So...where do you turn to?

[asbrand.livejournal.com]

I've been wondering... Where do you, my fellow tech support folks, turn to when you are stumped on an issue?

I'm certainly not going to post the problem here. *grin*

I will say it is networking related on mostly Windows machines.

Where would you go to look for answers to bizarre issues?



-Az

Comments

[vampireborg.livejournal.com]

techsupport_ot

[falnfenix]

this, or the googles. if the OP isn't finding what he needs, he needs to improve his search strings.

[asbrand.livejournal.com]

Exactly... I'm not getting any "error" I can copy and paste into google.

So, I keep trying different search strings, but haven't come up with the magical combo. My google-fu is weak, apparently. :(



-Az

[liber-cogito.livejournal.com]

google.com/microsoft
google.com/linux

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

The Googles, they do nothing?

[asbrand.livejournal.com]

I've tried for weeks now googling an answer. Either it isn't out there, or my google-fu sucks.


-Az

[teddy0bear.livejournal.com]

The googles are amazing. I also have the lucky position of not being the only tech, sometimes team discussions provide an answer or at least give more ideas of things to type into google.

[jecook]

*insert amusing, sarcastic, and biting commentary about reading the profile for this community, after granting access to you. :D *

[asbrand.livejournal.com]

Well, I was actually looking for something other than an LJ community. :) But...it'll do. *grin*



-Az

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

look harder

[jecook]

The OT community was created expressly for the brain-trust here to answer the sort of brain teasers we occasionally encounter.

[lolotehe]

I get this at work a lot. People ask for a solution, and I just take the error message and pop it into google, in quotes.

NOW, for the non-googlable answers, I turn to IT Toolbox. But be warned; they look unkindly on googlable answers.

After that, just experience. No one remembers the old "debug" DOS commands (fcs:200 400 0 FTW!).

[asbrand.livejournal.com]

If I were getting an error message, that's be easy. :)

I posted the problem to the OT techsupport community. You'll see what I mean there...



-Az

[mouser.livejournal.com]

I freaked someone out at work that was bitching there wasn't a backspace that worked in his telnet session.

"Oh, it's 'CTRL-H'"

The look I got... Just because I've been doing all this since he was six!

[kirolee.livejournal.com]

Try being the 2nd grader who doubled as tech support when the computer teacher was busy. Teacher who came to the classroom asked how to start a program on an Apple 2 when it was already running. Told em it would just be easier to restart the box.

[tullamoredew.livejournal.com]

windows specifics: petri.co.il/forums
everything: serverfault.com
realtime: freeNode IRC #(insert relevant channel here)

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

I'm not actually a member in _ot, and my replies are screened until my membership is approved, so I'm just gonna go ahead and reply here.

If you access the big file locally from the fileserver, does everything keep ticking along? If something's broken in your file I/O, then it could just be that opening the file in read mode (which would happen every time the file was requested, regardless of the protocol/server daemon.) then the disk buffer trying to pre-read the entire thing could be fucking everything up. Or what about a resident scan-on-access virus scanner? If it isn't something like that, associated with big disk accesses or something, then I can't explain why it would happen the same with both SMB and FTP.

[asbrand.livejournal.com]

Saw your reply over there and unscreened it, and replied. :)

Thanks!


-Az

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

There's this ritual involving a pentagram, some black candles and a goat... for contacting Microsoft Tier 2 tech support.

[caira.livejournal.com]

Sacrifice the entire herd, of course, and you risk getting through to senior management.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think that takes a human soul... fortunately, they have easy pay plans for that...

[daddykatt.livejournal.com]

I see your problem..... and it is.... MICROSOFT.... (I jest, I jest)

*cough* Outside of my advocacy...

Failing Google, I usually turn to the guys that I work with, we operate a pretty large scale datacenter that runs pretty much everything (win2k to Hackint0sh to slackware to freeBSD and so on) and they know some pretty off the wall solutions to just about any zaney problem out there. And most of them work.

[wibbble]

I've run a Hackintosh for the lols (on a netbook, even), but why would someone run it in a datacentre? If they're too cheap to buy an Xserve, they could always rack up a few Mac Minis.

[linguafranca.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Google. Or my sysadmin. Never underestimate the power of collaborative problem-solving.

[red-scully.livejournal.com]

Google, or my boyfriend, or one of my other friends. Generally I know someone who can solve the problem if my Google!fu fails me.

[mmaster.livejournal.com]

You could try Server Fault (http://serverfault.com/). Depending on the topic, the people there can be really helpful or deadly silent.

[taiki.livejournal.com]

I turn off the airconditioning in the server room and turn it into a sweat lodge for about 20 minutes. Either I'll hallucinate the answer or some one else will bang on the door and i'll hold the air conditioning hostage.