The first was quite a CD story...

The payroll team gave Denholm a corporate award and a $25 gift card. And during the ceremony at which Denholm was lauded, he said the Senior Tech Team glared at him with undisguised loathing.

Sounds like the IT Crowd didn't like him...

You mean : pressing the CAPS-LOCK key and walking away ?

Done that...

Alternatively (and with more justification considering how rarely most people use this button), pressing Scroll Lock and walking away.

I have a friend who is a university lecturer, quite senior. He told me his laptop was broken and the keyboard just sent nonsense to the screen. He was unable to use it for two months, until one day I visited his home and pointed out that the num lock was on, which on his tiny laptop meant half the letters on the keyboard became numbers.

The fastest I've done was for a software developer who couldn't get the camera on his laptop to work.

He had spent ages updating drivers, firmware, debugging etc...

I walked over and opened the camera cover.

That's such a software dev thing to do!

Their brains just tend to get hardwired to software debug mode.

Once you have stared into the abyss of how bad software is, it's very natural (and in fairness, usually correct) to assume that it's the cause of most problems.

Close cousin of the physical Wi-Fi slider.

Two personal bests for me, both Excel related.

1. A couple of colleagues were trying to figure out how to count the number of words in a set of strings (best practice for the purpose of these strings was to keep them under ten words).

Wrote a formula that counted the spaces, then added one to calculate (simplified) wordcount. 3 hour task reduced to 20 seconds.

2. CSV file imported into Excel had newline characters from the website input form. Junior team member had been put on fixing the file manually, had spent 8 hours to get a quarter of the way through before somebody suggested talking to me.

Built a formula based on empty cells that condensed each mangled row back into one. 32 hour task reduced to 10 minutes.

Measure length of string - Length of string with spaces replaced with empty string +1

I got asked to retype a Lotus 123 spreadsheet data into Excel, no direct import or export options on either.

Saved as CSV, imported CSV, time 15 seconds. The person who asked for it to be done told me to go away and do it properly like he asked.

See below for my other post of another incident with the same chap who asked for this.

Not seconds but minutes, but this one still impressed me.

I was writing some noddy code in C to endian swap a huge amount of data. I was doing it very slowly by reading data into memory, duplicating it, then copying multiple bytes of 8bits at a time back in (probably in a loop doing just one byte per loop)

Then a very clever colleague wrote a few lines of C that involved generating a pair of 32 bit ints from some binary masks, some bitwise AND/ORs and a single very fast arithmetic operation. I can't remember it exactly anymore but it was very impressive and reduced the processing time from "I'll run this over lunch" to "did it actually do it?".

with the tail pointing away from you.

The user I suggested it to turned a fetching shade of scarlet

There's an old saying: "If plugging it in doesn't help, try turning it on"

That simple process has led to many quick fixes for me.

FTP on windows to Unix box rang a bell there (or opened old wounds. ; )

TCP/IP QoS/ToS?

I vaguely recall having to add an undocumented line to a config file (netrc?) to change some odd* default QoS/ToS setting.

So I imagine that Usenet chap is up for two pints. ;)

_{* Solaris' System V TLI based networking could also be decidedly odd.}

Ring Ring

User: "My computer is beeping constantly!"

Me: "Take the file off the corner of the keyboard!"

User: "How did you know that?"

Me: "Magic!"

Of course the beeping resulting from a constant field overflow was distinctive, even over the phone, but you don't tell the users that as it would destroy the aura.

I work in schools and I get this one a lot:

"My mouse is going crazy! I think someone has taken over my computer! It's jumping all over the screen!"

"Remove the decorations you put around the interactive whiteboard."

"Oh."

Especially relevant at Christmas, and have also had the same because teacher was leaning back on their chair and the chair was touching the board.

I can't be the only one to have taken printer support call that went "I've just changed the ink in my printer and it's not working any more".

Queue one walk to the offending printer, remove the cartridge, remove the bright orange "Remove before fitting" tabs, refit cartridge, walk back to desk.

Had that with a judge in Scotland.

Senior Sheriff for Edinburgh so a very smart guy.

Admittedly it was an HP cartridge with a very small sticky on it which was easy enough to miss if you didn't look at the picture on the packet.

