Any other end user hating sys admins in here?

[HardDrive]

I suppose engineer hating developers can chime in as well

Lets hear some war stories.

Harddrive: What happened?

ID10t: I got an e-mail that had a file attached, and I opened it. Then the computer just went bat ****.

Harddrive: What kind of file was it?

ID10t: I think it was called globaldialer.exe.

Harddrive: Hmmmmmm...thats impossible, an .exe file would have been filtered out. I can't imagine anyone would have made alterations to Exchange to let.....

ID10t: Well, I had to name it that.

Harddrive: .........*what?*

ID10t: The email said I had to rename the file.

Harddrive: So....you....(Stunned silence)...you got an email. And there was a file attached. And the email told you to rename the file. And you did. Then you opened the file?

ID10t: Yeah.....probably was a bad idea right?

Harddrive: (Stunned silence.....ritual killing fantasy....stunned silence....thoughts of Eva Longorias hoohaa.....) Yes, that was bad.

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Oh, yes, I have plenty.

No time to tell them, though. Time for sweet dreams of corporate homocide.

[beepbeep]

user: "my mouse won't glide properly...those plastic gliding pads pick up too much dirt"

me: "wan't me to spit on'em so they glide better?"

[oldE]

A few years ago, when my brother-in-law was selling computers and people would call him up and say,
"It says to 'Press any key to continue'. Which one is the 'any key'?"
He would say,"The 'any key' is the wide one at the bottom of the keyboard."
I don't think he even laughed.
Les

[cool_chick]

How do you spell et. al ?

Yes, a question asked of a helpdesk personnel....

[Tim Walsh]

After 6 years on the helpdesk I've got many stories about raining machinerooms, UPSes that backed up the computers but not the cooling systems but one of my favorite is a lady from admissions calling up asking if we could do data recovery. Turns out she had insisted that she had backed up all of her data(and assured the tech that he didn't need to double check her work) before the tech formated her computer, but when she went to restore it off of her network space she found they were all shortcuts, not the files themselves. The kicker, it was ~5000 acceptance letters. OOPS.

[id10t]

Harddrive - I don't think I've worked for you... and you certainly wouldn't have been helpign me with those type issues...

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally posted by HardDrive
I suppose engineer hating developers can chime in as well

I knew it was getting bad the day "Venketramen Jayasankar" just rolled off my tongue like I had been saying it every day. That's because I was. You see, ol' Venky (as I now call him) is the help desk guy I get quite often when I call in problems on my tube. He works for TATA, an Indian company that provides these kinds of services to a surprising number of American companies. He barely speaks English, and the little he does comes out so fast and garbled it is impossible to understand him.

One of my pet peeves, and it really does not reflect on the help desk people in any way, is just how much I have to know about their job to do mine. I'm no software guy, yet to use the systems provided by the company I work for, I have had to learn more about it than I care to know. They pay me to design things; I think they would be stunned if they ever really tracked how much time me and my co-workers spend trouble-shooting computing systems just so we can perform our "day jobs". Guys like Venky certainly don't help.

[legion]

If my project ever gets out the door, I will become third-level (the guy they will call as a last resort to fix a problem) support for the stuff I have written.

Looking at it from the other end, I get very frustrated with the ineptness or the first- and second-level people. We use a software package to track problems (currently HP OpenView Service Desk). I learned very quickly that the first thing I should do is to call the person having the problem and get their story, because what is written down usually has nothing to do with the actual problem experienced. I have found that first level support will usually try to record something that best fits the problem they think is happening.

[stevepaa]

Gripe on hardware/software support.

Company provided a Thinkpad with Windows 2000 for my use. I wanted a wifi card. IBM website said to buy one that goes inside. Company purchased it in normal month long process and I finally got it. Called tech to install. Tech installed but could not make work, software provided did not make card function. Tech gave up.

I called IBM support and after going through about 5 techs who all reassured me that yes I had the right card and I just needed the right software which they could not find, I finally found one who finally knew that no I did not have the right card and the website information was incorrect.

So I gave wifi card back to computer group and they sent it back to IBM and they ordered me the correct external card which I got a moth later. I installed it and the software and it worked.

Forward 1 year later when company upgrades my thinkpad, loads new XP, and does not load software for wifi. I call IBM, and they show me on the website the software to use. Tried it and it doesn’t work. Called them back and they suggest finding the CD that came with wifi card and use original software. Did that and it works. Had to remove three newly installed programs first, though.


BTW, I use Macs at home and would prefer one here. We were an all Mac house until we merged three years ago with another company and their management effectively took over. Never had such issues with Macs.

[EdT82SC]

When I was in college I took care of all the computers in one of the libraries. One day one of the librarians comes up to me, and tells me her computer won't turn on any more. I come over to take a look. She moved the computer from one desk to another, but forgot to plug it back in!!!!

[IROC]

I'm the "end user" that always calls you guys with the stupid questions. :>) I had to call our support people this morning (located two time zones away) because I was getting a useless error message...OK here it is for your enjoyment:

"UG FLEXlm Error: The desired vendor daemon is down [-97]"

Yeah, that's crystal clear to me what I'm supposed to do.

