IT Support

[greencreeper]

I know this forum is stuffed full of IT support type people, so share with us your tips, tricks and anecdotes. I'm doing 2nd line IT support, but I'm still learning the systems and what not. I can't wait to start handling calls :disturbd:

[Russ]

While at ntl I spent 5 minutes on a call (I know 5 minutes doesn't seem long but try to picture this...) trying to get this guy to right-click on 'My Computer' so I could check his system resources. Each time he tried to do it, he would tell me he could see "C drive, E drive" etc which evidently told me he was left-clicking. I made sure his mouse configuration was the right way around and it was fine but no matter what I asked him to do, he seemed to have problems right-clicking. Anyway, I eventually found his system resources another way but it was bugging me - why could he not use the right-click feature?

Eventually I cracked it - he told me that when I said 'right-click' he though I meant he was to use his right hand.....

[greencreeper]

Eventually I cracked it - he told me that when I said 'right-click' he though I meant he was to use his right hand.....
:disturbd: I hope they're all not that bad. God. What have I done :p:

[Russ]

Oh no, that sort of thing is very uncommon in my experience.


Although another good one was when I asked a guy to click on My Computer.

His reply was "I don't know where your computer is".

[greencreeper]

It's mostly Americans and Europeans with poor English that'll end up with :erm: I'm trying to find out how to say "I don't speak French" :D I've got the "Goodbye" bit :p:

[Stuart]

Well, this actually happened to a friend. I work for a Uni doing student support. One of our guys got called in to sort out the then head of school's computer.

Basically, every time a window opened on his PC, it closed without giving him a chance to do anything. My friend was trying to eliminate the cause of the problem over the phone. He couldn't.

Eventually, he couldn't find a solution, so he went to the Head's office to have a look. He sat there for about 10 minutes trying to solve it, then realised there was a book sitting on the "Esc" key. He moved the book, and all was OK.

[Stuart]

Then of course, there was one user who plugged a 9V mains adaptor into the speaker output on her soundcard and wondered why the PC was smoking.

[swoop101]

One great time saver is the shortcut for system properties

windows key/break

every IT support person I have told this has found it a godsend, until you find somebody with a different keyboard that is.

[50420]

i took a call from a customer back in january of this year, the guy was very abusive from the moment i took the call.. he werent happy that he had no internet connection....
after nearly twenty minutes ... and the customer not accepting that the issue was with his pc...i gave my name and ext number and reluctantly had to terminate the call.
during the twenty or so minutes i managed to get information from the guy to the effect that he had recently purchased a brand spankin new pc for just over £1000.. .. the pc had been setup in the corner of a room... which the guy thought seemed a bit bare.. so to make it a more pleasurable work area, the guy had put a hanging plant there... directly above the monitor... can u see where this is going yet :) anyways the first day the guy watered the plant...water seeped through... and into the monitor.. BANG and lots o smoke...
now the guys train of thought was that ntl..as a service provider.. were duty bound to fix this ...ASAP... as he could not get onto the net !!! and no amount of explaining things to the cmr could get him to see sense..
hate those type of calls....

[cookie_365]

I'm not sure if anyone's posted a link to this elsewhere, but here goes:

http://rinkworks.com/stupid/

Now, some of it is just smugly laughing at people who don't have detailed knowlege about computers (why it should be funny that someone doesn't know that '486' and 'pentium' are mutually exclusive isn't too clear) but some of it really is stupid ;) .

I once had someone (on a different floor) phone up asking why her laptop wouldn't connect to the network; couldn't get to the bottom of it & had to get up off my backside to look at it myself. I know you're always supposed to ask first if it's actually plugged in but you never do because, well, it's so obvious ...........

[greencreeper]

One of the things that worries me is that half the stuff I would do to fix a problem, probably isn't available to an ordinary login, such as repairing devices and connections. I can remotely connect to their machine, but only if the problem isn't a networking one (obviously) but they're the trickiest problems to solve :( I'll be dealing with employees, so hopefully abuse will be minimal :erm:

Plugging power into a non-power socket is so easy to do, especially when you can't access the back of the machine, and I've done the book on key thing - the space bar. I just couldn't work it out :D

I've made a note of the shortcut swoop provided. Cool :tu: Didn't know that. You learn something every day :)

I'm despairing at the tales told so far :no:

[Stuart]

There was also a technician (part time) who I used to work with who told me a student wasn't able to write CDs in one of the PCs I am responsible for. I went to have a look only to find she was sticking the blank CD-R into the video recorder on top of the desk, rather than the PC under it.

