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

Comments

[twitchfetish.livejournal.com]

...and that's why that's the FIRST thing we look for with an NTLDR issue :)

iV

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

I'LL NOOBLET YOU!!!!

cmere...

[linguafranca.livejournal.com]

Hahahahahahaha.

The first time I ever saw that error on one of our work computers (I worked at an ISP at the time), it took me, my supervisor, our CEO, and another tech to figure it out.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

lol, yeah it's been a while since i've worked on other people's comps, by physically touching the things. when i PERSONALLY get that error it means bad things, not always the case when others get it, hehe

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

it's a hella annoying error!! provided there isn't a floppy in the drive, hehehe

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

the classics never die!

[jecook]

I still occasionally get those errors from the few poor souls that leave their disk in the drive.

Personally, I'd like to see that damn things go away completely, and have us move to use either CD-Rs or CD_RW for off-machine file storage. Floppy discs are not reliable anymore...

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

but it's SO much easier to use if you have to flash the bios!!!

[jjjiii]

Don't tell the customer's manager what the problem was, or next thing you know, they'll want you to install NTLDR on all their floppies.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

You're my HERO!!! how can i EVER thank you!!!

all in a days work ma'am. we're Information Technologists. it's what we do.

*rides off into the sunset*

[thalionar.livejournal.com]

yeah, I have a friend who got the NTLDR error on her home computer. I made her check for a floppy first. Unfortunately, not the problem.

Fortunately, *I'm* not the one fixing the problem, because it's apparently being a bear to resolve.

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love that one!

The only thing I didn't like about getting that phone call with that problem is trying to gently persuade people to check in the floppy drive, when they are insistent that there could NOT POSSIBLY BE anything in it.

"Could you just please humor me and look?"
"OMGWTFBBQTCP/IP! WHO PUT THAT IN THERE?!?"