User insisted their screen was blank, until admitting it wasn't
- Reference: 1765524607
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/12/12/on_call/
- Source link:
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Charles" who told us that last century he worked at what he called " The very large German bank."
"My job was architecting and writing programs that automated the network, connecting the bank's mainframe to terminals," Charles told On Call.
[1]
He was very good at that job and built a reputation as a go-to resource for anything to do with the bank's networks.
[2]
[3]
Which is why one day the bank's help desk called and asked for Charles because a user claimed to have a problem that had utterly confounded both first and second level support.
Charles called the user, who sounded quite upset because he was trying to edit a file but the screen of his terminal was blank.
[4]
"I asked him the ID number of his terminal and looked at what the network had to say about it," Charles told On Call. He learned that the terminal was running just fine, and that every piece of the network between the mainframe and the user was online and in good order. Charles could even see the user's editor session in the OS.
He therefore asked again if the user's screen was blank.
The user insisted their terminal displayed nothing but an expanse of black.
[5]
"That was strange because in those days the terminals had a status line at the bottom showing the machine ID, whether they are connected, what the cursor position is and other information," Charles told On Call. "This status line was always there. Always. The user said the screen was black. I checked again and again. We went through this for nearly half an hour. Nothing ever changed. I said everything looked fine and the user said the screen was pitch black."
Charles was stumped and at the point of giving up when he had an idea.
"I asked if any pixels were lit up on the screen, of any color. I told the user to start in the top left corner of the screen and tell me about every single lit-up pixel from there to the bottom right corner."
The user did as they were told and before long informed Charles that he had spotted some pixels at the bottom of the screen, and they were arranged into a sentence that read "HSM[some numbers] Recalling dataset... from tape..."
At this point, Charles realized four important pieces of knowledge.
One was that HSM stands for "Hierarchical Storage Manager," which meant the user's terminal was waiting to load a file from tape. The second was that not all of the bank's tapes were online, and that sometimes loading a file meant waiting for someone to physically locate the tape and insert it into a drive. The third was that the bank's tape operators weren't enthusiastic workers, so it was not uncommon for an hour or two to pass before anyone found a tape.
[6]Vendor's secret 'fix' made critical app unusable during business hours
[7]Cabling survived dungeons and fish factories, until a lazy user took the network down
[8]Linux admin hated downtime so much he schlepped a live UPS during office move
[9]Developer battled to write his own documentation, but lost the boss fight
His last realization was that the HSM message had been on the user's screen throughout all of his interactions with level one support, level two support, and Charles.
"I took a deep breath, did my best to keep my composure, and explained the editor was waiting for the file to be loaded from tape and this was the reason why his screen was mostly black," Charles told On Call.
He then asked the user why he said the screen was blank when the HSM message was clearly visible.
The user responded by explaining the HSM message wasn't something he had seen before, or part of the editor's interface, so he decided it was nothing.
"I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'" Charles told On Call. "That was absolutely the most bizarre support call that I ever had to handle and I needed quite some time to get over it."
What's the most bizarre support call you've handled? And how did you get over it? If sharing your story will help your recovery, [10]click here to send On Call an email so we can share your story on a future Friday. ®
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/05/on_call/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/28/on_call/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/21/on_call/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/14/on_call/
[10] mailto:oncall@theregister.com
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Reminds me of the time ...
This article reminds me of an event back in the 1980s when we were loading some early release software and it always failed with a blank screen. The Dev’s/support were adamant what we were seeing wasn’t possible, until one of the support guys uttered the subsequently immortal words “you did type ‘GO’ “
Us: “what?”
Support: “ when the screen is refreshed (ie. Goes blank) you need to type “GO”
Us: “ but that’s not what your instructions say”
Support: “sorry forgot to update”
Did support for various tablet hardware. HUNDREDS of similar calls:
"my screen just has your fruity company logo in the middle and refuses to boot"
What color is most of the screen? silver with a black logo
You're looking at the back of the tablet, turn it over......."oh that worked!"
And these are users who've owned an eye-pad for 2-3years but somehow 'forgot' which bit is the front and which is the back.
Other calls include "I have a special device..it doesn't HAVE a button on the front"..."again, you are looking at the BACK of the device!"