Before you say "that's an easy mistake", it may well be, but the video was clearly labelled "JVC DV/VHS Video Cassette Recorder", and while it is a similar size to the PCs we have in one of the labs, it looks quite different.

Then there was a lecturer who complained that ten keyboards and mice had been nicked. I was rather worried about this, and went to have a look. Obviously, I was running the lab, and it would have looked rather bad if a student had managed to nick ten keyboards and mice.

Now, some of our machines are configured for video editing (these now have the JVC VCRs attached, but didn't at this time). One thing these machines did have (and still do) is external video monitors.

The lecturer saw ten of these video monitors and, despite the fact they have no connections apart from a power and video connection, he assumed that they were computers.

[greencreeper]

My colleague (there's only two of us) was having trouble with a CD drive. I told him it was a floppy drive, hence the trouble. But no - wouldn't have it. I'm the newbie and what do I know huh. I let him flounder - the hard lessons are the best lessons. After a bit I opened a command prompt and typed A: and the drive light came on. Then he accepted it was a floppy drive. I've encountered this quite a bit over the years, either because I'm a newbie or because I'm young. Did I mention that my colleague has a degree and MCSE?

[Chris W]

Best piece of advice i could give would be to learn at least two ways of doing everything that you need people to do- to use Russ's example, if a person is having problems right clicking on my computer, it can all be done with left clicks.... start-> settings-> control panel-> system gives you the same info as a right click on my computer.

If a person cannot manage to highlight and delete everything in the address bar of internet explorer, press F6 and it highlights it so you can just get them to type over it, or F5 refreshes a page, windows key + m will minimize all the windows etc etc

Knowing two ways to do things can save you time, as you learn quicker ways to do things, and can also save frustration of you and the caller- they will get frustrated if you try to get them to do the same thing over and over again that they can't do, and you will get frustrated with asking.

Good luck with the job anyway :) it can be very amusing... stressful... infuriated... satisfying... so enjoy :)

MB

[timewarrior2001]

Do not say press control alt and delete.

You will get someone asking where the control key is.

To be fair, second line support probably isnt going to be as brain dead as first, Firstline should get all the people that cant do the basic tasks and solve the problem with first time fixes.
Where I work the Second line support team only contact the customer if they need any more info or the customer to do something. Just remember avoid techie jargon, not only is it mind numbingly boring but its also a poor excuse to confuse the not so tech savvy peeps.

As for saying I do not speak french......

Je nais parle le francaise
Parlez vous anglais?

I do not speak French, do you speak English? (I think)

[Macca371]

I'm trying to find out how to say "I don't speak French" I've got the "Goodbye" bit

Je ne parle pas le francais, parlez vous anglais?



Here are some others of those:

Spanish
No hablo espanol, hablas ingles?

German
Ich spreche nicht deutsche, sprechen sie Inglisch? (i think)

[Chris W]

Je ne parle pas le francais, parlez vous anglais?



Here are some others of those:

Spanish
No hablo espanol, hablas ingles?

German
Ich spreche nicht deutsche, sprechen sie Inglisch? (i think)

If we are going down this road....

I think if i remember my sixth form German, it should either be Ich Spreche keine Deutsch, sprechen Sie Englisch? or Ich kann night Desutsch sprechen, sprechen Sie Englisch?

Oh and just incase it is useful the Thai is...

phom pood thai mai dai krub, khun pood angrit mai krub?

:)

[cookie_365]

Maybe I should add something about the other side of the coin - my own idiocies.

I work in a smallish sub-office. Small enough not to warrant any IT support staff, but big enough to have things go wrong fairly regularly, with perhaps not the most IT friendly people in the world. So since I know a bit about PCs, can diagnose faults, etc, it's my job to act as a go between between the users and IT dept - translating dufus into geek, if you like.

Anyway, one weekend the facilities company that manages our building decided to run a test on the electrical circuits, which would involve a power surge. As we only work office hours our IT people thought that although the risk was minimal, they still wanted the servers etc disconnected from the power supply just to be on the safe side, and needed someone to bring the servers down, etc.

Now, this was a big step up from what I'd done before, so I wanted an IT bod to talk me through it, so at 6.20 on Friday I'm in the server room, calling this guy up, and he talks me through doing the backup, taking down the server, disconnecting the UPS, etc. It's all going swimmingly well.

The next step is to start shutting down the network hardware, so I start powering off the first router.

Phone goes dead.

It's at this stage that I remember that I'm using the fixed line phone in the server room. About 3 weeks earlier I'd spent the weekend 'helping' to install the new digital phone system, which kind of relied on having the network running. Turning the router back on didn't do any good, since the phone system needed initialising and we hadn't got to that bit yet.

No problem, just get my mobile and call him back. Only while we were waiting for the server to go down I did a bit of doodling ... on the printed email with the guy's extension number on it ... where the number was ...

I just about remembered not to press 'redial' but I did find myself walking towards the nearest PC to log in and reprint the email before I realised how futile that would be.

I ended up having to use my skill & judgement to try to decipher what the number was - luckily after about the third I got someone who was working late & managed to put me through to him.

Duh ! :dunce:

[poolking]

Maybe I should add something about the other side of the coin - my own idiocies.

I work in a smallish sub-office. Small enough not to warrant any IT support staff, but big enough to have things go wrong fairly regularly, with perhaps not the most IT friendly people in the world. So since I know a bit about PCs, can diagnose faults, etc, it's my job to act as a go between between the users and IT dept - translating dufus into geek, if you like.

Anyway, one weekend the facilities company that manages our building decided to run a test on the electrical circuits, which would involve a power surge. As we only work office hours our IT people thought that although the risk was minimal, they still wanted the servers etc disconnected from the power supply just to be on the safe side, and needed someone to bring the servers down, etc.

Now, this was a big step up from what I'd done before, so I wanted an IT bod to talk me through it, so at 6.20 on Friday I'm in the server room, calling this guy up, and he talks me through doing the backup, taking down the server, disconnecting the UPS, etc. It's all going swimmingly well.

The next step is to start shutting down the network hardware, so I start powering off the first router.

Phone goes dead.

It's at this stage that I remember that I'm using the fixed line phone in the server room. About 3 weeks earlier I'd spent the weekend 'helping' to install the new digital phone system, which kind of relied on having the network running. Turning the router back on didn't do any good, since the phone system needed initialising and we hadn't got to that bit yet.

No problem, just get my mobile and call him back. Only while we were waiting for the server to go down I did a bit of doodling ... on the printed email with the guy's extension number on it ... where the number was ...

I just about remembered not to press 'redial' but I did find myself walking towards the nearest PC to log in and reprint the email before I realised how futile that would be.

I ended up having to use my skill & judgement to try to decipher what the number was - luckily after about the third I got someone who was working late & managed to put me through to him.

Duh ! :dunce:
That is just pure class. :D

[MikeyB]

Some good advice there greencreeper, specially knowing two ways of doing things, particularly as not everyone will do everything the same way!

And try not to get annoyed if they don't know what you are talking about, I know it may seem obvious to us, but for someone who doesn't know about computers, you'll be talking gibberish, trust me, my Dad is the worst!!!!!


One I remember from my days on the support desk where I work, was one day getting a call from someone saying they got a floppy disk stuck in the disk drive.
So off I go, screwdriver in hand, and soon spot the problem, they had managed to get TWO disks in the floppy drive. When i showed them, they said they had a job getting it in there and had to force it :rolleyes:

As for things I've done, following on from cookie_365 post.
Must have been 7 or 8 years ago, I was in the server room doing some work with my colleague. We had done, and were on the way out of the room, when I spot a "normal" PC tower unit sat on a desk, still powered on.
So my reaction was to turn it off... Without thinking, I hit the power switch, as soon as I do I realise it's our email server (we were testing email then!)
So I'm stood there with my finger on the power switch. This was when the power switch was a proper switch!! But what can I do, stand here all night???
Well I took my finger off, powered the machine back on, and blamed it on the fact that we were still testing :dunce:

[Strzelecki]

Thing that got me is where is the 'Any' key? Never did find it!:D I'm unfortunate enough to work as customer service/tech support for a major PC Store (guess :idea: ) and we've had loads of great ones. I've had quite a few people come in saying they need their pc repairing as it's crashing and all they bring in is the tft screen, then give you a funny look when you ask where the computer is! I did serve a bloke who came in complaining that the mobile phone he bought from us didn't work (we don't sell mobiles), when he held it to his ear there was no dial tone... it was an ordinary PS/2 mouse! The best story though is someone who came in asking about making a claim on the insurance they'd purchased to cover their laptop. It covers accidental damage so we told him that we needed to see the laptop to assess it first. He agree with this then calm explained that he was using his laptop in his boat off the coast of america somewhere and got stuck in a freak storm and the boat went down with his laptop in it....he sent some divers to go and retrieve it and so got a new laptop!

[Stuart]

Before we had a dedicated server room, we just had four or five servers in mine and my boss's office. The office had been re-wired with extra sockets connected to their own circuit breaker. My boss went on holiday, so I decided to have some music on, but I was setting my own PC up again, so couldn't use that. I get my walkman, plug some speakers into that.. The speakers are mains powered, so I found a spare socket, plugged them in and, all of a sudden, I heard a whining noise (fans spinning down) then silence. I hadn't realised that the circuit breaker was on it's limit in terms of load, so me plugging the speakers into it had tripped it and shut down the servers. Luckily I was able to get all the servers back up before anyone noticed. Not long after this, we got a UPS.

[Gareth]

I'm in tech support for a BPM software company. Most of our callers are pretty clued up, but not all of 'em. I remember a while back asking one customer, who I thought was brighter than he turned out to be, to do an rpcinfo (a command in *nix) and send it to me. Shortly afterwards, I received an email from the guy which contained an attachment - the rpcinfo executable, not the output of the command! :rolleyes:

Oh, and call me pedantic, but in French you should really say Je ne parle pas francais - you don't need to say le francais

[greencreeper]

Cookie's tale is strangely apt in that the server room where I work has two mobiles constantly on charge in case of total systems failure, including the fancy telephone exchange thingy.

One of my tasks will be to image a laptop and put all the user's work back onto it. I can see something going terribly wrong, I just know it :disturbd:

I asked a mate and he's given me, which hopefully will be enough:

"Excusez-moi, je ne parle pas francais. Ne quitez pas, je vous transfer a mon collegue."

"Excusez-moi, je ne parle pas francais. Veuillez renouveller votre appel
plus tard quand mon collegue francophone sera la."

[Gareth]

I asked a mate and he's given me, which hopefully will be enough:

"Excusez-moi, je ne parle pas francais. Ne quitez pas, je vous transfer a mon collegue."

"Excusez-moi, je ne parle pas francais. Veuillez renouveller votre appel
plus tard quand mon collegue francophone sera la." Very good - that will do the job perfectly! Unfortunately, at our place, le collegue francophone is me :eek:

[Marge]

he he he can I add my name to the thick list. I took some pictures for my sister and she has been pecking my head as to why I haven't emailed them to her :mad: I got my lead for the digital camera, plugged the USB lead into my laptop and then tried plugging into my camera. No matter what I tried I couldn't get it to fit. I didn't want to force it in cos knowing my luck I'd break it, even got some little tweezers and tried fiddling with the tiny little connection thing inside the camera.

Nothing doing and 2 hours later I'm getting really fed up. Why the flaming hell won't this work....... I got the camera from Amazon so I've been on their webpage looking at contacting them with a view to returning it cos it's no good if I can't download the pics.

Well, then literally a lightbulb went on in my head, hang on I got a little camera last year that came with a USB lead, no no no I haven't been using the wrong lead, off to the drawer to check and oh yes yes yes I have :dunce: :erm: So now it's 1am and I'll have to sit up and do these damm pictures :D :D :D

So the first rule of any support, check the bloody obvious

[greencreeper]

The really cool, but sad, thing is when I think, "Cooo I'm gonna need admin rights to do this". Then I think, "I am an admin" :D Oh the power :p:

[etccarmageddon]

I once referred a client to their hardware supplier as the problem was hard disk related.

The client thus phoned the hardware support line who talked her through formatting her hard disk. Now what question should you always ask before advising someone to format their disk???

The next day I was *******ing the hardware supplier for advising someone to erase their disk without first checking they had a backup!!!

The hardware company never accepted responsibility or admitted that should have checked the client had a backup before telling them to format drive c!