[RESOLVED] Stupid computer tricks, or WTF did you do that for?

[Humpinate]

MAN!!!!!!
I've got too many stories! Just a short one for now...
Lady brings her Apple PowerBook in (I am the Laptop guy)and states "It will make a noise but it's not the noise it's supposed to make"
Well I hunt up a power supply ( she "forgot it") and I clear the bench to get a good amount of room in case I need to disassemble, and I boot the beast. It makes
the chime, and then it starts to GRIND and SHUDDER.... Any way seems her kid put a floppy in the drive SIDEWAYS and she tried to boot it. I sold her a "gently used" drive
to fit her laptop and she was grateful.

[mzcpu]

Not too long ago a guy brought his computer in wondering why it wouldn't post. I asked if he'd added new hardware etc...his reply oh no. Mind you this is an ancient 486. So I tell him we'll have a look and call him back. We open it up and it seems he bought some ram for it, sdram and sawed it off to try and fit it in the memory banks. Alrighty then!

[BOLO]

This is a good one..
I was called down to a fellow employees office. He wanted to know why the document he printed didn't look like the one on the screen. hmm...
Well, I looked at his screen and the text on his screen covered it completely but the text on the print out looked extremely tiny. I looked at the font he was using and found out that he was using a font size of 8 but he was zoomed in 200%. geez...
I cried after this one...
To top this off, he only had a 15" monitor.

[CobraTekMax]

These are some good stories. But I've got one that takes the cake. A few months back, a lady brought her computer in that she had bought through the Home Shopping Network just a couple of weeks before. She said it had worked fine for the first week, then one day she turned it on, and it ran Windows for about five minutes, then just completely powered down, and wouldn't come back up. No Windows, no OS, nothing. So I popped it open, and noticed right away that there was no CPU fan. Just for the hell of it, I pulled the chip out, and I could tell it was a Celeron (PGA 370), but that's all I could make out. The center of the chip was just a big bubble of carbon. I pried the heat sheild off, and said carbon bubble crumbled away to reveal a hole about the size of a dime. It even blistered the socket area of the motherboard! I showed all the other techs, and we all had a good chuckle over it, so I called the customer to give her the news. Her husband answered, I told him there was no fan on the CPU. "Oh yeah", he said. "I took that damn thing out because it was noisy." "You took it out?" "Yeah. Why, it's not something important, is it?" "Please let me talk to your wife." I told her what happened, why it happened, and she set down the phone. I could her bitching at her husband in the background for about a minute, then she picked up again and told me she call me back. Anyway, the system was trashed, HSN wouldn't cover it under warranty, and she bought a new Athlon from us. And it was the first system to showcase our new "anti-tamper" stickers.

[Jediab]

ROFLMAO!!! Holy Sh*t Cobra!! That is funny!! Do you still have the CPU? Because if you do, PLEASE send me a picture of it. That one is great! HEH! HEH!

[BarnesConsult]

The best one I've had was this sweet senior citizen that used to work here. I was trying desperately to train her without losing my patience. I had already shown her how to turn it on and how to move around in Windows, but she came and got me because it wasn't responding to anything. I asked her to try while I watched. Honest to God, she was holding the mouse directly in front of the monitor, about a foot off the desk, clicking furiously. "It just won't do anything!" she said.


As far as that website, sounds like a guy I once knew. The guys at work told him that if he just re-arranged the spark plus wires on his car, he would get almost double the gas mileage. Well he saved on gas alright. It was over a week before he got the car running again!

[BarnesConsult]

Add on to last comment...

I guess I just qualified myself for this thread. My User Name is the first part of my e-mail address. I tried to submit my reply three times before I realized I had typed the whole address in!!!

Oh well, at least when we do those stupid things, we just don't tell anyone.

[RodT]

Okay, had a customer bring in his new Aptiva, claiming that, "it's not reading CD-ROMs". Set the machine on the bench and powered it up. No luck reading the CD.

Pulled the case off, and laid the machine on its side to have a look, and *LIQUID* drips on to the bench! (I should have stopped right there, but I guess I'm a glutton for punishment).

The CD-ROM tray made a clicking sound when ejected and upon closer inspection, found it wasn't sliding out level because there was something stuck inside on the left hand side of the tray. Called the customer and told him that whatever he'd done wasn't covered under warranty, and we'd need to replace the drive. He wasn't happy, but consented.