Handled several solicitor calls because people for a well-known ISP got a 'wireless router' and were upset it still had a power cord. "BUT THATS NOT WIRELESS!"
Had at least THREE different people cut the cords off their keyboard and mouse because "I have wireless internet now, and don't need these cables anymore!" then would demand replacement devices.
And people would literally start legal proceedings.....
If these are for real...
I despair* for the human race.
* Well, more really...
Handled several solicitor calls because people for a well-known ISP got a 'wireless router' and were upset it still had a power cord. "BUT THATS NOT WIRELESS!"
Had at least THREE different people cut the cords off their keyboard and mouse because "I have wireless internet now, and don't need these cables anymore!" then would demand replacement devices.
And people would literally start legal proceedings.....
what part of the world was that in?
legal professionals should have their licenses revoked if they thought they could waste their customers money like that.
to be fair though, descriptions of things should be better, ofcom giving virgin permission calling their network fibre when the last mile was predominantly coax is an obvious egregious example.
" A wire less" = "wireless". It sort of makes sense.
And regarding the user with "nothing" (i.e. not what they were expecting) on the screen - I've handled a similar call and was similarly bemused. From that, I learned to ask very specific questions that were meaningful to the user.
Solicitors...
To become a solicitor, one has to undergo lots of education... Hmm.
I worked for a company who had a client that was a huge firm of solicitors.
Support call came in. A solicitor had worked on a document ALL DAY. Apparently it was very detailed. They had lunch. At the end of the day, they turned off their PC.
The next day they logged the support call. Their day's work had gone!
Lots of investigation revealed the following
- At no point during the day had they actually given the document a name or attempted to save it,
- At the end of the day, when they shut down their computer, they ignored the prompt to save the document.
Yes, we could have a look for temp files and see whether there was any way to recreate the non-document, but that became DATA RECOVERY (something which our company offered, but at a serious price). The solicitor engaged 'Solicitor Authority' and senior partners and my company folded and said we (me) would attempt to recover the data using 'best endeavours' - which meant doing it as when able while doing normal work (meaning no SLA). Consequently it slipped right down the list of priorities.
Solicitor fuming. He wanted the data NOW. He needed it. It was time sensitive. All the usual.
It has been deemed DATA RECOVERY (rejected by the client) or Best Endeavours.
Naturally, said solicitor didn't want to surrender their PC for me to access as and when i could so as to trawl though it, remotely, because they needed to use it NOW.
Guess what happened... (no, my employer didn't fold again - the data recovery aspect of their business was quite lucrative and they were not of a mind to devalue it).
Re: Solicitors...
At the end of the day, they turned off their PC.
Many years ago I has a similar issue where someone had spent the day typing in a large document then closed the word processor without saving (yes, ignoring the prompt). She was a French exchange student so perhaps language hadn't helped and was practically in tears so I needed to do something.
With the aid of trusty old Norton Utilities I was able to find the temporary file in FAT and reset the first pointer to make it visible again (undelete having failed). She still had to redo some formatting but at least she hadn't lost the whole thing.
The other occasion when something similar happened it wasn't the users fault. It was on a VAX at the local college and one of the students had saved her document at the end of the day but inadvertently used the name of one of the printers as her filename - on a VAX that meant the document was printed not filed. Cue another weepy teenager but fortunately we were able to retrieve the printout and one of our department secretaries typed it back in for her so smiles all round.
Should be interesting in the brave new world…
of exclusively "agentic AI" desktop support.
I am not sure that the agent's training would encompass the user's looking at the rear of a tablet although being an Apple user would be big clue.
Perhaps the rear should be labelled: "please turn over." Apple could use the rear camera to detect their valued but gormless customer gazing at the rear of tablet and using the Siri voice synthesis capabilty gently suggest turning the device over.
I have some sympathy for the non technical polloi when faced with non obvious things.
I have to admit that I always thought selfie cameras on smart phones † didn't mirror invert on the phone's screen until I "demonstrated" this to a non·techie with her newly acquired smartphone—très embarrassant.
A little bit of humility like crow pie goes a long way. :) [Unless it's not obvious the selfie image is not stored reversed.]
† I had stuck with feature phones (lacking selfie cameras) to the bitter end (finally Nokia Asha 300.)
"I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"
Not really.
