Aggravating stories from tech illiterates

[loco365]

So, college life (AKA "You really should know better by now")...

A friend of a friend ran into my room and begged for help with his printer. He had a big paper due the next day, and if he couldn't print it out, he was going to be "dead" and "toast" (in that order, mind you). According to him, his printer had been just fine until all of a sudden, it refused to print. No matter how many times he would press print, nothing materialized.

I'm no computer expert, but of all the people present that night, I guess I was the go-to guy.

So I enter his room and get to work. His printer is fine, it has paper and ink, there's no print jobs, etc. I was about to try printing out another copy when I looked down at his windows to see "Microsoft One Note".

It turns out he had been unknowingly been sending all of his print jobs (about 15 in all) to Microsoft One Note rather than his printer, and this was the source of all his grief and frustration.

TL;DR: Microsoft One Note is a harbinger of pain and misery.

Good god. Our school computers do the same thing. We have to make sure we select the correct printer. Not to mention there's close to 50 printers.

 

[Felipe_9595]

At the beginning of the year, we had to enter to one website of our school to see our qualifications and to get some important papers. The problem: the retarded IP limited the access to the page to only allow 100 users at once. Our school has 4400 students. The result: the server got overloaded only 5 mintues after the website was up and nobody could get their necesary papers on time.

 

[Coto]

Hahaha, at least you didn't have that stupid IP-pool blocking policy Movistar has (up to three shared IPs). Also, intranet on most universities tend to collapse as soon as a lot of people try to gather their data at once.

 

[Felipe_9595]

Hahaha, at least you didn't have that stupid IP-pool blocking policy Movistar has (up to three shared IPs). Also, intranet on most universities tend to collapse as soon as a lot of people try to gather their data at once.

In fact, we have Movistar internet lolololololol

And yah our intranet is shit, it doesnt help at all that the people in charge of it are tards.

 

[mechadylan]

Somewhat related. My boss had to set up an account with a local vendor via their website so I volunteered to do it as I would probably have to have access to it at some point as well. After setting up his username and password, the following convo ensued:

Me: Okay, now we just have to set up the security question for this account.
Boss: Sure, what's the question?
Me: "What's your favorite food?"
Boss: Sauerkraut.
Me: Sauerkraut?
Boss: Yeah. What's wrong with that?!?!
Me: You DO realize that at some point you may be prompted to provide this answer, yes?
Boss: Yeah, and I'll type, "sauerkraut." What's the problem?!
Me: Sir?....
Boss: WHAT?!?!
Me: Spell, "sauerkraut."
Boss: S...O... ... ...U... ...
Me: ...
Boss: OK, OK! "TACOS" THEN; MY FAVORITE FOOD IS "TACOS!"

 

[Felipe_9595]

This is now oficially my favorite topic on the site. just lost a valuable hour of my life reading it entirely xD

 

[Taleweaver]

Fun with passwords...I saw that "sauerkraut" one coming a mile away.

We had this one new guy at one point. Not the brightest lad when it came to computers, but nothing absurd. Though it kinda raised some doubts as he turned out to be hired as a project leader for an ICT project (!).

Either way...he had problems syncing his smartphone. After about an hour of trying everything (we were new to smartphones and their settings at that time)...it turned out to be the password the user had ASSURED us was correct. He even typed it for us. Twice.

The next day: the same thing. Though against company policy, I asked him to write down his password*. He wrote it in all caps. And assured me it was all caps. And the letter 'O' (he was one of these guys where O and 0 are identical).
About fifteen minutes into troubleshooting when he was in a meeting, I did what I should've done from the start: actually try to log into his pc account. It didn't work. A bit pissed, I reset his password to match exactly what he had written. Lo and behold: everything was perfect.

Of course, that was until he tried to log in again the next morning when "his password was changed". Luckily for me, he also had that same piece of paper with him (complete with the 'all capital' and 'letter, no number' remarks). I sent him to the head of IT with it (he wasn't to the point of blaming me, but it was starting to get close).

He was fired the next day.



