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Thread: Tales from Techsupport

  1. #601
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Quote Originally Posted by Mileron View Post
    Customer: I'm having trouble installing your software.
    Me: Okay, what is happening?
    Customer: Well we got new Windows 7 workstations. And I'm able to use both the OS and the program with no problem. But when I go to your website, hit "Download", then choose "Save," I pick the folder I want - on my network drive - and hit Save. It downloads quickly - under a minute for a ten MB file - but then a window comes up that indicates "Copying Program_Setup.EXE from C:\Users\Temp to X:\Downloads... with a 9+ minute estimated time.
    Me: Okaaaayyy...
    Customer: This just started happening Tuesday.
    Me: What happened Tuesday?
    Customer: I was out of the office. Maybe it missed me and got jealous.
    Me: Anthropomorphizing computers aside, are you aware of any system updates?
    Customer: No. However our server is ailing, and with less than 2GB free on the data drive (which has a max capacity of 60GB), we're expecting a replacement in the next 60 days.

    So I remotely connect into her computer and do the downloads she needs, then try to apply them. Even with Full Control access to the destination folder, she's getting disk space warnings.
    I delve into my program's structure, delete a few older installers, some unneeded temp files, that sort of thing, (freeing up about 250MB)and go about downloading all of the update installers to her local C: drive.

    So I try the installer again - same issue.

    I try to "backdoor" it, and instead install to her C: drive, and go about copying the executables and other files that the update included.

    At this point, I discover that copying a 7.72MB file from C: to X: will take over 3 minutes. A 13MB file took over 11. Windows 7's "more details" window displays a 39KB/sec transfer rate.

    Me: Well, everything's in place, however you're having a terrible problem with your server. Information is transferring at under 40KB/second, where it should be transferring at over 30 times that (probably more.) You may want to ask your tech guy to either troubleshoot the issue, or expedite the replacement, because this sort of issue is never a good thing...
    Customer: Here's my tech
    Tech: What's the problem now?
    Me: Your gig-ethernet capable server is transferring files at 39KB/second
    Tech: That doesn't sound too bad, it's gig-e after all
    Me: Maybe you didn't hear me right. I said 39 KILOBYTES per second.
    Tech: Yeah, that's riii... wait, what?
    That reminds me of one I had a few months back.

    An e-mail went out to the procurement guy (and the whole IT team) with the subject line "[LOL]What is the requisition process for..."

    and contained the following:

    ...2,998,928 Terabytes of drive space?

    image001.jpg

    Soandso apparently needs it.
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  2. #602
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Procurement guy replies:

    3TB of drive space for what? Internal or external?
    Is this for a customer or for us? If external do you need USB or NAS?
    If internal, internal to what?

    Everyone proceeds to laugh their asses off.
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  3. #603
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Double Duh Day:

    1:

    Get a call from a customer who is having an issue where a certain setting isn't being saved.
    I remotely connect to her computer, see the number is getting truncated. I have the same problem on my system.
    Forward all appropriate logs to the developer who says "Oh, yeah, numbers that start with that combination of digits are getting stuck because the encryption model won't save this information in ASCII in a plaintext file."
    I say back to him, "Good thing it's not personally identifying information, huh?
    He responds back, "Why?"

    2:

    An important part of our web server stopped working on Monday night, just out of nowhere. Pages are being displayed that shouldn't exist.
    Tuesday morning my counterpart emails development and says "This isn't right, please fix."
    Development replies and says "there's nothing wrong, you can't prove anything."
    We provide over a dozen screenshots and randomly poke around on the website to prove it. This was ten in the morning.
    After providing this information to development, we get no response.
    So I send a followup email around 4pm saying "WTF?" so in short order they provide some random and bs response about how the downloads of the program shouldn't be affected, blah blah blah... and yet they are.
    The next morning (today), there's an email that says "oh yeah there was a problem with the server storing thousands of ASPX pages that it shouldn't have been, and instead of creating new ones, was backtracking and using old ones, but that's okay we restored the web folder"
    Us: When will this be fixed?
    Dev: Fix what?

  4. #604
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Coworker walks up to my desk and says "When I do X Y and Z at home, it doesn't work"
    Me: What doesn't work? (asking for clarification)
    Coworker: X, Y, and Z
    Me: Are you doing 1 before X, 2 before Y, and 3 before Z?
    Coworker: How do I know?

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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Email to customer's tech: We need you to download X utility. Once downloaded, Unzip the file. The included EXE will fix your issue.
    Tech reply: We followed your instructions. Here is the file size and icon of the utility. (file size is too small; icon is incorrect.) When we run it, we get an error, "this file is not compatible with this version of windows" This is unacceptable. We need this utility to fix this issue.

    My reply: The file you are running, while the correct file, is not in a usable state. Per previous instructions, you must UNZIP the file you received before you can use it. You cannot rename it to .EXE.

    Tech: Why can't I just rename it? It's still an EXE.

  6. #606
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Quote Originally Posted by Mileron View Post
    Email to customer's tech: We need you to download X utility. Once downloaded, Unzip the file. The included EXE will fix your issue.
    Tech reply: We followed your instructions. Here is the file size and icon of the utility. (file size is too small; icon is incorrect.) When we run it, we get an error, "this file is not compatible with this version of windows" This is unacceptable. We need this utility to fix this issue.

    My reply: The file you are running, while the correct file, is not in a usable state. Per previous instructions, you must UNZIP the file you received before you can use it. You cannot rename it to .EXE.