Changed the drive, and tested the machine. All seemed to work well until I ran some random tests on components to make sure everything else was all right. Turns out that there was food encrusted on the inside of the floppy drive! (And when putting the case back on found that inside the handle, a joint(!) had been tucked. Hmmm....this might explain the BURN marks on the recessed bowl of the handle. Seems the guy was using it as an ashtray while he toked up and surfed the Net....

The case itself was also FILTHY. It actually looked like he had thrown up on the machine, and the feet looked like he used the computer out in his back yard. They were covered in dirt and hair. So, after a good deal of cleaning (with rubber gloves and alcohol), called the customer, told him that there would be an additional charge for the cleaning and he came and picked up his machine.

Two days later, it was back. This time I refused to work on it, and passed it to one of the other techs....

[grem467]

go to HTTP://www.techtales.com for more of this stuff!!! some of it is unbelievable, unless you are a tech and have dealt with users!!

[bruce24]

This is one of those WTF did you (I) do that for?

Well, I hate to admit it, but this little story involves me. ME! A+ and MCSE certified. 100% PG (Pure Geek).

Well, I was upgrading a machine for a friend of mine (first mistake). He had two hard drives in his machine and after the system board and RAM update, I fired up the BIOS to do an 'autodetect'. But only one of the drives were detected. Hmmm....I looked in the case and noticed that one of the drives was unplugged. Now, I KNOW you are supposed to power down the system before plugging in the drive. I KNOW - I MEAN I KNOW THAT. We all do, right?

Well, I was feeling lucky. I'll just plug the drive in REAL FAST and it will be OK. From the time I made that decision to actually doing it was about 10 seconds. My gut was aching. It was like God or someone was SCREAMING AT ME - NO NO NO NO!!

I fried his drive (thank God I had a backup) and memory. Cost me $400.

Guess what I have NEVER, EVER done when working on a system since?

Bruce Tyler

[Indigo]

I had a customer bring in a pc that was having HDD problems. She said the data was very important..her whole business was on there....yada yada... so I told the other tech to connect another drive to it and ghost it before we do any scans on it. She called to check on it.. I told her we would be very carefull and make sure her data was safe.I hung up the phone and turned around and see the ladys hard drive on fire! Turns out the tech had managed to shove the power connecter on backwards(the connecter on the drive.. was cracked)...and when he powered it up... boom! smoked then burned... I called her and told her that her drive failed during the ghosting process and all her data was lost... do I feel bad..? hmmm? No..

[RogueLdr]

I support connected black and white and color copier/printers. I was dispatched to the local office of Pioneer's Computer Systems Division. These guys design computer's and computer interface's for private industry. When I got there they made me put my name on a signup sheet. On the list above my name were some big computer companys and here in the middle of it all was my name. They have on of our high speed color copier/printers connected to their NT Server.
The complaint said that some PC's will print but others get error's while trying to install the driver. So I take a look at one of the problem PC's. I can ping the network controller on the copier so I know I've got a good connection. I change a setting on the controller so it will broadcast it's IP across their network. I print directly to the copier instead of through their NT Server and it prints correctly. This usually indicates to me that it is a permission's problem. I tell the local Admin that I suspect it to be a permission's problem on the NT Server. He proceeds to tell me that it couldn't possibly be that because they don't use Local Group's for printing that full control is given to the Everyone group. So I tell him he's either incorrect or not all users in this area are part of the Everyone group. He tells me to look further because obviously my hunch is incorrect. I insist that we go to the server room and check the permissions and to see if a Group had been defined in the permissions. He then tells me that he's just the PC Admin and that he can't gain access to the NT Server. So I ask him who can at this facility. He explains that the Server there is administrated remotely from another location. I tell him to get the admin's on the phone, which we do. I introduce myself and tell them what I'm working on. They reply that they had been working on this problem for 2 weeks now and have failed to resolve the issue. I tell them to check the permissions on the copier/printer. The admin tells me it would do no good since they don't use Groups for printing. I tell him that in this case they are using a Group for printing or somehow they don't have all users in the Everyone Group. He laughs at me and asks me my qualifications. I tell him that I've worked in the field for 12 years and that I'm now working my way through my MCSE. He laughs again saying that all three of the Admin's there are MCSE's and one is a CNE to boot and take it from him he knows what he's talking about. I grew angry at this point and told him to prove me wrong then. Go to the permissions and prove that I'm wrong. He said fine, if that's what you want, I will prove you wrong, but then you will have to admit it that you don't know what your doing.
He tells me to hold while he PC Anywhere's to the server. I hear a minute or so of silence and then keystokes and mouse clicks. Very suddenly I hear him bellow out, "What f'n idiot put a g** d*** print group on my server!" It seems that there was in fact a Group for this printer and only half the users of the department were on the list. The local guy gives the Admin the rest of the user names to add to the group and we hang up.
I tell the local guy as I'm about to leave, "Well, I have good news and bad news." He looks up to me and says lets have to good news. "The good news is this was a simple problem." And the bad news? "The bad news is, since it took me some time to gain access to what I needed to fix the problem you moved into the next billing increment, here is your bill for $150.00"
I've heard of paper MCSE's before, but this was my first real life experience with not only one of them, but three within the same office.

