I was once on a client site on a call out when another issue got phoned into our office. A user (a particularly whingey one) was reporting one of their screens had failed. It made sense that I just pop to the machine in question rather than the support desk talking it through on the phone.

I sat at the desk and tried to ignore the whingey noises emanating from behind me. Looked at the monitor and saw there was no power light.

My first thought was actually "shall I pretend this takes me a minute to find or shall I just push the power button first?"

I split the difference and switched the monitor on after a little look around the desk.

From behind me, the immediate reaction was "well why was it turned off!?"

It's such an obvious problem/solution. I have applied this miracle to others on several occasions. Of course, it never happened to me.

Not that anyone observed.

Those Toshiba wireless switches are a right pain in the behind - our users were perpetually turning them off. We ended up deliberately breaking them in the "on" position for some laptops.

Dell laptops and slipcase style cases was one of my client's loves.

Pulling the laptop out of the tight case moved the switch every time of course.

At least on the Dell laptops I was exposed to, the !#¤!"%!!! switch could be disabled in (98% sure) the BIOS, which became our standard setup 2 days after the first PC got in user hands.

"Toshiba wireless switches are a right pain in the behind"

Yes, call me paranoid, but some of us users do not trust software switches not to be "re-manufactured" in a (usually remote) software update.

"re-manufacturing" a switch requires a physical agent to have pried it out of your cold dead hands..........

I had a client's new PA who ranted at me over the phone. Same as the pirate in the story. Just remote. "Wifi don't work". So I asked her to flip the switch. She refused to acknowledge the switch. Kept telling me there was no switch.

Next day, sat on a train for two hours. Walked into the office, walked up to PAs desk. Flicked switch. Walked out of office, nodded a quick "hello" to the boss, walked out. Back to a two hour train journey home. Charged them for the day trip.

Funnily enough that PA was not around for much longer.

I've done similar, but made a point of talking to the boss while there to explain the problem and the reason they'd be getting a bill for £lots.

Also ask if there's anything else they'd like me to look at whilst I'm there.

As soon as Toshiba was mentioned I diagnosed the problem - they were notorious for that happening.

Toshiba also did physical volume controls on the edge of laptops. Black on black, obviously. I had several "sound doesn't work" calls that involved carefully guiding the user to that adjuster.

"Black on black, obviously."

Another example of where Douglas Adams appears to have had a streak of the prophet in him, laptops coming along after his version of Hotblack Desiato (not the London version).

Having a physical switch whose position can be observed is better than a random function key bearing a hieroglyph, totally meaningless and yet intended by the manufacturer to convey the information that this is the wifi switch. Accompanied by a pinprick of an indicator LED in the case edge marked by the same symbol shallowly impressed nto the plastic of the case next to a few other equally inconspicuous LED with similar symbols.

Amen!

Aircraft gps and autopilots often have controls on touchscreens. You try hitting one of those when it's turbulent!

A couple of times, actually.

I used to repair Word Processors. Not the fancy Amstrad types - the Sharp ones. They had a soft power button on the keyboard but also a physical power switch on the left side towards the back.

I can't count the number of times I took a support call to say flick the power switch.

But also an ex girlfriend. She was studying a masters and had previously got by with very basic electronic typewriters - alas one with a built in memory which she'd not got around to printing out anything when it died. There was nothing I could do at that point, so I got her a cheap (for the time - this was the late 90's) laptop and even managed to cadge a laser printer.

We'd actually split up by the time this happened but she called me in a mad panic because the laptop was dead. It took me a couple of moments to calm her down then eventually work out she'd left it plugged in to charge but hadn't turned the socket on. No nice critically low battery warnings back then. Click. Charging. Powered up.

That was not actually the first or last time I ever heard from her, but it was only ever when she needed help, so when she called me again a few months later for yet more tech support I politely refused. I never heard from her again.

Had a client with a machine with out network access.

Refused to do what I asked, and I was heading south to a consultant doctor's appointment in London (this was in Lincolnshire).

Ended up swinging past the site, walking in, pushing the network cable back in, walking out, back in the car, heading to south to catch my train.

The next week I replaced the cable, due to the broken latch on the connector.

Call out fee for pushing a cable in and walking away.

> "The man who managed this area was someone who could be transported back to a 1700s pirate ship," Roger told On Call.

Roger the Cabin Boy?

Seaman Stains....

Or the Master Mate...

Is masturmation the new 'solitary vice'?

Master Bates, ITYM.

Captain Pugwash

Mister Mate

Barnabus

Willy

Tom the Cabin Boy

Other saucy names are misinformation.

But where's the fun in that....

He sounds quite jolly.

User calls. I answer and hear beeping. User complains about beeping .I say check if you have anything resting on any keys of your keyboard. Beeping stops.

