After a long lunch, user thought a cursor meant their computer was cactus
- Reference: 1735284545
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/12/27/on_call/
- Source link:
This week, we’re revisiting the topic of extremely swift fixes that we [1]raised in November , when a reader claimed to have solved a user's problem in 8.5 seconds.
Another reader, who we will Regomize as "Barry," told us he was once called by the user of a greenscreen terminal who, upon returning from a lunch break stretched to unusual length by the need to queue for a bank teller, complained their machine displayed nothing but a "flashing screen."
[2]
Barry got his hands on a replacement and lugged it to the user's desk.
[3]
[4]
When he arrived, he saw a blinking cursor in the top left corner of the terminal's screen.
"I pressed the space bar, and the cursor disappeared, replaced by the login prompt, fixing the problem."
[5]
Barry didn't claim the tech support world record though – he thinks his fix probably required less that ten seconds, but not much less.
"The user didn't know a screen saver kicked in after 30 minutes, because she was always back from lunch before it kicked in," Barry told On Call.
Bank tellers have sadly been largely replaced by IT, so there might be some ironic justice there.
[6]
Now let's meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Ron" who told us about the time a customer reported half their screen was blank and not working.
Ron quickly realized the customer had managed to adjust the Windows Task Bar so it occupied half of the PC's display.
"I resized the taskbar, locked it at regular size, and was out the door un under five minutes."
Ron rates the job as the fastest money he ever made!
[7]Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it
[8]Techie left 'For support, contact me' sign on a server. Twenty years later, someone did
[9]Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing
[10]That hardware will be more reliable if you stop stabbing it all day
Let's return to the greenscreen age for our final tale of fast fixes. It comes from a reader we'll Regomize as "Connor" whose customer complained that his terminal would crash every day at around 2:00PM – a massive inconvenience as this customer was a securities trader. Then as now in that industry, any downtime meant dollars down the drain.
After plenty of tests and hardware replacements, no root cause could be found, so one of Connor's colleagues was dispatched to stake out the machine.
On the second day of watching, the problem became apparent.
The greenscreen age was also the age of reading newspapers printed on actual newsprint – oh, the nostalgia! – and this user spent their lunch hours acquiring and reading both The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times.
Upon returning from lunch, said user would fold both papers – which in those days could each be a couple of centimeters thick – and toss them onto the back of their terminal.
Which is where the machine's air vents were located.
As the afternoon wore on, hot air produced by the cathode ray tube could not escape, heat would build up, and the boxes would crash.
"My engineer got a face-full of hot air when he pulled the papers off," Connor told On Call. "Once the papers were relocated, the problem stopped!"
And once again, despite considerable investment in troubleshooting time, the fix itself took mere seconds.
There can't be many of you at work today, and hopefully those of you compelled to exchange your labor for currency at this time of year aren't very busy. So [11]click here to send On Call an email with your story of fast tech support fixes, or the messes you've been asked to fix in this festive season, so we can tell your story when we return to work. ®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/08/on_call/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Z26eWIp0bT2mC0zlRIcGmQAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z26eWIp0bT2mC0zlRIcGmQAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z26eWIp0bT2mC0zlRIcGmQAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z26eWIp0bT2mC0zlRIcGmQAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/29/on_call/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/22/on_call/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/08/on_call/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/15/on_call/
[11] mailto:oncall@theregister.com
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Thank you El Reg
Thank you all for your tireless dedication to entertain and inform us - or is it inform and entertain us ? - about all things IT and loosely related.
I hope you've all had a good festive season and I look forward to reading you for years to come.
Re: Thank you El Reg
Seconded. Couldn't say it better Pascal. The same to you and yours, and all commentards. Keeping IT down to earth! Best of luck for 2025, 1447 or whatever your chosen calender is :)
Re: Thank you El Reg
Thirded!
Re: Thank you El Reg
AOL Mode="on"
Me too.
Re: Thank you El Reg
Upvoted all the comment above…..
I think the fastest fixes eventually turned out to be the CTRL-ALT-*arrow key* for an inverted or rotated screen, users believed it was magic
Corner of Folder/Similar on Keyboard.
Once seen before subsequently fixed in a second.
One of my quickest fixes was regarding a laptop that wasn't charging. User confirmed from the power icon in the system tray that the device was connected to power and was showing as being "plugged in", but it wouldn't charge. I went up, took a look at the user's docking station (this was the era of the big Dell E-docks) and immediately noticed the power connector was not fully plugged in (quite a bit of the steel barrel was visible). Slotted it home and the laptop immediately started charging.
Turns out with the Dell E-docks that it is possible to have the power connector sufficiently connected to power the laptop, but not enough for the laptop to know the wattage of the power brick, and in that situation it'll report that it has power but will refuse to charge. I think the call took me about 20 seconds - which included the time taken to check the system tray and confirm it was now charging correctly.
I had the *joy* of sharing the office with a particularly obnoxious PFY who thought very highly of himself and his computing skills. I returned to the office after playng 5-a-side at lunch time (we were on flexitime) to the news that PFY had called IT support because the monitor was showing funny colours and the screen was fuzzy. I was told that the PC was FUBAR and that he "had tried everyting" including turning it off and on again, and that IT spport would be along sometime in the afternoon. (IBM PC XT with original double height drives).
A quick look round the back of the machine showed that the monitor lead had been pulled half out of the socket and hence the strange colours and fuzz. Two seconds later and a quick tighten of the screws and the machine was restored to full health. Turned out that the monitor lead screws had never been tightened when the machine was set up (by none other than PFY himself).
Turned out that he had dropped something which had rolled behind the machine and had pulled the cable half out in retrieving it.
I made him call IT to cancel the support call (which would have been charged to our department) and never did tell him how I'd fixed it.
April 1, 2000.......
....so for a bit of fun with a technically challenged colleague, the Windows splash screen on his laptop was changed to an image of the blue screen of death.
Of course, when he rebooted his laptop, the windows desktop came up with all the usual icons...perfectly functional!
...and, as predicted, he had a conniption and called the help desk!!
Mission accomplished!
P.S. I know,,,,not original...but fun anyway!!
I had a consultant appointment in London, As I left home a client rung with a network issue. Refused to carry out the action I asked them too, so we set off, diverted to the site which was enroute.
I parked up, walked in, pushed the network cable back in the PC, walked out, got in the car and drove off.
One call out for under 3 minutes on site.
Follow these simple instructions...
A client with a hardware support contract calls in "My floppy disk drive isn't working..." It was a 5.25" unit. "What's happening?". "Well, I put in a disk, and a prompt said 'Cannot read disk. Try another disk', so I did. I've tried three disk now, all have failed.". An engineer attends, with a replacement FDD at the ready. While the fix did include swapping-out the drive, so was a few minutes rather than seconds, the diagnosis was instant. There were three floppies stuffed into the drive. The instruction was to "try another disk", but didn't mention removing the current one...