He took it in good part unlike some of the prima-donnas I had to deal with when they realised their common sense had failed them.

I was 'impressed' by a user who managed to jam a toner cartridge into a printer with the bright orange plastic still attached to it. It took me quite a while to get it back out, but the printer still worked afterwards.

They must have used a lot of force to get it in.

Fastest one I ever had was when working in support at my first job for a local UK council, fresh out of uni and still quite green.

Call came through that a PC in the front office wasn't working and just had a black screen. I did the usual phone troubleshooting of "is it turned on?" "Oh yes, there's a green light on the front". "OK, turn it off, wait a few seconds and turn it back on again". "No, still nothing, the screen is blank".

So as it was only one flight of stairs, I popped down. Walked over to the PC and hit the power button, only to see it spring into life. I learned a simple lesson that day - don't assume the users know the difference between the PC and the monitor (yes, they thought the monitor was the PC and were just turning the screen off and on again). I think the visit to the office took all of 10 seconds - 30 if you include me explaining that the little Dell box under the monitor was in fact the computer...

Edit: And a second one a number of years later for a PC where the mouse wasn't working. User had actually unplugged the mouse and plugged it back in, still no joy. I walked over, picked up the mouse and peeled the gaffer tape off the sensor. Laughter from some guys in the office as their prank had worked and one rather red-faced and irritated user!

I won't be the only 'expert' who has 'fixed' a PC by switching on the separately-powered monitor.

Not that I've ever been caught out .....

After having patiently explained to a user the difference between the screen and the computer, I then spent another half an hour on the phone trying to diagnose their problem, before realising that they were still confused, and had been turning the monitor on and off the entire time.

Not the quickest fix, but the quickest removal of the obstacle to doing the fix.

In the 90's I part-timed IT support with civil engineering design. My main IT role was looking after a MicroVAX and a Novell network. It was very stable and normally only needed sorting out the backups on Friday night and an hour over the weekends to change the tapes. But every so often it needed a bit more TLC and I was the only one with experience with VAX and VMS.

I was out of the main office in a subsidiary part of the company when the call came through that the MicroVAX was down and I needed to get in. So I went to the boss of the subsidiary and said I needed to shoot off to get the MicroVAX rebooted. He said no. I said no one can do any work at the main office. He said (and I quote) "Go back to your desk and earn money!"

So I went back to my desk, rang the main office and told them I couldn't come and why. Seconds after putting the phone down, my bosses phone rang and I could almost hear the incoming side of the conversation it was that loud! He summoned a flunky to tell me I could go because for some reason he didn't want to tell me himself. Three months later (his notice period) he was gone.

Fix took about 15 mins, plus an hour travel time, and I was back at my desk earning money.

They got rid of the VAX in '99 when the IT team brought in from the subsidiary side who were all MicroSoft guys lied about the VAX not being Y2K compliant to management.

What were you doing to the poor MicroVAX? VMS machines could be relied on to run for years without a reboot. Many only ever rebooted to install a new VMS version.

Got a call from a client that their server was beeping. I could hear it on the call. Asked them to remove what ever had been dumped on the keyboard.

"I'm trying to play some music on my computer but it's not working". Wander in to the office, turn up the volume knob on the external speakers, "Seems OK?"

A good portion of the time I find that problems have magically fixed themselves either just before or at the moment I walk through the door. Boxen feel my soothing aura no matter where they are, like Jesus and the Centurion.

I always say that it's the way I threaten them with being reprogrammed - with a large axe!

With thanks to Douglas Adams of course.

The corollary to this is the way an intractable problem evaporates as you explain it to the support desk, leaving you feeling like an idiot.

I think sometimes having someone stood looking over their shoulder helps users take it slow and (eg) correctly type their password in, but there's other problems that would seemingly magically disappear when I was in the room. I even had one user who would call me over to stand next to their desk purely because their computer would always work correctly then.

There's nothing like the elation when a problem that sounds insanely complicated over the phone turns out to be a 5 second fix...

"I opened the drawer, took out the CD and flipped it over," Russel told On Call. "Job done! They had put the disc in the drive upside-down."