> Have you fixed a fault by merely flicking a switch?

Yep, but rather boringly in my case, the switch in question was the power button.

It was back in 2004 and I was fresh out of University and working in IT support for a local council. I got a call to say that a PC in the office next to the front desk wasn't working and was just showing a blank screen. Despite being young and green, I did ask if it was powered on (ie, is there a green light on the front), yes there was apparently.

Given that the office in question was only a 30-second walk from my desk, I decided just to pop along and take a look at it - quicker than troubleshooting over the phone. The moment I walked into the office I saw the problem. The monitor was on, but the slimline Optiplex underneath the monitor was not. I hit the power button and it booted up just fine. Turns out it was a shared machine that was usually powered on 24/7, the current user was not IT literate and had never had to turn the base unit on before. Users of that system usually just logged off and switched the monitor off at the end of their shifts.

Of course, the monitor is "the computer," and the box that it's plugged into is "the hard drive."

Yep! I'd read tales about people confusing the two, but never really believed it until I came across this situation myself.

"Users of that system usually just logged off and switched the monitor off at the end of their shifts."

Having users who log off could almost be a bonus. We used to have a reminder in MOTD ending with "this includes $RECENT_CULPRIT". Eventually they learned.

My reponse - "Try the one next to it".

Yes!

The one that's plugged in......

Was getting really frustrated with a server one day, we could hear lots of huffing and puffing and muttering, then he slammed his keyboard on the desk, punched the monitor (CRT, so pretty indestructible), flipped the bird with both hands at the screen, and stormed out, slamming the door.

Sadly, the door happened to have a fire safety closer on it, so after a briefly quick movement, it slowed to a snails pace with a high pitched whine, and all five of us in the office had to wait 6 seconds for it to finally close before we could burst out laughing.

Is it cruel to install them on teenager's bedroom doors?

Why start with teenagers ?

I think there is a wider market : my offspring is 3 years off the teens, but is getting in regular practice already.

I fixed one user's "problem" once about as quickly by toggling the insert key. Travel time 20 seconds.

I've already told this story before, but it'll sit well in this thread, so here it goes again.

I once stopped by a PFY trying to fix a user's Access application that had stopped generating email reports. He was at wit's end, having tried for hours everything he thought might possibly solve the problem. I nonchalantly asked the user if IT had done any upgrade that day. "Hm yes, they installed new printer drivers".

Ah.

After changing the default printer to PDF, the emails started once again being generated, because of course Access needs the printer driver to generate reports, even if they're not being actually printed.

More or less than 1,5 seconds to diagnose? No idea!

Working in schools doing IT support. Teacher finds me to say her interactive whiteboard wasn't working. Those things were always having issues of some sort so you dreaded them being mentioned. Walk into classroom, spot the light at the top of the whiteboard was the wrong colour, look behind the left bezel to see it wasn't turned on. Pushed the button, "Works best if you turn it on first", all sorted. Teacher clamed she'd checked that. Don't they always!

Probably took me longer to walk across the classroom to the offending article that it did to "fix"!

Admittedly not mine, but a former colleagues

A little background: I worked in a county, since IT is all about information, it naturally fell under the Public Information department, and the head of PI.

One day said head of PI called us, and needed someone to assist immediately since the PC would not turn on. A coworker was quickly dispatched, and soon returned. For some reason, pushing the CD eject button did not turn the PC, but the Power button worked just fine. Time to identify problem, probably in the low single digit seconds. Implementation: Probably took some time to either make the user use the correct button, or to move the user aside so the tech could. Testing: Ah, back in those days... "fat client", boot on Lan, probably took several minutes

I remember when I w**ked for the NHS visiting one orifice to install and set up some remote access software.

While there I was grabbed by a manager and asked to (take another) look at an issue they'd been having with a PC that had been moved. After it was moved from one orifice to another plugging it in caused the entire site network to crash. One of our people had been out a couple of times, and our third party support company had also been out a couple of times, but both had been unable to rectify the issue. All of this was explained while walking to the orifice in question.

Knowing that the site was using a single segment of token ring with [1]EAD Sockets , and knowing an easy way to reproduce those symptoms I had a sneaking suspicion of what the issue might be. And a quick look from the door of the orifice at the PC and its network point confirmed my guess. I confidently walked over to the PC, plugged the token ring cable into the network wall socket ….. upside down ….. and then turned on the perfectly functioning PC!

I suppose I can forgive the wiring contractor for getting a single socket the wrong way up, but what I found harder to forgive was the half a dozen support visits that failed to spot a relatively simple token ring issue.

Diagnosed whilst walking to the orifice .... fixed as quickly as I could walk across the room!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EAD_socket

When I had a job which included looking after PCs in labs, there was a microscope which you had to plug the fibre(?) in the opposite way to what the documentation said....