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Tales From the Support Crypt
An anonymous reader writes "Talking viruses, infected physical devices, and lights that go out are some of the 'problems' Panda Security's tech support service has had to face. Many of them were not a result of computer viruses, but of confused users. This proves once again, that antivirus manufacturers must make a special effort to increase user knowledge regarding computer security and malware effects." For anyone who's been on the receiving end of such questions, now's a good time to tell your cathartic tale.
My all-time favorite true story occured when I tried to help my dad (I bet that for everyone here, our parents are our #1 support customers).
Dad reports following problem: in the last month or so, the mouse started acting strange. Every time he gestures right, the mouse goes left. When he wants to go up, the mouse moves down.
I look it up online, suspecting some virus having fun. Can't find anything.
Dad reports that he got used to the problem, he just has to gesture in the opposite way and then he can use the computer again. Not a great workaround, but it's good enough for him.
At my next visit home, I finally can diagnose the problem live instead of over the phone: Dad was holding the mouse upside down.
True story - lasted for a month before problem was fixed. My fault for not figuring it out sooner.
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Six months of AI programming will make you think there is a God. Six months of tech support and you'll know there isn't.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Maybe I'm just getting old and losing my sense of humor, but it seems like these "ha ha users are dumb" stories get less and less funny. As the audience for personal computing continues to grow, the number of senile, mentally ill or simply ignorant users will also grow. Mocking them leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
/...
But they charged us $600 to chop off dad's hands and reattach them the other way round.
I would say it is best to avoid geek squad.
I took a call from an end user a couple of months ago, informing me she was having trouble changing her password. She was receiving an error message that said "Passwords cannot begin or end with a space."
When she asked me what to do, I focused all of my energy on maintaining calm professionalism and replied "If you're typing a space before the new password - don't; if you're typing a space after the new password - don't."
Her reply?
"Hey that worked! You guys are so smart, I don't know how you can remember all this stuff!"
One of our senior techs (yes, feel free to laugh, I know I do!) came to tell me he had a virus on his laptop. His cursor was runnign wild, an dplenty of windows kept popping open and apps being launched. He could not figure why, so his best guess was "a really bad virus."
From personal experience, 97% of people who guess "It must be a virus!" have no virus whatsoever (the reverse is also true - 97% of viral issues ar edismissed as "something weird is going on and I don't know why") so I assumed it surely wasn't one. I had him unplug his wireless mouse bluetooth dongle, which ended the problem immediately, so it was clear where the problem was coming from. I guessed bad drivers, and suggested he reinstall. Putting them fresh from the driver disk simply returned the issue.
The following day, while looking for a spare power supply, we stumbled on the answer. The wireless keyboard that came with the mouse he was using had been carelessly thrown in there, with another keyboard on top, mashing down a large part of the wireless keyboard's keys. The laptop was just doing as it was told by the keyboard all along.
8 years ago I had a guy at our company come up to me and tell me he got an email from a girl that said "I love you." He then said, she attached a vbs file to the email and he spent the last 10 minutes trying to get the attachment to work. He said he double clicked on it, ran it from a command prompt and several other ways but couldn't get her "love" program to work for him. The guy was an IT analyst.
"Anything tastes good if you deep fry it."
I've had two of those happen this month.
First case:
We got an email saying the internet was down and had been for 15 minutes. We monitor this company's connection with a constant ping (every 5 min or so). If it goes down, we'll know. We didn't get one. Plus we were able to VPN in and get on their servers.
Called the customer up. Turns out www.msn.com was busted and wouldn't load. Google, Yahoo, CNN and BBC worked just fine.
It was very likely they heard a badly suppressed laugh right before I hung up.
Second case:
Another company's internet tanks. We can't ping their public ip, they're down. This happened on a Monday, 10AM.
After dragging AT&T there on a leash so they could swap out some hardware (inside a locked box...), the net started working again, Tuesday, 2PM.