[Paul Clarke]

There are some VERY amusing stories here: I won't try to compete. I just have to put these two stories in:
1) I work on a technical support helpline that deals with more that one company. So one of our questions is where did you buy the PC from? well, this young welsh lady said from a shop in Cardiff! Not to be beaten I asked for a description of the PC. "A white one" was the answer. So still trying to hold the chuckles back I then asked what the problem was... her answer? "I don't know that's why I'm calling you!!"

2: A gent calls me up and says that his warranty is about to run out and he want's to get his PC sorted out. He says that for the last 11 months he has not had any sound. So trying to be as helpfull as possible I went through the basic diag tests. "have you got the little speaker by your clock? yes! Can you confirm that the volume is all the way up? yes I can hear my modem!! You can hear your modem? yes every time it connects I can hear the modem. So I know my speakers are working this is a hardware fault!! can you tell me exactly where your speakers are plugged in? yes they are plugged into the socket that says SPK! my reply? Ok sir, if you would not mind taking the speakers out of your modem and plug them into the socket that says line out on your sound card you will find that the sound will work. Oh yeah!

For eleven months? gees I wish there was a basic PC test that users had to pass before they called tech suport!!

I mean can you imagine calling your ford dealer and saying " I bought this car a week ago and now it just stopped running" <dealer>"have you put petrol into the tank sir?" <owner> "petrol??? what is that??"

[ZjoeyZ]

A manger of a Hotel in Arizona was coming into his office in the morning and proceeded to turn on his monitor (He just shuts his monitor off at night instead of shutting off his whole computer). His Monitor is not dispaying any information and he's upset! So he goes out to a computer hardware store and comes back with a new monitor. He plugs it in and connects it to the computer. He turns it on and nothing! He's pretty upset then an employee comes in asking what was wrong and he tells him the situation and the employee presses the power button on the case and boom it works. The manager still wont admit to this and has found a use for the extra monitor!

[thebelin]

I used to work for a local computer company in the technical department. Working at the front lines, you see all sorts of problems. Here's the best one I've encountered:

A lady purchases a motherboard, 64 MB of RAM and an Intel 233MMX Processor. These are going to be an upgrade for her pentium 90. She elects to install them herself to save on expenses, and takes the parts home. She was waiting for us to get to work the next day, parts in hand, with a GIANT burn mark on her case. She was furious that the parts had failed, and wanted us to replace the components that had burned out, including her video card, modem and sound card from her old machine. I took a look at the case and determined that SHE HAD SCREWED HER MOTHERBOARD DIRECTLY TO THE BACKPLANE OF THE CASE, USING WOOD SCREWS. Where there weren't any holes, but there was a mounting point on the case, she had drilled holes in the motherboard.

Second Story:
This one wasn't a dumb customer, it was just a freak problem. Back in the heyday of 486's the same company that I was working for purchased about a hundred flatline proprietary 486 SLC's. A customer purchased one, and had no problems for almost a week. They called the sales floor with an emergency, their computer had made a loud bang noise, and caught on fire. The Sales floor person told them to take it outside where it wouldn't catch anything else, and hose it down, if necessary. They brought it into the technical department, post haste, where we determined that the CMOS battery had exploded. It had enough force to blow the processor off of it's mount (remember, the SLC is soldiered on) and to blow most of the chips off of the SIMMS, as well as melt the sockets. It also took off about 8 or so assorted cache chips and other motherboard erratta.

I've got more stories, but those are the best. (or is it worst?)