    Tech: Why can't I just rename it? It's still an EXE.
    Seriously, the guy was a tech? Wow!
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  7. #607
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Quote Originally Posted by Mileron View Post
    Email to customer's tech: We need you to download X utility. Once downloaded, Unzip the file. The included EXE will fix your issue.
    Tech reply: We followed your instructions. Here is the file size and icon of the utility. (file size is too small; icon is incorrect.) When we run it, we get an error, "this file is not compatible with this version of windows" This is unacceptable. We need this utility to fix this issue.

    My reply: The file you are running, while the correct file, is not in a usable state. Per previous instructions, you must UNZIP the file you received before you can use it. You cannot rename it to .EXE.

    Tech: Why can't I just rename it? It's still an EXE.

    How could a tech not know to right click and extract? Hasn't windows been able to unzip since XP? Not to mention any company computer will have an unzip utility anyway.
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    It's definitely a full moon.

    Tech: When my user prints, she get error messages saying ".NET 4 is missing and needs to be installed"
    Me: It needs to be installed from Microsoft's website
    Tech: Well why didn't you alert me that we needed it?
    Me: That information is included in the release email, the release notes, the installer, and after successful installation the program pops up a warning box as soon as it opens, if .NET 4 is not detected, that it needs to be installed.
    Tech: You expect me to read a warning box?

    Here's another good one

    Customer: I imported from my 2011 return, and I'm getting information duplication. When I delete the duplicate record, it removes the original record.
    Me: This issue, while now rare, may occur when importing from a prior year tax program that has not been updated to its final release version.
    Customer: I finished my returns, why would I update after that?
    Me: Because it's necessary
    Customer: Well it was never necessary before
    Me: According to your records you called back in 2008 with the exact same problem
    Customer: That was five years ago, how am I supposed to remember that?
    Me: Be that as it may, we need you to update your programs before you can import
    Customer: I think it's stupid that you release versions of the programs after people stop using them
    Me: So fixing bugs and releasing further updates, one of several things your yearly payment covers, as it does this support call, is stupid?
    Customer: YES!

  9. #609
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Our support guy asked a user for a screenshot showing a problem they were reporting. What he got was a low resolution photo taken by a phone camera of their monitor...

    support screen_shot.JPG

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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Just keep repeating to yourself. 100 is the average IQ.
    Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office

  11. #611
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Quote Originally Posted by Merkus View Post
    Our support guy asked a user for a screenshot showing a problem they were reporting. What he got was a low resolution photo taken by a phone camera of their monitor...
    With the snipping tool it's even easier now for non-tech savvy employees to grab screenshots, you can grab exactly what part of the screen you want, easy as pie. I still use alt+print screen key mostly, because that plus paste to email, etc is still easier and quicker.
    'This world may be another planet's hell.'{Aldous Huxley}
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  12. #612
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    I use Snagit....really great tool for grabbing screen shots and adding notes, pointers, etc.

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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Quote Originally Posted by Merkus View Post
    I use Snagit....really great tool for grabbing screen shots and adding notes, pointers, etc.
    I use Greenshot because open source > *

  14. #614
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    I have 150mb of pictures and I can't email them to <the person across the hall>, can you help me?

  15. #615
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    This is what happens when you buy your 70-year old mom her first smart phone. I didn't want to, but she said she needed it.


    mom text.png

  16. #616
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Quote Originally Posted by Merkus View Post
    This is what happens when you buy your 70-year old mom her first smart phone. I didn't want to, but she said she needed it.
    So she can ask her homies "Hey where you at? Get yo Buick Imperial over here cuz it's BAZINGO NIZIGHT!"

  17. #617
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    You think her reply might be some old-people lingo us kids just don't understand?

  18. #618
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    You need to put that fucker on:
    http://www.parentsshouldnttext.com/
    I've got beer to drink and You guys are wasting my time.

  19. #619
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    I think I earned my pay for the week with this one issue...

    Worked from home this morning (because I was a tard, and ate mashed potatoes with milk, and being lactose intolerant, that weren't too SMRT)
    My internet dies at 8:30, and then again at 9:30... Just moments after I find out that one of the sales managers, who had been on vacation for the last 2 weeks, came in to find out her computer's hard drive crashed.

    I spent a half hour troubleshooting it, before I got her office quiet (and empty) enough to hear the death throes of the hard drive. Shit.

    So I swap the drive in from another computer - boots just fine. Except then I can't get the damn thing on the domain.
    Apparently, you can't do that with Windows 7 - so I had to swap the original hardware for Drive2 with PC1. No biggie.

    Went over her options - suck it up, etc - only to find out she doesn't have a recent backup of her Very Important Emails(TM) since at least 2008 and she's practically in tears.

    I remember that I bought an SATA-USB Bridge a couple years ago, but misplaced it somewhere in the move... so I tell her I have one possible option left and leave it at that.

    I get home, I find the bridge, connect it up, and drive still won't spin up.

    I throw it in a ziploc bag with a silica packet, then into the freezer for over an hour.

    Pop it in the bridge, BAM, spins right up. I copy her data off.

    Of course, onto the only W7 computer I have - my own - since I was pretty sure the NTFS partition wouldn't let me put it anywhere else - but that's okay, I'll just take my own external in tomorrow.

  20. #620
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    Re: Tales from Techsupport

    Email from Project Manager overseeing my office's move next month:

    PM: While reviewing the phone circuit setups we noticed there's no internet connection ordered for the new office.

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