We got an email from them shortly after it came back up, dated Monday, 11AM... "Our internet's down."
I need to print both of those out and frame them.
I've done a bit of support for an electronics company that also made TVs. Back in 2007 one of their newest models was a decent 40" LCD tv, HD ready etc. and fairly cheap. We got a LOT of support calls on that one because of the design of the rear of the TV.
The TV had a physical on/off switch, but the designers had decided to "hide" it between the speaker and display enclosures on the back of it. It was clearly outlined on the diagram on page 5 of the manual, but still we had a ton of calls about this particular model, because people couldn't turn it on. And invariably about half of them would complain that they already hung it on the wall and couldn't reach the bloody switch. Boo fucking hoo - read the manual before assembling your unit.
But - I had one phone call about this TV that still has me smiling ear to ear
Me: "[$Company] support, you're talking to Martin" ... hi?"
Very timid, baby girl voice: "Hiiiiiiii?"
Me: "Ehh
Very timid, baby girl voice: "My name is Pia"
Me: "Hello Pia."
Pia: "I'm four years old!"
Me: "Is your mom or dad around?"
Pia: "My daddy doesn't know how to turn on his TV"
At this point I simply couldn't help but laugh out loud. Then I hear a grown up female voice in the background
Mom: "Just go ahead and laugh, that's what we've been doing all day long"
Me: "Okay, can your dad hear me Pia?"
Pia: "He says he can"
And then I proceded to guide him to where this switch was.
It's one thing to be a stupid user, it's another thing entirely to know that there's something you don't know - at least that's what Socrates believed.
Yes, I had one of these. It's a real pain, because when something is broken, you expect to hear beep codes on the PC speaker. If the speakers are unplugged, as a result of disassembly before diagnostics, then no error messages are presented. The error would probably have been "[cp]U Fail", not "You fool" - though the latter interpretation isn't unreasonable in the context!
This article reeks of being written by low-level tech support who think they know more about computers than they actually do.
Obviously antivirus software isn't going to blow an electrical fuse. Obviously the user who thought he'd found a virus in a specific chip on his motherboard was a bit off. A DVD-ROM drive with infected firmware seems unlikely but is certainly within the realm of possibility. The rest are all perfectly plausible.
Someone with a rootkit popping open notepad remotely and typing a message? Viruses that change system sounds? How are those symptoms at all a reason to immediately dismiss the reports?
If there's one thing that grates on my nerves, it's people who work in tech support and therefore think they know everything about computers.
I'd hate to see how the people who wrote this article would respond to a report of the symptoms of a trojan horse/rootkit that I saw firsthand this last weekend. It intercepted all communication with Google (and Yahoo Search) and replaced the first page of results with spam/malware site links. In any browser used on the system, not just IE. MalwareBytes and Avast detected nothing - I had to boot off of a CD and manually move the files somewhere else before Avast detected some (but not all) of them as part of a rootkit.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I have to tell you that techies often get the "no I don't" kind of response because of all the wrong diagnoses that have been given in the past. I can count many times when I have instructed a technician on what to do, what I have tried, and then get some half-assed "please reboot", or "check the ethernet cable" or whatever. The thing is, it is impossible to tell the smart, slashdot reading help desk personnel from the just-graduated-from-college-and-trying-to-find-a-real-IT-job person.
Let's see... last week I actually noticed my mouse wandering around on the screen where it wasn't supposed to go. Then the computer opened up a Windows Explorer on its own. No shit. So I opened up Notepad, in between wrestling control over my mouse, and wrote "This is my computer, what the heck are you doing on it?"
The response was "Are you employee #XXXXXXXXXX with the email problem?"
My response: "No, I am working at home and wondering why you took control of my computer."
Him: "Sorry, I am trying to help another user."
Me: "Please give me your name, phone number and department so I can check who you are."
Him: "Sorry, Matt Smith, XXX-XXX-XXXX, Support Desk"
Me: "No worries, don't let it happen again."
