Warning signs

[harry-whodunnit.livejournal.com]

When a customer, who speaks the same language as you with no accent, asks you what a 'question' is - HANG UP IMMEDIATELY.

Getting written up is the lesser evil.

(no subject)

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

Sometimes the problem isn't on the other end of the phone.

I just spent all day going back and forth between a laptop and my cloning workstation, trying to figure out why multiple drives i has wiped and cloned would not boot. Primary partition is active, using fdisk's master boot repair doesn't fix it; and when i use my custom boot floppy, i get to the desktop fine. What in $deity's name is wrong with these things?

Duhrr. Have to format them in the laptop as c:\ under dos; as formatting them as d:\ in the cloning station doesn't give me the necessary boot files. I'm an idiot. (Although in my defense, it's been 8 months since i've had to clone new field units.)

Its a Damn Good Thing She's a Remote User...

[the-elfster.livejournal.com]

...otherwise I would hunt her down and kill her....

Trying to work on a printer installation for a remote user.  I tell her that I need to remote into her machine and set up a specific time with her to do so.  I call her and tell her I need her to log off the machine, but to leave it on so I could remote in.  She acknowledges that and tells me to give her five minutes.  I give her fifteen.  I login, start the installation, and suddenly the connection is terminated.  Huh?  Now I can't log back in to her system, as it won't connect.  So I call her to let her know that I am having issues -- SHE TURNED THE COMPUTER OFF WHEN SHE LOGGED OFF!!

I hate clueless, arrogant customers

[lordstorm.livejournal.com]

How many times do I need to repeat, leased lines DO NOT have phone numbers attached to them! Circuit references yes, but you can't exactly plug in a handset into the NTE and expect to get a dial-tone now can you? Aie.

"But that's the way it's always worked: our telephone system is in the same rack as our leased lines and uses the same system."

Yes. And? Just because they're located in the same rack doesn't mean they're sharing the same systems!

"Look, I'm a PABX technician and I've got an MCSE. I think I know what I'm asking you."

Bingo: with one acronym you just validated the very reason I didn't believe you. I too used to be a PABX technician - I planned, programmed and maintained a corporate PABX system myself in one of my older jobs.....and it had nothing to do with our connection to our SHDSL connection to the outside world. Ass.

"When I call myself the leased line's number comes up on my GSM."

Welcome to the lovely world of PABX routing tables! Fascinating, aren't they? The fact our records show you also have 2MB ADSL into the site might also ring alarm bells, yes?

"But the leased line runs directly into our Netgear router, and it shows sync, and I disconnected last night and was able to call myself. Do you even know what you're talking about?"

Oh boy, you just stepped over that invisible courtesy line. And I don't suppose you have a dusty, apparently oft-neglected Cisco 1600 records show we configured for you quite a while ago? I don't suppose if you disconnect your Netgear you'll find you'll still maintain a connection, mmm'yes?

"Sigh. The Cisco hub runs our telephone system, duh. And I'm not going to disconnect the Netgear in office hours! Too many people rely on our connection!"

Riiiight. Patient explanation of site with leased line with backup ADSL service follows.

"That's incorrect: you have no idea how our network is set up here. Can I actually talk to someone who knows what they're talking about?"

Oh supervisor? Dipshit customer service call coming your way. Prepare the razorblades over the wrists, while I port into the router at our end in our end and administratively down her port for a small demonstation.....

Network Problems

[lions-tambua.livejournal.com]

Customer: The server has an problem! you need to swap the Network Card! I have 4 workstations and 1 Server. After a few hours of work, the Workstations loose connection to the server and we cant access the server any more, but i still can access the workstations from the server!

Me: Please send me the system logs of both, server and workstation.

-------
*snickers* well... no, i WONT swap the network card. no hardware error found. lets see the log and check what might be the problem *G*


------------
Workstation:
The Security System has found an attemp to degrade the Masterrole of the Server cifs/Server05.
The Error Code des Authentificationprotocols Kerberos was "There are no Domain-Controllers available to proceed the Login(0xc000005e)".

The Security System could not open an secure connection to the Server cifs/Server05. There is no authentification protocol available
------------

Server:

The dynamic Registry or deleting one or more DNS-Entries which are associated with the Domain "ForestDnsZones.companyname.local."
This entries are used by other computers to verify this Server as Domaincontroller or as LDAP Server.
Possible Reasons for this Error:
TCP/IP Properties or Networkconnections of this computer contain wrong IP-Adresses of the Primary and secondary DNS-Server.
Some primary and secondary DNS Server are not responding.
Primary or secondary DNS Server are misconfigured.
Useraction:
reconfigure possible misconfigurations as listed above and initialise register or delete the DNS-Entries and run "nltest.exe /dsregdns" from an comand line or restart the network service.
------------

When will these... 'sys-admins' learn to read the logs ???

first, probably mediocre, tale from my new job!

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

WELL, after being just sick and deathly ill of sitting all freakin day doing nothing but answer phones and dispatch technicians who i personally could run circles around, i've started a new job this week that actually is a step above the phone people and am actually the one being dispatched and fixin da stuff, WOOHOOO!! finally!!!

the work order said "boot up error on pc, NT LDR missing".
internally i groaned... i dont enjoy this error... especially since it didn't seem like we had a win2k startup disk. generally it's a pain in the butt if you dont have the right stuff. either you can boot from cd, or perhaps from a dos disk with drdos or something else that can read ntfs partitions, transfer ntldr over, fix anything else that might be corrupt, or it could be a bad hard drive.
walking over to the customer i feared the worst and imagined sitting there for the next two hours messing around and being annoyed at the computer.
since it's only my third actual day, i was with another tech (basically so i could find my away around the place which is mammoth). there was another problem in the area, a printing issue, so when we got there he went to take a look at the printing problem and let me go play with the HARD problem.

i sat at the pc trying to decide the best way to start.
and then it caught my eye....

10 seconds later i walked over to the other tech who had just sat down at the pc with the printer problem and said "WELL, i'm done, what the heck is taking YOU so darn long?"

you may have guessed the answer.
i sat down at the pc, ejected the floppy disc that was in the drive, pressed the space bar, and voila!

Valis