*not that THAT matters much: we're the guys who reset forgotten passwords

 

[DS1]

"My Mac is running slow because it's running out of space!"

"Uh, it says here there's still 60GB left on your HD..."

"But I got a popup saying I was running out of space!"

"............"

 

[Taleweaver]

Another fun one (to tell...the experience itself was irritating) from today.

But first, I've got to tell we're somewhat in the middle of a merge (long story). That means that we have a department with their own network, different computers, different version and language of windows, citrix and...well, EVERYTHING different than what we're used to. This has lead to many a "I can't print" warnings from their main pc nitwit, but that's a different story. Today, she and her colleague showed me a cell phone of yet a third person. It couldn't get on the internet. Note that this was a kind of phone I've never even seen. And, as it turns out, it wasn't even of them: it was from...an external client, perhaps? Worse...it wasn't a smartphone. Unless there are really smartphones with just dialing buttons and a screen which is barely larger than your thumb.

He insisted it was a smartphone. I didn't bother to correct his views. I just parrotted "I've never seen such a phone so I wouldn't have a clue how to help", "the internet is secured by so unauthorized personnel cannot use it" and things like that until it somehow arrived in their brains that I wouldn't drop everything just because they occupied my office with a 3-person posse.

 

[shoyrumaster11]

"the internet is secured by so unauthorized personnel cannot use it"

Than how are we on the internet now? Damn it! Those tech illiterates!

 

[BORTZ]

This is a really simple one from high school.

I had 4th period :Moving Making" in the computer lab. One of my friends worked next to me, lets call him jon.
I have another friend who rode the bus with me, a few years younger but he apparently sat at the same computer station a few periods later in the day.

All of the computers had "Deep Freeze 3" installed on them as part of the boot image. I guess it was the school way of keeping the computers from getting bogged down with stuff people download and shiz. I cant remember if its important to the story or not but ill explain it anyways. DF3 deletes everything that isnt on the original boot image or saved by the admin or something. So if you changed the background, it would be gone and back to the default DF3 when you logged back in. But you could move icons around and stuff and they would stay... My guess is that we didnt have an active DF3 license because it would create some really weird problems. Like i changed my background one day, and when i came back the next, I simply had a DF3 logo over my background, but it was still there... So out tech department was pretty much shiz.

So jon one day started noticing things were quite right on his machine. like the mouse would be unplugged...
OH. If you messed up your password 3 times on our particular XP/Citrix network, you would get logged out for 15 minutes or so... so being the dicks we were, we would log out at the end of the day and purposely get locked out so the next person would have to sit there for 15 minutes with nothing to do...

So one day jons icons wouldnt work. He couldnt find any of the programs in this start bar either.
Later i came to figure out that mattie (the kid on the bus) had gotten bored and drug all the icons out of the start bar and onto his desktop. lol
But for some reason that meant that no one else that logged in could access the programs on that computer...lol.

Once i figured out that mattie could do whatever he wanted and screw up jons account, i convinced him to delete the sys.32 file. he knew what it would do, and we both thought it was funny, until the next day...

Then it was hilarious. Jons computer had been sluggish that day, and the more he worked on it, the slower it got. So he restarted it. It showed the initial monitor spec and the F4 and F12 boot options... then a message saying "A critical dll is missing, please try agian"

I died laughing.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Cmon bortz, we all know deleting system32 makes the computer run faster. Stop lying :/

(anyway, wouldn't df3 have just restored everything?)

 

[Arras]

Cmon bortz, we all know deleting system32 makes the computer run faster. Stop lying :/

(anyway, wouldn't df3 have just restored everything?)

Honestly I have never heard of Deep Freeze but I'd think it wouldn't be able to restore anything if it doesn't get to run. Also yeah, I broke about two or three school computers this way. One by deleting the entire WINDOWS folder, one by deleting Win/sys32/hal.dll and one by editing desktop.ini.

 

[BORTZ]

Cmon bortz, we all know deleting system32 makes the computer run faster. Stop lying :/

(anyway, wouldn't df3 have just restored everything?)

