less cables all around the room. Cable guides led out from the switches and led to wall mounted RJ-45 sockets.

Someone left one cable out, probably for an employee to stick into their laptop instead of plugging in to wifi. So you have a cable sticking out in the middle of the room, and an empty RJ-45 socket neatby.

Our pm in question was bored out of his mind during a meeting and started fiddling with the cable. Eventually, he decided to be helpful and stick in it "back" in the open port. All hell broke loose. The connection dropped, the meeting dropped, the room dropped, the whole floor dropped. Unbeknowst to him, he stuck the cable right back into a socket that led back to the switch itself where the cable was originally plugged in, creating an ethernet loopback.

The funniest thing is, he genuinely thought someone careless had left the cable unplugged and he just wanted to put it back (he thought it was a secondary projector plugged off by accident).

A few years back, we had a department working on a project with some third party supplier and the people involved were using their proprietary software for the project needs. The project got delivered and finished, people eventually moved on and changed departments, the usual. Our story begins when all of a sudden our folks from the old project got a group email if they want to end their subscription and stop receiving emails for the product line, since it was coming EOL, or purchase a new license for a replacement product.

The first person responded with a positive confirmation to stop their subscription. Reply to all.

The next person in line did the same. And so did the others. And so it went on. The storm of emails spamming everyone's inboxes just kept growing. At some point, someone sent an email asking for everyone to stop spamming them. With reply to all. The next person in line getting frustrated did the same.

At this point we have a legitimate Ddos storm of emails being sent back and forth, and now it was starting to affect our exchange servers (this was before we had Azure and Outlook 365 integrated). Some were still sending the "please unsubscribe me" email to everyone, while the rest was spamming "stop spamming me". All in reply to all. People were even starting to attack each other personally in new emails for spamming their inbox since everyone knew everyone else, they worked together in the past.

Soon thereafter, we in IT security get a high priority notification from helpdesk and get included in helping them protect the company from a storm of ddos attacks being sent from a dozen "infected" machines within the company perimeter.

To anyone outside security, it looked like a massive breach and a horrifying issue wrecking within our perimeter. We, on the other hand, couldn't stop laughing our assess off as we went through the event history. The domain got temporarily blocked, the accounts in question got temporarily disabled so the storm of emails could stop, the email chain was completely deleted to save the used up space, everyone got notified the issue was resolved and asked to please stop sending emails, they no longer needed to do anything about it.

One of the funniest IT "incidents" of my career. Remember folks, don't tell your employees to just "reply to all" in every conversation blindly just to keep everyone involved notified.

A few years ago I was working at a computer repair shop and this 80 year old lady came in to get her "email fixed". She ran some kind of business and suddenly her outlook stopped updating, she had a custom domain and everything. Immediately we though "oh no she canceled her custom domain".

We asked her if she canceled her email service. She said no, but she did say she canceled a bill the previous month but did not know what it was for, she thought it was a phone bill or something. We were pretty sure she canceled her custom domain service, she wasn't giving us much to work with. But she did have an assistant who basically ran the business from Pennsylvania.

It took a long time to get them to tell us what is happening with the account. We had to get the account credentials from the assistant. Turns out the email was set up a long time ago, back in the 90s or something. Long story short, the email provider she used (don't remember its name) subcontracted out the email hosting service to Intermedia. Then Intermedia sub-subcontracted Godaddy to do the actual email hosting. So as it turns out, she did cancel her custom domain. We just had to go through three layers of subcontractors to figure out what actually happened.

In the end we got her assistant to buy the domain on Google's domain service. Then we did the basic configuration and set up her outlook to sync to that.

As promised in my first post, here it is. This one was not my call, but my friend's. I was there and he told me as it was happening and I heard the follow up from the manager as well. My other friend referenced it last night, coincidentally.

On a normal day, expecting a normal call, my friend answers. Before saying hello, or introducing himself, the customer just says "I need the name of the tech that was just onsite"... Well this can't be good. Despite being new, my friend handled it well. He explained that he can see the request for a tech, but not details like names. He can, however, get our manager to reach out and speak to the subcontractor. I'm not sure exactly how he said it, but the customer took a breath.

"While I get the manager, can I ask what happened so I can get this recorded?" Apparently, the tech came out, was let into the datacenter, and left to do the work (this is a theme with these stories). He did the work fine, and solved this issue without a problem as far as I know. He put everything back together, cleaned up, and headed out.

When leaving, he pushes the door and it does not move. In his head, presumably... "Oh, there is a button here. This must be the exit button"... NOPE. Fire alarm... The entire DC power is cut, alarms blare, emergency lights come on. What does our intrepid tech do? He tries pulling. Door opens. Cool. Time to admit your mistake and limit the damage? NOPE. GTFO!

Now, our understandably irked admin has to run in and search for the fire. Finding none he reviews the cameras and sees what really happened. He starts power on procedures and gets things up again and then makes the call.

Well, this is a problem for us. This guy just cost the DC downtime, which has SLA violations, and I don't know how much money. Leaving made it much worse since they had to search for a while instead of just starting things back up immediately. Now legal needs to be involved.

Manager does not provide the name, obviously, but does call the subcontractor to get their side. Funny, tech has not reported any issues ... Awesome.

Lawyers, fun... I don't know exactly what was said, but this is the update I heard after all that:

Yes, he hit the button, but...

The button was unprotected (no cover)

The button was not labeled

The button was not red, but Blue!

So, we have an unlabeled, blue button next to a door that did not open while he had his hands full or tools/parts. Do you really want to bring this to a judge?

Now, I have no idea if it did go to a judge, or there was a settlement, or if they just dropped it. Moral of the story, use proper, labeled emergency buttons, and stop trusting techs to know their way around your datacenter.

This is my first time posting here, so I will tell you I worked tech support for two very large tech companies in my time. Both companies made datacenter products so the people who called in were computer professionals... supposedly... I will have to be vague as to not expose the company names. The first story I will share is short but flabbergasting.

The equipment in question called home with a failed power supply. This was a very routine call and we dispatched the part and a third party tech (don't get ahead of me) to swap it.

The call comes in and I get it ... Lucky me.

Me: thank you for calling blah blah...

On-site tech (ost): I replaced the psu but the instructions say the amber light will come on. It didn't.

Me: Okay, it is possible it is DOA, they are refurbs. Let's check the slot. Go ahead and swap the partner PSU in and make sure the partner psu works in that slot.

OST: Okay.

A few moments later...

OST: No, now neither have lights and the first one is still sparking.

Me: Sparking!?! Pull it out!...

OST: Okay, it's out. Should I pull the partner one out too?

... To shorten the conversation, the moth....fellow... moved the partner psu (they each have two) like I asked but also put THE SPARKING ONE in the partner. I had him pull the partner one just in case.

Me: So, just to clarify, was the new one sparking before you called?

OST: Yes.

Me: And when did you pull it out of the first one?

OST: When you told me too

Me: ... Did you not think you should pull it when it started sparking?

OST: The instructions don't say to...

Me: and you did not think it was something I should know about?

OST: Oh, you didn't see that?

Me: Dude (I contained myself), I am 1000 miles away. Why the fu... Ahem... Why do you think we contract you?

OST: I don't know.

Me: Let the admin know i will call him and leave the parts onsite.

I then called the company that owned the units (they let the OST in but no one was watching him) and explained that I will be sending everything, enough parts to build two complete units, and one of our first-party techs.

The next day our tech calls in to chat. He was able to salvage most of it, but had a "lovely" day dismantling one at a time to rebuild them in the two new chassis (the backplane was not a field item) while the now VERY interested admin stared over his shoulder. He also said the PSU had nice black scorch marks out of the vent holes.

Our top manager had what I assume was a very interesting call with that third party company, but I was unfortunately not invited to listen in.

This happened a decade and a half ago, so the conversation is my "best recollection", but I will never forget that "I don't know" like he saw nothing wrong with what just happened. And "The instructions don't say to" ... I had to take a few minutes on that after the call.

I just saw the "Mom has no Google storage post", which reminded me of my mum. She similarly needs me to weed through her emails to delete stuff, as she and her brother send each other memes and silly videos by email and use up all her Google storage fairly frequently.

Technology is generally a bit of a challenge for her and I’m the designated tech support person.

A while ago she called me and asked, completely seriously: “Has the government done something to television because of political correctness?”

After several seconds of trying to work out what possible answer there could be, I asked her to explain.

She said that for about three weeks, whenever she watched TV, a voice would suddenly say things like: “Steve walks into the room, looking angry.”

She’d apparently spent THREE WEEKS listening to this before coming to the conclusion that it must be some new political-correctness thing the government had introduced.

I assured her that no, it was definitely nothing to do with the government.

She had accidentally switched on Audio Description.

There then followed the considerably harder task of trying to talk her through switching it off over the phone, while I couldn’t see her television or her remote control and she had no idea what any of the buttons were called.

“Press the button with three lines.”

“I haven’t got one.”

“Yes you have.”

“No, I definitely haven’t.”

“What buttons HAVE you got?”

“Well, there’s a red one…”

Being the family tech support person is a joy and a privilege.

I don’t know if this belongs here, but it’s the best I could find.

For MONTHS my mom had been freaking out over the fact that she had no Google storage. Unable to join meets, download stuff, etc.

After another bout of her freaking out about it, I’m like “fine whatever”, I go to check her email. Relatively average? I think? At least for a woman who has had this email for a while. 3k in primary inbox, 3k in social, 5k in updates, etc.

I look down at her promotional folder. Any guesses? Any guesses on how many emails she had in her promotional folder? WELL YOU’RE WRONG!! She had 63k EMAILS!! Sixty three thousand!! Do you realize how absurd that is?

Her justifications were, she “didn’t know there was a “select all” feature”, and that “it took too long”. Yeah man. It takes a while for Google to delete 63,000 emails.

Took me about 40 mins to get everything deleted, but it’s solved now. Oh. My days.

I'm not sure if this post belongs here.. but my image view for a long time of techsupport were tech savvy gentlemen who would keep themselves busy with the most difficult of questions customers could possibility have.

How wrong I was.

My dad isn't very tech savvy and regularly has problems anything related to tech.

I genuinely wonder sometimes if my dad is serious or not me when he has a tech problem. One time his camera wasn't working and he tried all sort of things like shutting off and rebooting his phone, scouring the internet for answers and asking chatGPT why his camera wasn't working,

I came over, took around 10 seconds to asses the situation, and explained how his new phone case with those flap thingies where you put in your credit card and stuff were blocking his camera.

Another time, my dad complained how the ringtone of his phone wasn't loud enough and wanted to call the store, complaining how the new phone they sold him was broken and that he wanted a refund. took me a minute to just open the settings app, raise the volume, and explain to him how to raise the volume of his ringtone.

Yesterday when I was at university, my dad had been struggling with the computer for 2 hours. he explained to me how the computer froze, that he kept moving and tapping the computer trying to make it work, turned it off, and that after he turned it off it wouldn't turn back on, and how he kept calling the store he bought it from that they sold him a broken computer.

Those system updates with the big letters "UPDATING, DO NOT TURN OFF" apparantly didn't matter to my dad. while he was moving and shoving the computer, he somehow magically managed to unplug the power cable. it took me a few seconds to plug the cable back in.. and another 10 minutes trying to convince my dad that, the problem why the computer didn't turn back on was because he unplugged the power cable, and not some corrupted harddrive like chatGPT was telling him.

Looking past support tickets with tech support from companies and how long they are, it made me realize the real type of problems tech support must be facing from clueless customers like this.

Was going to post this in response to another post, but felt it was worthy of it's own post.

So, I was running a lab with multiple workstations doing Things And Stuff.

Workstation (WS) A stopped getting an IP address from the corporate DHCP server.

Connected WS A to WS B's network drop; still no IP address.

Connected WS B to WS A's network drop; WS B gets an IP address.

Connected WS A to my isolated network where I have my own DHCP server; WS A gets an IP address from my DHCP server.

Put a hub between WS A and it's network drop and pulled a Wireshark capture of the DHCP request going out in to the Ether, and nothing coming back.

Created support ticket outlining observed behavior and expected behavior, with Wireshark trace attached.

Spend next two weeks getting punted from one IT support group to another, explaining the issue every time.

Finally get to the group that (eventually) ended up fixing it and the first thing they asked for was a Wireshark trace.

They were surprised that it was attached to the ticket two weeks previously...

IlovemyjobIlovemyjobIlovemyjobIlovemyjob!!!!!!

Happily, I no longer work at that company.

Resolution was that some intrusion detection system thought WS A had malware and blocked its MAC address from sending frames/packets on the network.

Please be a good human!

Got to have some fun playing merry-go-round with the various tier levels of IT support a few weeks back. Big company, many branched areas with their own T1-T3 style support groups. I guess I'm probably "T3" in my area and how many dumb hats I pretend to wear, but there isn't any official designation in that regard.

Create a ticket and send it off to a group as the problem is only occurring for users in their system. Basically, can I get an audit log on X user? Noted some specific details of the problem to indicate it'll need some hands between XYZ teams and shouldn't be routed to X because this not a T1 issue.

Immediately see it get punted down, alright whatever no big deal I'll walk the walk.

An hour or two later I go on break, come back to faint footprints in the dust of my message box, I'm certain the T1 guy waited until he saw me go inactive and leapt into action to try and close the ticket, devious. I replied less than 10 minutes later but nothing but echoes of the void.

A couple hours later he replies he's escalating the issue to the correct group to investigate.

The group is me!

Not in IT support.

Way back in the nineties I was the designated computer guy for friends and family. My girlfriend was studying at university and her buddy needed some software installed on her home computer for a project they were working on. The software belonged to the university.

I had said software in my possession spanned over a quite large number of floppy disk and had made a batch script that would copy it to a destination of my choosing, prompting for a new disk when needed. I was very proud of myself.

So we take some hours off on a Sunday and head to the buddy's house.

Her computer was running the then new windows 3.1.

The desktop was obscured by maybe 5 or 6 program windows neatly tiled so they filled the entire screen. Whatever. I check that there wasn't any unsaved work and close them down.

I proceed to sit myself in front of it and feed it the disks when prompted while the girls chat and occasionally top op my coffee.

Life was good.

Buddy's husband is in the yard doing yard stuff.

When I was done a few hours later I rebooted the computer confirmed everything was good and announced that the new software was working.

Buddy was happy.

Her husband was FUMING. He apparently had spent hours tiling the program windows "just so" and did not understand the concept of reboots. Even when I explained the concept he wouldn't budge but insisted that I had ruined his hard work.

Still confuses me to this day.

Some people you just cant make happy.

Not native English speaker, please excuse any errors.

Back in the days of 'mini'-computers (e.g. PDP-11/84) supporting CRT user terminals scattered around in different offices, I got a call about 2:30 one morning from one of our priority users, basically the office that justified us having a night shift in the data center, reporting their terminal blew up. In my initial training, they'd told us the two main physical hazards of working in a computer room were electrocution and imploding CRTs, so I first asked if anyone was injured, and the guy replied "no," but sounded kinda confused. At the time I was pretty new and young, so I thought that was maybe a trauma response, so I just told him we'd have someone down there so soon as possible. I called my boss to get approval to call in the (contracted) hardware maintenance, he approved it, so I made the call. About half-an-hour later, that maintenance guy stomped into my section and informed me that the CRT hadn't imploded, the customer simply meant it had quit working (ergo his confusion when I asked about injuries). It had quit working because someone hit the outlet with a vacuum cleaner.

Yes, we paid an expensive contractor time-and-a-half for a 4-hour minimum service call, just to plug the power cord back in. I understand that all the support reps gave stern talks to the users after that, about being specific and avoiding hyperbole when reporting trouble.

(Didn't really help - I had an upper-management guy call in some weeks later complaining about "squashed bugs" on his screen, and he got upset at me when I suggested Windex on a soft cloth. Turns out he just didn't like saying the word "asterisks," the control characters that would fill his screen when he lost connection to the server.)

Last time I posted about helping my father with his printer while I was thousands of miles away from him.

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/1ok1in6/remote_family_printer_tech_support/

I want to restate – I am not a professional, I just know the most about computers in the family.

This time he called me with help for his computer: he bought a cheap keyboard off Amazon, plugged it in and his computer immediately turned off and won’t turn on again. My immediate thought was a dodgy USB dongle fried something.

First I asked him to let me know if there was anything happening at all with the computer, lights, fan sounds, anything. He said there’s a blinking light, I said great! Let me know how often it blinks, if there’s a pattern, anything of the sort. So he sent me a blurry picture.

I asked him to do a full discharge, maybe that would help. I tell him to unplug the power cable, hold power button for 30 seconds, and then plug it bank in to see what happens. What does he do? He unplugs EVERYTHING from EVERYWHERE, including everything that was plugged into the computer: the printer and the monitor, the mouse and (old) keyboard, even the 3.5mm cable for the speakers. The for good measure he unplugged the printer and monitor from the wall as well. I tried explaining that it's like block shapes, only the trapezoid cord (HDMI) goes in the trapezoid hole. It took about 45 minutes for him to relocate the power and HDMI cables to plug them in again to see if our solution worked. It didn’t.

At this point I told him that from a continent and major ocean away there’s not much more I can help him with – he can either go get a new one, or pay somebody who can better diagnose and fix it.

He hasn't done that yet, but now he wants to know how to take out his hard drive so he can still hold on to his data, I said I’ll do that for you when I see you in November....