OK, just .. WTF?!

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

Why would it even occur to anyone to go to the trouble of imaging the *contents of their install disk* onto their hard drive? So the computer boots to the hard drive and acts like it's booting to the install disk? And, naturally, half a dozen techs in a row get the call and are completely stumped at why the utilities on the install disk won't repartition or reinitialize the drive? (and of course the answer is, *BECAUSE IT'S BOOTED TO IT!!*)

Why? What makes people think of such evil things? And why do they wait until they've painted themselves so far into a corner that even God would have trouble getting them out?

(And sir, don't gush and tell me I have the patience of Job. He wouldn't have lasted ten minutes in this job, and if he did, he'd have gone postal after the first week..)

Comments

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Rule #1 of Tech support: The users are either dumb as rocks or very clever and certifiably insane.

This is why those that work tech support get free passes to Heaven when they die...
because the Devil figures they've suffered enough when they were alive, that Hell's gonna be a holiday resort in comparison !!

Flipside to that, Hell hasn't got any competent Tech's... but that's ok!

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but this one was a diabolically evil kind of stupid .. finding the one failure mode that mimics the behavior of a useful tool. Almost as though someone set *out* to find a problem whose very nature would work against trained techs trying to solve it.

Feh .. probably never will figure that one out.

Free pass to heaven, eh? That would be nice. I've got a few *questions* for the guy in charge.

[commonsensehere.livejournal.com]

hey mr know it all whats up?

[rorted.livejournal.com]

Just enough to be dangerous.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

It might not have been the luser. Some computer resellers/manufacturers do it so they can prompt the user through a complete system wipe/reinstall without having to provide the media. Of course, these are the dodgy kind of resellers, because why wouldn't they provide the media? It was common in the UK. Also, I've seen it done to make it more convenient to install drivers and suchlike... but getting it set as the boot disk is quite special.

My favourite related thing is those users who'd insist on saving their entire C:\ drive to a network share... GAH.

[jecook]

Yeah... we don't let those users on our network...

I've had to do some "special" things the last time I scratch-built a system, as I forgot to get the correct cd from the library at work, but I managed. I later found out that the way I did it was one of the M$ approved methods for installing XP Pro on a brand new system... ::rolls eyes::

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

I once replaced the Finder on a Mac (System 9, I think), with the disk image of Win98 of the user's Virtual PC set up. 'Course, I was Mac support there but sometimes, you just have to fuck with your users.