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Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

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TheGnome said:
I think you are misremebering here. I don't think I've ever seen a dongle for use with any proprietary hardware. The only effect they ever had on hardware was for it to not work properly anymore.

The dongles were used for software copy protection. They were small things that you plugged (most often) into the parallel port. They then sat there and did nothing obvious.

Today I'm quite okay with calling anything a dongle that is small, plugs into the usb and doesn't do anything immediately obvious. But maybe that's because I'm a german speaking Swiss. We have a history of misusing a lot of english words.
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I have seen (and used) hardware dongles as described, they 'usually' had a different socket on the far side (so were basically an adapter that prevented the hardware being used without it)- however some used what appeared to be a serial output on the other side- one actually caused damage to a machines port as it simply 'swapped' the wires around to different pins- which stopped the machine working without the dongle- however, what it did do was when a standard serial plug was plugged into the dongle by mistake wasnt pretty (user was swapping devices and only had limited number of serial ports available) instead of unplugging the dongle and lead and plugging in new lead, they unplugged the machines lead from the dongle, leaving it in the serial port and plugged the other machine into it instead of the serial port...
Scratch one motherboard for the machines controller....

Company that made the machine that required the dongle eventually paid for the repairs (several thousand dollars) only after legal action was taken against them- and that dongle was glued and heatshrinked to its lead so it could never happen again...
 
Today is a public holiday in ACT and NSW, and I think South Australia, and not a public holiday anywhere else. So we have to have people on deck, but only at a reduced staffing level.

I LOVE working the public holidays. The workload is practically nonexistent and I get double time for more than a half shift. Four hours at double is better than seven and a half at single.

This is awesome. :D
 
This used to be the busiest couple days in the warehousing business. End of fiscal year, and trying to push orders through so they get accounted for in that quarter instead of rolling over to the next one. Inevitably in the chaos, somebody would mess something up (perhaps by fudging a date), which would generate a call. I think by the time I left all support personnel were basically expected to be available Sep 28-Oct 2.
 
Back on the main topic of the thread, I saw this one before passing to the correct team :
I have a call raised XXXXXXXXX from Sep 21st. Despite several emails asking for an update, I haven't received anything.
I tried to escalate this, but still no response.
Is there anybody there or have they all gone home? Is there some magic word or special incantation I have to shout into my screen for this to get actioned?
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I got this one this morning:
The <printer name> located on 6UCC has been throwing an error and has not been printing for at least a couple of weeks. Several persons in our area have not been able to print using this printer.
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Highlighted one relevant part.

The other is, instead of sending this to our service desk (or opening a ticket, which users have been able to do themselves, easily, for about two years now), she sent it to one of our internal groups that includes about half the IT department.
 
Hellbound said:
I got this one this morning:


Highlighted one relevant part.

The other is, instead of sending this to our service desk (or opening a ticket, which users have been able to do themselves, easily, for about two years now), she sent it to one of our internal groups that includes about half the IT department.
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Did you ask if there was paper in the paper tray and if the paper tray tray was completely seated into the proper shelf of the printer? Check those two things and report back?

When they report back that's when you tell them to switch the printer off, wait thirty seconds and switch it back on again ...
 
Oh man it feels good when someone comes to you with a mystery and you solve it.

Caller said that emails from three particular members of staff are just not arriving. He can receive emails from other people, just not these three. They do not get delivery failure notification. Also, this had been going on for months. He could receive emails from those people if they were sent to a distribution list that he was a member of.

Checked his workstation and what did I find? A bunch of Rules that were still in effect from an older version of Outlook, that were set up to automatically move emails from those people into folders. Where were those folders? Subfolders of Deleted Items. He clearly deleted the folders without realising that he had to disable the Rules that moved emails to those folders.

Mystery solved! Damn that felt good.
 
Elagabalus said:
Did you ask if there was paper in the paper tray and if the paper tray tray was completely seated into the proper shelf of the printer? Check those two things and report back?

When they report back that's when you tell them to switch the printer off, wait thirty seconds and switch it back on again ...
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No, actually, I don't do desktop support. I'm a server guy :)

I did forward her email to the actual service desk, so it could be made into a ticket and routed appropriately.
 
Dear Users:

Do not phone or email individual agents with your requests. Even if you think you will get better service from an individual than by going through the standard established procedure, you won’t. Apart from the fact that it would be the exact opposite of transparent and accountable, it also suffers from what could be called the Bus Problem. If the agent you sent an email to suddenly gets run over by a bus, then your request disappears and cannot be accounted for.
 
Sometimes problems appear in reverse.

I have asked the appropriate people four times to repair an email glitch, and each time the request is ignored.

It is possible that if I knew which software is involved, and had access to it, I could fix the problem myself, but unfortunately I don't know and don't have access.



Also, unfortunately, escalation is not possible; I have no idea who handles the actual software, or even whether it's in-house or outsourced.
 
"I just got a quick question about my setup when I connect from home using my laptop. The remote connection seems to keep the sides of the screens as I was working from my office but I need that the side of the screen just get what is available in my laptop – double click the top of the screen I am working on seems that doesn’t work.

Appreciated your suggestions,

Cheers"

I have absolutely no idea what this person is asking.
 
arthwollipot said:
"I just got a quick question about my setup when I connect from home using my laptop. The remote connection seems to keep the sides of the screens as I was working from my office but I need that the side of the screen just get what is available in my laptop – double click the top of the screen I am working on seems that doesn’t work.

Appreciated your suggestions,

Cheers"

I have absolutely no idea what this person is asking.
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Maybe meant 'size' rather than 'side'? They want the remote session to use the laptop screen resolution as the maximum screen size, not scroll around the larger screen of the remote system?
 
Or they are trying to use software that only runs on the desktop at work and is either not accessible outside the office or not installed on their laptop.
 
How is it in 2018 people don't understand that their monitor isn't their PC and vice versa?

Okay so to over simplify it somewhat the health care company I contract out to for IT support has two types of workstations in general use for their office, personnel, human resources, insurance, claims and billing and other general admin type workers. HP Small Form Factors (Elite Desk 800s mostly) and HP Thin Clients (T520s mostly).

Most of the worker bees get the Thin Clients because literally all their work is done in the company's web portal or various insurance and medical websites so all they need is a functioning web browser and very basic office and productivity software (MS Office, Adobe and.... and... hell that might actually be it) and the thin clients are substantially cheaper with lower overhead.

But... 10-20% abouts of the general admin/office workers for some reason or another, usually support of older legacy software, need to us a specialized piece of equipment (various scanners and mail postage scales and assorted other frippery), or other reasons require a full PC.

All pretty bog standard.

Anywho this one lady was getting moved from one position to another and in the process was being upgraded from a Thin Client PC to a full workstation.

It took me a legit hour to convince her that she could still keep her big dual monitor setup before she would let me swap out the machine. And again this is replacing her thin client with a full PC that would have all the capability plus some of her original machine.
 
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