Here's a great one.

[momentarygenius.livejournal.com]

This was actually yesterday, but yeah.


Luser: I installed the VPN upgrade you guys pushed out and now I have no network connection! SPAZ! FREAKOUT! THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END CAUSE I CAN'T WORK FROM HOME!!!!


Me: (yes I already know how to fix this, it'll be like a 2 second process) Ok sir. Can I have you double click on your My Computer Folder...

Luser: I don't have one of those, where is it?

Me: Well it's normally in the upper left corner. If it's not ther-

Luser: oh ok, I found it. But it's giving me options of Open, Explore, Search, ... which do I choose?

Me: Choose Open for me. When it opens, I'd like you to go in your C drive.

Luser: D drive?

Me: no C, like Charlie.

Luser: OK S.

Me: no, C. Like cat.

Luser: ah ok. Now where?

Me: Do you see a folder called Program Files?

Luser: Yeah. Oh, but there's nothing in it?

Me: Do you see a message warning you that you should not make modifications to this folder? If so, there should be something you can click to continue.

Luser: Ok I see folders now. Where to?

Me: You're looking for one that says Symantec Client Security

Luser: Can you spell that?

Me: S y m a n t e c client security.

Luser: I dont' see it.

Me: Ok, give me your computer name and I'll remote in and help you locate it.

Luser: my computer name is $ACOMPUTERNAME.

Me: ok you should see a pop up asking if Ellis, Mary can control your desktop.

Luser: nope, don't see it.

Me: (it's telling me it's prompting him) Let me try again. (I cancel, resubmit permission request) Do you see it now?

Luser: nope.

Me: OK. Go to Start > Run and in the box there type cmd and hit enter. You should see a DOS window pop up.

Luser: Yep.

Me: great. Type in IPCONFIG for me, and hit enter. You should then see something that says your IP address. It should be a string of 4 sets of numbers.

Luser: OK, its $IPADDRESS.

Me: Great. (I remote to it that way instead of with computer name.) Now do yo usee the pop up?

Luser: Yep, I'll say yes.

Me: great. (it connects, the computer name is not even CLOSE to the one he gave me... but whatever)(I go to the explorer window he's got open....

HE'S NOT IN PROGRAM FILES. HE'S IN DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS.)

w. t. f.

I browse to the correct location in complete silence, and run the fwexcept.bat. and he instantly is working again.

Comments

[gholam.livejournal.com]

On a related note, somebody at Symantec needs to die in a chemical fire. Their "new and improved" Endpoint Protection 11.0? I have yet to see a system that it doesn't bring down to a complete halt. Even with everything but the most basic file scanning disabled. Just the installation folder is over 800MB. That's eight hundred - and not kilobytes. Whoever was responsible over turning their consumer line into a bloated piece of crap (the last Norton Antivirus that was actually usable was 2002... maybe 2003, but that's already stretching it), and it gets worse with every passing year. I want to know who slept with who in order for all the major vendors (Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc) to keep bundling Norton Internet Security with every single system. I support a good amount of Symantec Antivirus Corporate 9.0/10.x, and now that their subscriptions are expiring and Symantec is making it mandatory to migrate to 11.0, it looks like we'll be migrating them to NOD32 instead.

[momentarygenius.livejournal.com]

Yeah. apparantly the 11.0 doesn't like our VPN client. It's a fiasco and a half. Which is why I get calls like this.

[sami-rdwd.livejournal.com]

Oh if I could only count how many times I have been on the phone with a staff or faculty member and couldn't get them to do what I needed them to, so I remoted into their computer, only to discover that they weren't even in where I asked them to go. So frustrating!

[momentarygenius.livejournal.com]

i know, it's agony! i like to think that i have good luck with walking users through things like this, but every now and then ...

[heidl.livejournal.com]

i know exactly this very same conversation. some co-workers are just too dumb to use a computer. i'm always asking myself how they got through the job interview.

next time tell him to use the windows search for "fwexcept.bat" :)

[momentarygenius.livejournal.com]

yeah, that's probably what I'm going to start doing. Who knew the C drive was so hard to find?

[wibbble]

I feel your pain.

My supervisor at work noticed the ticket I was working on and commented, 'oh, he lies'.

Apparently this company's IT contact for us has been blatantly caught lying about what he's tried before. And to make it better, they've fucked their firewall so we can't use remote desktop to just look at it ourselves.

Thank fuck for gotomeeting.com.

[momentarygenius.livejournal.com]

yep. we get to use webex if our remote desktop doesn't work .. and it sucks so bad, but is better than nothing.

[snyperwolf.livejournal.com]

He actually sounds better than most, you know, besides the whole lying thing (which is really terrible).