Well like I said, DF3 was spotty... Like my freshman year it world like the admins wanted. But by my senior year (when all this happened) it was kinda... broken. It was really weird.

And DF3 was like an application that ran after the computer was logged in or something... I dont think it had access to the sys files.

 

[BORTZ]

I cant stand people who are ignorant about cell phones either.

Two and a half years ago... right when the very first 4G phones were hitting and the iphone 4 had just dropped. My uh, classmate was due for an upgrade over the summer and everything so he got a new one.

One of my friends was over showing me his new iphone 4, which was pretty sweet at the time.
So the "classmate" (we werent really all that great of friends, he just thought we were) was on rounds and waltzed into my room.
"Bortz! i havent seen you yet this year, look at my new phone!" pulls out the first EVO 4G and shows me its pixelaty screen, and how much of an oversized monster it was. And then goes on to brag how much better it was than the iphone. Before anyone gets all "Ifone suxx" on me, lets remember this is 2 and a half years ago, before android had really gotten a solid grip and the iphone was generally a better phone than most. He goes on. "Yeah i switched from Verizon to Sprint so i could get 4G and this awesome phone (also this was before VZN had the iphone). Its so awesome.

His phone starts buzzing. "Oh im getting a call. smell ya later"
He walks out the door and i remember him saying something like "Yeah its a new one, i hardly get any service anywhere in this town. And ive been into the city and havent found 4G yet..."

He switched to AT&T 3 months later and got an iphone 4.
4G still hasnt hit our area.
He is now on Verizon with a 4S he bought right before the 5 was announced (even though i told him to wait) and now hes pissed and wants the 5.

 

[mechadylan]

I'm trying hard not to stray off topic, but seeing as how "smartphones/dumb people" has popped up a few times:

Neighbor: Hey I got the new 4G phone.
Me: Cool, how do you like it?
Neighbor: Not so much. Sometimes I only get like 1 or 1 and half G's.

 

[Taleweaver]

"the internet is secured by so unauthorized personnel cannot use it"

Than how are we on the internet now? Damn it! Those tech illiterates!

Not on my company, you aren't. And not on an 'unauthorised' computer/smartphone/whatever either.

...which kinda reminds me: somewhere at the end of February, we suddenly got all sorts of strange effects with our network. PC's that had worked fine suddenly didn't got an IP-address anymore. After some hairpulling troubleshooting of every freakin setting and the kitchen sink, I ended up with what I, until then, thought was impossible:
-PC A on patch A doesn't get an IP-address
-PC A on patch B gets an IP-address
-my own laptop on patch A gets an IP-address.

Lots of calls that got totally ignored by those partners (this is usual: I remember a call where some tech support claimed I should contact the bsm (short for "Business Service Manager"). My reply: "I AM THE BDSM! ...erm...I mean: I am the BSM!". *) actually got a result. Turns out they were experimenting with a new security protocol. Literally 5 seconds after I stated the PC name and someone in charge of that protocol, things were back to normal.
All in all, five different problems without solution (among which: not being able to get an IP-address for new PC's. PC's delivered by them, on their network).


One week later (on my birthday, no less!), someone from that company proudly proclaimed their ever innovative search for quality by utilising a new security protocol that "would normally not hinder the end users". My chiefs don't want me to state opinions openly, or I would have replied to everyone to put it where the sun didn't shine for all of the five or six reasons why end users MOST CERTAINLY DID experience hindrance. Instead, I only informed my chiefs. They went "diplomatic" on things. For now, it's disabled for everyone until further notice.


...but I got off-topic. I was going to tell a much smaller story about the internet. You see, when you're on our network, there are two settings for internet:
-standard. This is pretty much "no internet except to specific whitelisted sites".
-full: this is to all sites except the ones who are blocked (facebook, porn, games...you know: everything fun).

Unfortunately enough, some wiseguy thought it was neat to whitelist google for the standard setting. End result: I've had at least three people who were CONVINCED they were granted full internet "because google worked". Of course, none of the replies gave any hit, but that wasn't worth mentioning until further probing.


*yes, that really happened. Low level tech troubleshooting ("are you SURE you restarted?") does that to me.