The user is not generally aware of all the things that happening in the backend for his terminal session to work, especially back in the days where tapes were a thing that were useful on a day-to-day basis for other than system backups.
Even today, I have to remind my wife regularly that when she says Google doesn't work, I have to ask her on which browser she is. At that point, she generally blanks out for a minute before venturing "Firefox ?". So I go check and she's on Brave. I've abandoned trying to get her to understand the technicalities that are beyond the fiber cable that goes from our house to the lamppost across the street.
Don't get me wrong, she's far from being a dumb blond, but she's just not interested in that stuff. When she clicks on a link, she expects it to work, period. And since we've had our GB fiber link, I can hardly blame her. It's just that, sometimes, it's the server on the other side that is not responding fast enough for her taste (and she's not really the patient kind). In the best of cases, by the time I get to her desk in the living room, she says "oh, its working now".
Oh well, I get a bit of exercise like that.
Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"
Don't forget the exasperation of something not working (like cart) and wanting you tell them why and to fix it
Re: "The user is not generally aware of all the things [] happening'"
My task was to design a piece of software that would replace a commercial offering we were using that was incompatible with Windows 7 (which we were in the process of upgrading to).
The user showed me how it worked and what they did daily, "press F3 once then type something then press F3 twice and check the values, then press F3 n times", etc. Each time F3 was pressed, the program advanced to the next part of the workflow.
I then asked how to go back to the previous screen in case you wanted to recheck something.
"Well, you press F3 until you get to main screen again and restart pressing F3 until the screen you missed is shown", was the answer.
I looked a bit closer for a second, then pressed F2. And, to the amazement of the user, the previous screen was presented.
So, although the user had been using that program for over 10 years, they had never read the instructions shown at the bottom of every screen!
Go, Look, See
At some point it becomes quicker to send somebody round to do at-shoulder support.
Re: Go, Look, See
That might have involved a flight across Yurp
Re: Go, Look, See
Yep, Second Line too lazy to get off their arses and do their job.
Re: Go, Look, See
True - but only if there's somebody in the same premises who can do that.
Re: Go, Look, See
Even if that's not a support person, but a colleague of the end user.
Just a second pair of eyes to make sure nothing's been missed.
screen messages
I think we've all worked with people, even apparently intelligent ones, who are completely incapable of reading a message word for word from a screen.
"Storage manager waiting for tape to be loaded"? You're likely to be told that there's a message about there being no Dymo supplies in the cupboard.
Re: screen messages
I've worked with some brilliant, imaginative people, who are really quite inept at the practicalities of living amongst other humans.
I've also worked with people I initially thought dim, who turned out to have real skills in fields outside their 'normal' work.
I am very wary in my initial judgement..... although I'm not always wrong.... It's worth reflection ---->
When they (think they) know enough to be helpful
Back in the days of CRT monitors, persistent (actually) blank screens often turned out to be our users having moved something about on the desk and somehow managing to turn the brightness down. Or the so amusing colleagues who waited for someone to leave their desk and turn their monitor down.
Some of the most difficult customer support calls were with people who knew something about systems and were trying to be 'helpful' by interpreting what they were seeing rather than repeating it verbatim. For our safer regulars (i.e. had a decent working relationship, sense of humour etc.) the conversation often included "I want you to take your brain out, put it somewhere safe and just tell me word for word what you're seeing"
Re: When they (think they) know enough to be helpful
>Back in the days of CRT monitors, persistent (actually) blank screens often turned out to be our users having moved something about on the desk and somehow managing to turn the brightness down. Or the so amusing colleagues who waited for someone to leave their desk and turn their monitor down.
In open plan offices, there was the ol' leaning-over-your-colleague's-monitor-to-have-a-chat-and-surreptitiously-pulling-the-power-cable-when-they-were-looking-the-other-way-move. Or the perhaps more frustrating situation my wife had when she worked for a newspaper and was equipped with a brand spanking new Power Mac G4 Cube. With the power button on the top. With people constantly placing stuff on it - papers, books and even coffee mugs. I think it lasted about a week before she had to move it off her desk.