I let him drop after that. And here I was freaking out that during my "work" from home, at the exact point I happened to be browsing Slashdot on the company laptop, that they were on to me and I was busted. I am probably busted anyway based on the logs...
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
That will be the best part.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Let me preface this by saying, I agree. People can be dumb. However, I have found a way to look past it and truly love my IT job. Here's a couple tenets I suggest you consider:
1) If it wasn't for people doing stupid things, IT/helpdesk people wouldn't have jobs. Granted, it can be like babysitting sometimes, but I have come to appreciate the ignorance that some people have simply because they know that they can come to me and I can fix it. That makes me a valuable resource.
2) Smart people don't know easy things about computers. I work for a company that does very low level computer science stuff, we have many PhD types who know their niche of computers inside and out, but if you stray them 10 feet from the path they know they're completely lost. Those guys need me because even though I don't know how to design a microchip or synthesize FPGA code, I do know how to fix their terminal when they've hit Control-Q. (Not to say I'm not a technical guy, but this is the type of stuff that you gotta fix for them sometimes.)
3) Everyone says or does stupid things every day of their life. It's unavoidable. By treating customers/users with respect (even if at the moment you don't feel like they deserve it) it endears you to them. You don't know what's going on in their lives that might have them distracted from the technical aspects of their job.
More than once I've felt 'Aww come on, you should know this!' only to find out that the user has some terrible event going on in their life and they couldn't care less about researching the problem or extending their computer knowledge -- they don't want to be in the office but they have to be, they're up against a deadline, they just want it to work now and they send up a signal flare for the IT guys to come and make everything better.
Enjoy those moments, if you're a typical shy nerd like me it's one of the brighter moments you'll get in your professional life to be the hero to someone whos at their wits end.
On night at about 2am, I received a call from one of our field technicians. Quite distraught, he told me his computer was broken and he had a high-profile job in the morning and needed it replaced ASAP. He explained that when he tried to type in his username to login, it was showing garbage on the screen, "all sorts of weird numbers and symbols". He regaled me with the story of how he had taken the laptop apart, checked the contacts on the keyboard ribbon cable, found his keyboard chipset model, and Googled the problem, eventually finding it to be a common issue known as a "K9 Keyboard Chipset error". This guy had done his homework.
Having no way of getting his laptop replaced so quickly by myself, I was forced to call the desktop support manager (who was the epitome of a BOFH). He groggily answered, and the technician told him the issue.
"Do me a favor," said the BOFH.
"OK?" the technician responded.
"Hold down the shift key, and press the Num Lock key. Then login."
"ITS WORKING!"
"Gentlemen, we will discuss this on Monday," growled the BOFH, before slamming the phone down. Those words are to this day etched in my mind. I don't blame him for being angry, but in my defense, the tech *did* sound like he'd already tried everything. From then on, I became known as NumLock PantsDown. I'll tell Slashdot about the "PantsDown" portion another time.
>Whatever problem we have, it is always an imposition on their precious time which never involves teaching us enough so that we won't be in their office in another 6 months
Wow, bitter mcuh?
My time is precious. I cant baby every single user. If I do something I cant spend 30 minutes explaining to you the nitty gritty details of what happened, our network infrastructure, etc.
>leading the sainted admins to crack wise knowing inside jokes about the stupidity they manage to put up with (read: instill) in their users.
So youre saying that if you knew the details youd be able to fix everything yourself. So lets say we are having some problems with one of lines and I need to quickly put in a static route on your desktop. Am I going to sit you down and explain to you what a route is and how the route command works. Heck, if I did that then I could expect a lot of random routes put in by "smart" guys like you.
Hey, at the end of the day its a job. You took the job and you need to learn to live with how the business is run. If you want full admin rights and want to be able to get into the routers you are more than welcome to bring this up with your boss. We'd love to hear how all the "elitist" IT people are keeping you down and how your accounting degree from State U along with your WoW addiction makes you much better qualified to do everything.