I'm trying hard not to stray off topic, but seeing as how "smartphones/dumb people" has popped up a few times:

Neighbor: Hey I got the new 4G phone.
Me: Cool, how do you like it?
Neighbor: Not so much. Sometimes I only get like 1 or 1 and half G's.

Me: 1 and a half G's? You throw it against the wall THAT hard?
Believe it or not, but I tend to come up with those sorts of responses without missing a beat (though my tongue sometimes has troubles explaining the image popping up in my mind).


And another gem from today:

Yesterday (note: yesterday!) some guy calls, kinda aggravated, because the network printer "still doesn't work". There were all these mailings going back and forth but nothing was done. Except that he mailed all that to my colleague and not to me (or, you know, the mailbox where you SHOULD deposit complaints so the entire team knows about it). After him forwarding the case, I started my routine to call around and make some passive-aggressive threats. One of the decent guys in that company checked it out.
He mailed me today that it was fixed. Kinda odd...the case concerned the printer manufacturer not wanting to intervene because the given printer serials didn't match. Nice to hear that it was solved, but even then it tends to take a few days to get a tech in the correct place with the correct equipment. So I called the guy back. Only now, he tells me that he isn't near the printer itself.
He called me back less than 5 minutes later. He sounded apologetic: the printer was repaired 2 days ago.
Everyone had complained to him about it when it was broken, but by the time it got fixed, nobody even bothered to mention it.

 

[mechadylan]

Part I

I arrived at work one morning and was immediately greeted by a frustrated co-worker:

Co-worker: The system is down! The internet is down! My computer is slow! I think it's THAT virus they're talking about!

I walk over and observe the following: anti-virus scan hasn't been run for a while, Java update pending, and 67 (not even exaggerating) critical updates!

Me: You really need to address these updates.

Co-worker: Can you do it for me while I use your computer?

Me: Sure, just don't break that one too.

We switch desks and I go about updating and he attempts to go about working on a "foreign" computer (mind you, we were both on XP Home at the time.) After several minutes of clicks and frustrations, he finally blurts out:

Co-worker: Your computer doesn't work either! The system is down! The internet is down! I think you have THAT virus they're talking about too!

I walk back over to my desk and see that he's managed to open up about 6 Internet Explorer windows and they are all at "about:blank."

Me: Well first off, you don't need that many windows open. *click *click *click *click *click

Co-worker: But none of them are going to the internet.

Me: That's because, #2 you haven't told IE where to go yet.

Co-worker: Well on my computer, when I click the button it goes directly to my login screen at *business name here* .com.

Me: That's because that is YOUR preference on YOUR browser on YOUR computer.

Co-worker: And yours is different?

Me: Yes.

Co-worker: But why is it blank?

Me: Because that's my preference.

Co-worker: Why?

Me: BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I FUCKING PREFER!

Part II

Co-worker: So you actually type out website names?!?!

Me: Not always, no.

Co-worker: So how do you go to different websites?

Me: I use my bookmarks.

Co-worker: What's a bookmark?

Me: Umm, simply put, it's a list of commonly visited websites in the form of clickable links.

Co-worker: Ohhhhhh! You mean my my favorites! (not a typo, he actually said, "my My favorites.")

Part III

(casual convo ensues as I continue to update and he continues to work)

Co-worker: Ya know, it's really stupid the way you have your computer set up.

Me: Excuse me?

Co-worker: It's almost like you've intentionally made it impossible for someone like me to go on the internet from your computer.

Me: Yeah, how about that.

 

[BORTZ]

Please post more stories, its been a long week away from the temp and i could use some more tech shiz.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

In the course of a few months about two computers broke around my house. My mom thought it was my fault since I usually am the one installing most of the software and end up using them a lot but it wasn't. The computers were crap, outdated when we got them seven years ago. Now my mom feels a bit distrustful of me using a computer. When I got my laptop (which I'm using now) she said "...Maybe you should wait until school to start using it."

I'm not some tech guru but I know how to handle a computer. No one seems to understand that however.