Nifty-Looking Desktop Computer Cases
If I designed nifty-looking desktop computer cases, mine would be shaped like pyramids, cones, or some other shapes which did not provide inviting flat, horizontal surfaces to misuse.
reminds me of the telnet test
someone says the firewall is blocking their app from working
back in the day i'd ask them to open the windows command prompt and type telnet x.x.x.x 2209 or what ever port they needed & tell me what they see.
they'd then say nothing happened or nothing is happening, i'd then say did the window go blank, they say yes I then say thats the sign it worked, if they want proof of what it looks like when it doesnt workk i get them to go to a none existent address and they see a different response namely seeing what they typed then after a pause the timeout message.
most remain sceptical until its fixed at the remote or local end by others, path in between us typically fine.
Error message
In some bespoke software I'd written there was a should-never-happen scenario which produced an error message along the lines of "phone Anonymous Coward and tell them this number: 168702342" (there were several such messages each with different numbers) - this was a debug build intended to pinpoint the conditions that led to the should-never-happen happening.
I took such a call, stating "I was using the software and an error popped up saying I should call you and give you a number" "OK, what was the number?" "I don't know, I've closed the window now"
Penny ante
In a role many years ago, a client called the helpdesk about not being able to access the system (a remote database connection).
After patiently spending nearly an hour getting the user to check, recheck and confirm the modem was working, the poor tech guy had to drive - 100 miles - to the user to discover (yes, you guessed it) the modem was unplugged. Apparently the user said there were "lights flashing" because that's what they had been told to say by the office manager.
Re: Penny ante
User: The computer isn't turning on
Me: Can you check the power lead is firmly in? (IBM PS2/50 had slightly dodgy input sockets)
User: Yes it is!
Me: Can you just unplug it and plug it back in again firmly to be sure?
User: Yes, yes, I've done that!
Me: OK, I'll call an engineer but be aware that if it's a loose power lead it will be chargeable!
A few days later...
User's Boss: Why have I just received a bill for £120 for an engineer visit?
I explained that the engineer had arrived, pushed the power lead back in and left. The boss wasn't very happy with their secretary at that point!
Ignore what isn't understood
Never under estimate the user's ability to just have blind spots about what is happening on screen.
I once sat through a user demonstrating a problem they were having when booting their computer. They insisted it there was no error message, and it was just freezing. I ended up sitting next to them as the computer booted. In course of booting an error dialog appeared, but they clicked on it before I had time to read it.
"What was that?" I asked.
"What was what?" they replied.
"That error message you clicked."
"I didn't click anything."
"I just saw you. Let's reboot again. Do not click on anything."
Turns out that their computer had been warning of an impending full C: drive for months, but they didn't understand what it was saying, so had just been ignoring it. They had got in the habit of just clicking OK on the warning so often, they'd stopped even registering they were doing it. I practically had to grab the mouse off them to stop them.
In this instance i cant blame the user for this!
Cant blame the User for the IT team being either too lazy to visit (especially in thoose days) or the the IT team being too lazy to load a tape reel. !!!!!
Re: In this instance i cant blame the user for this!
But I would be quite happy to blame the user for saying that the screen was blank when it wasn't!
"I'm looking at a Blank Screen"
I went round and round with a user complaining sbout a blank screen for a few minutes until they eventually said, "I'm looking at a blank screen. It says, 'Press any key to continue' at the bottom."
That taught me something about TUI interfaces, and how I should design them differently in the future, even if it's "just" in an MS-DOS batch file.
Reminds me of the time ...
a user claimed the image display of the microscopic image processing system I developed was upside down, and this had to do with the software update I had provided. I explained that the update did nothing to the screen, but she was adamant the software was the problem. I came to the lab, noted that the image display seemed fine, as all the letters on it weren't upside down, the status bar was in the right place, etc. She then said that the letters were OK, but the bacteria on the image were upside down, compared to how they looked through the microscope. I took one look at the microscope, rotated the camera 180 degrees, and the problem was solved.
Case closed ... except that moments later she claimed the mouse was working in reverse (cursor went left when the mouse when to the right, etc.). I again explained I had changed nothing in the mouse settings at all. Again, she was adamant the software update was to blame. Again I trundled over to the lab, looked at the mouse, rotated it 180 degrees so the "tail" was pointing away from the user, and declared the problem solved. To her credit, her cheeks did turn a fetching shade of scarlet in embarrassment. We both had a good laugh.