Likely, this user was of what I call the "top league". It's a very rare, jolly annoying breed, which have a learning curve over 2 000+ occurrences of the *very same* fucking incident to even thinks to try the fix from the last 2 000 times.

I have one of those in the office, and it has become knee-jerk reaction for me to answer "have you tried X" and it always works. I'm often below 10 seconds ...

But those users are a bit of a cheat to records :)

Back in the early days of writeable CDs, I had a box of a brand that were unlabelled, with nothing to indicate which side was which (and no, they weren't double sided, I don't even know if any CDs were.)

At first, the quickest way to find out which way up the disk should be was to just try it and see if it worked. Later we worked out that there was some tiny printed wiring around the centre home that have you a clue.

"The server's down!" (yes, singular).

I was working consultancy for individual schools and worked 3-6 hours for a different one, often a few a day.

This was an emergency call while I was at a different customer's site. They were increasingly desperate, which is a good time to talk terms. I agreed I'd come and fix whatever the problem was - however long it took - if they paid emergency rates so that I could justify tearing myself away from the other customer I was already with that day. But also that's all I would be doing - fixing that problem.

Asked the customer I was with and they were happy for me to "swap days" (because it would similarly benefit them if anything were to happen, and it was a rare occurrence).

CYCLED over to the other side of town through freezing ice and snow.

Got there and went to where the server was (it was sited in the school office, sitting in a corner, with its screen turned off - this was "normal" for Borough installs that I had inherited at the time).

Turned the monitor on for the server (it was always switched off to "stop people playing with it" - high security!).

"Press Enter to continue boot...." white DOS text on a black screen. Nothing else there.

I pressed Enter. The machine booted. Everything started working.

Apparently it was a BIOS option that the Borough put on their servers - most ridiculous!

So technically the fix was within a few seconds or so of arriving.

But, diligent as I was, I diagnosed further.

I noticed a disconnected fan heater hidden under the office desk just a few metres away, clearly trying to obscure itself under some cardboard. It was hot to the touch, but not plugged in. I put my Poirot detective skills to the test. There was nowhere else to plug it in except near the server.

I gathered the suspects and had my moment:

The office secretary was cold (it was snowing outside). She wanted to plug in a heater. There were no sockets available. So she plugged it into the extension lead (I know, I know, don't go there, it wasn't my setup!) that the server was plugged into. It popped the breaker. The server went off. Rather than admit to this, she unplugged the heater, hid it, and flipped the breaker back on (the breakers popping happened a lot in that school, especially in winter). The power came back on, the server started to boot, but the BIOS option made it wait forever until someone came along and pressed Enter.

For several seconds of fixing, and 5 minutes detective work, I was paid a full day's wage at emergency rates, and was home by 9am.

A user couldn't login to their new PC......

The person sitting at the facing desk had the same problem!

Once the monitor leads were correctly assigned.....

I was dropping off a small sandblaster for a friend, and had arrived just in time to see him about to start his lawn mower.

"I just replaced the blade, did a plug, oil and filter change, how many pulls?" he yelled across the driveway.

I wandered over, assessed the situation, and said "all of them ... it wont start. In fact, it'll kick back at you."

"Bullshit" was the reply.

He jerked on the cord, and the mower pulled it back out of his hand, wrapped it around the center portion of the handle bar[0] and smacked him in the chest.

"The key between the crank and the flywheel needs replacing" I told him.

Again, the reply was "bullshit" ... I said "whatever" and went about my business. Life's too short to argue with people who won't listen.

A week later, as he returned the sand blaster, he asked me how I knew about the busted key. Seems he fiddly-farted around with the poor thing for three-four days before finally giving in and breaking out the puller to remove the flywheel. I simply said "I'm clairvoyant, remember?". To this day he doesn't know that I saw the bent mower blade that had obviously hit a large rock while the machine was running in the trash can as I walked across the driveway ...

[0] Sears Craftsman mower with a "collapse to store" handle.

I had an urgent call - a big meeting was about to start - 20 people sat around the room and the projector wasn't working. They said they'd tried everything.

I wasn't even tech support, just a friendly software guy the meeting organiser knew.

Walked over, took a quick look, removed the lens cover, walked out. Kudos +1