Problem is I didn't grow up with computers and I look at them as an appliance these days - not something that I really want to learn the inner workings of so I call with the stupid questions. :>)

Mike

[BGCarrera32]

It goes 2 ways.

Log into my normal computer in the shop one morning. Network is off line, can't find wireless signal. Great I think..dead 3com card again. Check card, check software, no signal...walk into room next door...sys admin swiped wireless transceiver down off the wall so another room could use it. Thanks for telling me moron!

Proceed to inform sys admin my network connection is down...

[tobster1911]

I hate our IT dept. I should have know better but...

This week I had them put WinXP back on my laptop. (They had removed it and put Win2000 on when it was first ordered. Company policy don't ya know) So I backed up some things and walked it over to them.

They asked, "Did you back up your email?"
I said, "No, I forgot. Let me go do that real quick."

They said, "Oh, no problem. We will do it for you."

This is where I should have known to just WALK AWAY with my laptop.

So I get the puter back the next day and start to reload all my backups. I get to the email.....


They so kindly backed up my ADDRESS BOOK.

All my saved emails are toast. Pure genius.

[djmcmath]

The trick is that so many stupid people call into tech support that reasonably intelligent questions have to spend a lot of time fighting through the BS to get to useful help. From time to time, my cable connection used to go out, so I'd call in after doing my local network troubleshooting process. You know, ping from here to there, make sure that all of my internal network is still routing like it ought to, then try a ping from the modem out, or run a quick signal strength test. Sure enough, no signal.

So I call tech support and explain that there's no signal on the line. "Ok, sir, are you in front of your computer now?" Sure. "Please reboot your computer." What? "Please reboot your computer." And we're walking through a 30 minute troubleshooting routine to ensure that an average windows user hasn't dorked up their system before we get to what I already knew. Aargh.

The other variation on this one was the night I got struck by lightning. The cable modem no longer powered on. No lights, no nothing. It was just straight-up dead. The tech (ComCast) insisted on trying a firmware update on said unpowered modem numerous times, rather than allowing me to exchange the dead modem for an operational one.

[Eric Coffey]

MOVE!

[Jeff Higgins]

I'm like Mike; I never hesitate to call in with a "stupid question". Also, like Mike, computers are an appliance to me. I don't care how, it just better work when I need it. It amazes me no end the IT people that think we are "stupid" because we can't/won't troubleshoot our computers. That's not what I'm paid to do or trained to do. Like I said before, one of my pet peeves is the expectation that I know so much about their end of the deal just so I can do my job. I would love to have even their very best computer wiz kid come to my work group someday and try to do even the simplest task that we do every day. We could all sit around and laugh at how "stupid" he is.

[campbellcj]

I have more stories than I can begin to remember, but they include gems like (from a tenured U.C. professor) "I think my hard drive just crashed with my nearly-complete latest book. I didn't have a backup copy. Any chance you can recover it?".

I also had an IT professional at a customer site once take a "web server install" CD around to EVERY client PC at his site and run the installation script...locally onto each machine's C: drive! After a few days he called and reported they were unable to access the new web site...

Damn, I hate computers sometimes, and customers/users even more! Since they pay the bills I just suck it up and try not to giggle too much.

[87coupe]

Originally posted by IROC
I'm the "end user" that always calls you guys with the stupid questions. :>) I had to call our support people this morning (located two time zones away) because I was getting a useless error message...OK here it is for your enjoyment:

"UG FLEXlm Error: The desired vendor daemon is down [-97]"

Yeah, that's crystal clear to me what I'm supposed to do.

Problem is I didn't grow up with computers and I look at them as an appliance these days - not something that I really want to learn the inner workings of so I call with the stupid questions. :>)

Mike

That's a Flex License Manager error. I assume you are running AutoCad or some other software using the FlexLM. Here a few reasons this error can happen.

Sentinel Key (Hardware Dongle) is not attached.
License checkout failed from a license server.
The admin upgraded the License Server but didn't update your License Manager app on your machine.
The license file on your machine is corrupt.

Hope this helps

[HardDrive]

Originally posted by Jeff Higgins
I'm like Mike; I never hesitate to call in with a "stupid question". Also, like Mike, computers are an appliance to me. I don't care how, it just better work when I need it. It amazes me no end the IT people that think we are "stupid" because we can't/won't troubleshoot our computers. That's not what I'm paid to do or trained to do. Like I said before, one of my pet peeves is the expectation that I know so much about their end of the deal just so I can do my job. I would love to have even their very best computer wiz kid come to my work group someday and try to do even the simplest task that we do every day. We could all sit around and laugh at how "stupid" he is.

Jeff, I don't actually do a lot of support anymore, but 95% of the questions aren't not stupid. I 100% agree with you that non-IT folks are there to do their work, and their not idiots because one of their tools is broken. Despite the tone of this post, I actually go through great pains to train my staff to provide helpful service.

I also agree that some folks in IT can be real jerks, and 95% of the time, its because that don't really know their ****. The put up a bunch of bluster to hide this.

However.......there are some people....its like they are intentionally on a mission to F everthing up, then call you PO that there is something wrong. When you tell people 50 TIMES how important it is to back up data, repeatedly show them how to do it, and they don't do it, who are you supposed react when they call pissed?