On Call With another working week nearly done, The Register as soon as again provides a fresh instalment of On Call, our reader-contributed tale of tech assistance trials and adversities.
Today, satisfy a reader we’ll Regomize as “Edward” who works for an Australian handled providers.
“We do all sorts of things for our consumers to make their IT lives simpler, consisting of a completely handled desktop service,” Edward discussed.
One client of that service had actually simply set up a charming brand-new fleet of high-end laptop computers, all managed by a cloudy endpoint management tool.
Regardless of the PC fleet being simply a number of weeks old and under control from afar, an end-user called one day to grumble that their laptop computer docking station was no longer able to link to a set of external screens.
Edward’s coworker on the helpline remoted in to the device in concern and, while doing the typical troubleshooting without much success, asked if the user had actually altered anything because the device last worked.
“Nothing had actually altered,” came the emphatic reply. “It simply unexpectedly quit working.”
The customer was due a weekly arranged see, so Edward made the journey– and upon arrival discovered the screens were certainly not working.
He switched in his own laptop computer, which he understood worked simply great.
It, too, stopped working to make the customer’s external screens show even a pixel.
At this moment there was simply something to do: crawl under the desk and examine the cabling.
Edward discovered an HDMI cable television– however it was just plugged into the 2 displays. No cable television reached the laptop computer dock.
The repair was for that reason blindingly easy, however likewise provided a secret: who would have mangled the cabling so severely? And why?
- Thanks for concerning assist. No, we can’t state why we called– it’s categorized
- Bad vibrations left techie shocked throughout over night database reconstruct
- Computer system sprayed with unique chemicals produced super-problems, not super-powers
- I informed Halle Berry where to go throughout a programs gig in LA
Which was when Edward understood the screens were not the ones his business had actually so just recently set up at that workstation. They were bigger– and better.
“It ended up that the end-user did not like the screens he was designated, saw that a coworker had much better set, and chose to take matters into his own hands and remediate the ‘apparent oppression’,” described Edward. And while doing so, they ruined the cabling.
When faced, the user murmured some random reasons, which Edward and his colleagues became a lunchroom joke– And a story for On Call.
Mentioning stories for On Call, we desire more! We’re edging towards the 500th On Call and wish to ensure we arrive. If you have stories of users messing up cabling, or switching set, click on this link to send us an e-mail We can consider your tale for a future Friday. ®