Perhaps you should just let us do our fucking jobs so we can go home at 5 just like you do. Thanks.
which never involves teaching us enough...
Please explain why it is our job to teach users? Does the user not share responsibility here? It would be one thing if it was in the job description but it's usually not. Your assertion that this is part of the job reminds me that we have a misunderstanding about what IT admins do and don't do. Hint: teaching isn't usually covered.
I ask because my biggest pet peeve is the helplessness users display with respect to computers. Not only is it dishonest in many cases, but it is lazy. Everyone just throws up their hands and waits for IT. Then what? IT is supposed to hold their hand through the solution and explain, step by step, what went wrong? Nonsense. We IT admins have been trying that for 10 years now. It doesn't work. Hell, we can't even get users to use Google and it's friggin' 2008.
God forbid, sometime over the last 20+ years, users take an hour -maybe even 10hrs- to learn something about the subject. Take a course. Buy a book. Hire someone to teach you. Adult outreach. Libraries! I mean, it's only been 20 years for Windows.....surely anyone could find a moment in their somewhere to "better themselves".
If users spent as much time learning on their own as they do bitching about IT, this problem would have long been solved and over.
There was an older woman who had trouble understanding the mouse. She had to hold it steady with one hand while clicking the buttons on the mouse with her other hand.
So I showed her how to play solitaire on the computer.
A week later she had mastered the mouse.
It's all about finding the right way for that particular person to learn.
Maybe the solution would be something like:
"Warning! The raid system is failing! Please type in the first six letters of the alphabet to close this window. ______"
If a message is important enough, you shouldn't be able to just click it away IMO.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
That's actually not a rare incident. I don't even wonder how many readers nod their head to this statement because it's been an endless source to their own frustration.
One wonders why. Why do people just click away all messages sent to them by the system? I actually remember an incident where I was called to fix "something with the server". Turned out to be a raid6 system that lost three drives and thus didn't work anymore. Now, I hear you say, how can a raid6 system fail? Raid6 can lose two drives and still work. Three drives dying, power surge maybe? No.
One drive failed, but the hotspare took over. The server beeped, so the beeper was cut off. The server reported dutifully that a drive was blown, which was equally dutifully clicked away without reading it.
Another drive failed, but it still somehow managed to keep going. No beep this time since even the best beepers fail to work when they are not connected. And finally the whole system failed to provide data, or they'd probably have continued 'til a rebuilt would have been impossible.
But the real kicker was that I was being yelled at how we dare to sell a Raid6+spare as a system that prevents data loss. It does, when you don't do your best to ignore every information it gives you about an impending catastrophe.
And this is hardly an isolated case of stupidity. People simply close every warning information they get because "I don't understand it anyway". Without reading it, how do you KNOW whether you understand it?
I dare you to ask that question. It usually results in more yelling, but no really enlightening answers.
I think there is an explanation for this, or at least a partial one.
Microsoft makes a decent keyboard but other than that, I don't use anything Microsoft on my own machines and this has been the case for about ten or eleven years. I'll often go long periods of time without ever using Windows. If not for my friends who use it and ask me for help with problems from time to time, I might have lost the skillset. Because of that, when I do sit down at a Windows machine, I can easily see the contrast between the way things are done on it and the way things are done on other systems.
One thing about Windows that I find to be a nuisance is that so many non-critical messages will trigger system-modal dialog boxes. The examples of this are too numerous for me to begin to enumerate them here, not to mention it would be a rather boring list, but if you have experience with multiple operating systems then you have probably noticed this too. The problem with this approach is that users quickly grow accustomed to the idea that these messages are not very important and can be safely ignored. It becomes something like the "boy who cried wolf" fable, in that it sets up a situation where the occasional important error message gets ignored. Using Windows XP makes me feel this way; I can only imagine how much more true this is for Vista's UAC system.
I'm not saying that this fully explains your example involving RAID 6, only that it is a particularly egregious example of a much more general tendency.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein