Mondays are almost always the most interesting day of the week. Everyone that can't get their PC working over the weekend calls on Monday to bitch and moan.
It doesn't help matters that I don't work on the weekend. I'm out on Friday at 7 and in again on Monday at 10. Some people just don't realize this so I get some mails over the weekend that are rather interesting.
One such mail was sent this Saturday. The customer was having a problem getting his existing Windows 98 OS from his old system to load up on his new motherboard. He had stated in the email that he had considered reinstalling from scratch to fix the problems as it did seem to be software related (safe mode worked where normal did not). On Monday, 15 minutes after I walk in the door, I receive a second email:
"I can gather from the lack of response to my previous email that you had felt that I had answered my own question. I did a reinstall and everything works great. A word of advice: Even if I answer my own question, please at least acknowledge that I'm going in the right direction."
Sigh.
My response: "I went to the fair this weekend. I ate a lot of strawberry shortcake. The ferris wheel was really big. Sorry I couldn't get to your email sooner." with a little smiley face after the sentence to show I wasn't just trying to be an ass.
OK... I was kind of being an ass. But I put in the next sentence, "Feel free to bounce off of me any other issues or questions that you may have as I will be in the office every weekday this week until 7PM." A second smiley face here WOULD be construed as sarcasm.
My first phone call yesterday was over the top. The customer bought everything from another company... we'll call them NewPost... except for the video card, which was bought from my work. The PC would POST, but lock at the "CMOS Checksum Error".
It doesn't hurt to at least try to help someone even if they only bought $40 worth of stuff from you, so I asked himm a few questions:
"Does the keyboard work in another PC?" I ask.
"Yes." he says.
"Do the lights come on on the keyboard?"
"Yes."
"Does it properly recognize the CPU and RAM?"
"Yes."
"Tried other RAM or RAM one stick at a time if you have multiple sticks?"
"Yes."
"Try clearing the CMOS and giving it a second try?"
"No. I don't know how to clear the CMOS." the customer responds.
"OK. I'd start there. Other than that, I don't know what the problem could be. Could be bad CPU, board, power supply... I just don't know."
"Well, how do I clear the CMOS?" he asks.
"I wouldn't know because I've never worked on a IZM brand motherboard before. Usually there's a jumper near the CMOS battery. What's the manual say?"
"I don't have a manual. If I find the clear CMOS and it still doesn't work, what do you think the problem is?"
"Dude. You need to call NewPost. If it was stuff we sold, I could tell you that the behaiour is indicitive of a bad such and such based on previous experience. I have no experience with that brand. You need to call them any way to find out where the clear CMOS is."
"They don't have tech support."
"Sorry man. You only got the video card from us."
"What do I do?"
"Call NewPost." I insisted.
"They don't have tech support. They thought the problem I was having had to do with the video card."
I had to break it to him "You don't really believe that do you? You know they say that because that's the only part you didn't buy from them, right?"
"Yeah... I know" he said as he hung up the phone.
The next call was my typical "let's write a rant" customer.
He bought a Gigabyte board and a Duron CPU and couldn't get it to POST. He called for an RMA. He didn't call for tech support or to ask any questions about the board. Just an RMA.
I asked him my usual barrage of questions, one of which being "did you change any of the jumpers?"
His response was, "Save the questions. I'm an IT for the Pentagon and I'm A+ certified and Cisco certified and my mom is an MCSE and...." You get the picture.
I started typing up the RMA and was just talking because I hate just "dead air" when I'm on the phone. Besides, if I keep talking then the guy can't keep telling me how many certs he has. I decided to explain to him why I do the "usual run of questions" with every customer regardless of their background...
"Yeah, like that 'did you move any jumpers' question... I know that board off the shelf is set to a 100 MHz front side bus by default, so regardless of what CPU you put in it, it should fire up. Of course with that Duron you're using it should be set to 100 MHz."
"Huh?" he responded, "I called up my tech buddy to ask him where I should put that jumper and he told me 133 MHz because I was using PC133 RAM."
"So," I said, "Despite what the manual says, that the jumper is for CPU frequency, you set it to 133 MHz before even trying to fire up the PC at least once without changing anything?."
"Well, I didn't get a chance to read the manual."
"But you were in doubt about where a jumper was set, so you called your tech buddy instead of reading the manual or waiting for Monday to call us?" I say trying not to sound agitated.
"I guess I don't need that RMA number after all."
Guess not.
I Even have "Monday moments" when dealing with manufacturers. I was talking to Biostar about an issue I was having with the M7VIB motherboard not posting with certain high end AGP cards. I was told that the BIOS chip was bad, so I asked if flashing the BIOS fixed the problem.
I was told that the problem was the BIOS chip itself and that a flash would not correct it, so I asked what the solution was just short of swapping out the BIOS chip with another one.
They told me that the board works with an AGP card if a PCI video card is installed and the BIOS is set to "AGP" for the primary display type (not default). I figured, "Great! So you put in a PCI video card, set the BIOS appropriately and then pull the PCI card out."
Umm... No. I pulled the PCI card out and the board quit posting. It turns out that the PCI card has to REMAIN in the system!!!
I call them back; "Umm... Guys... How many new BIOS chips can you send me?"
It doesn't help matters that I don't work on the weekend. I'm out on Friday at 7 and in again on Monday at 10. Some people just don't realize this so I get some mails over the weekend that are rather interesting.
One such mail was sent this Saturday. The customer was having a problem getting his existing Windows 98 OS from his old system to load up on his new motherboard. He had stated in the email that he had considered reinstalling from scratch to fix the problems as it did seem to be software related (safe mode worked where normal did not). On Monday, 15 minutes after I walk in the door, I receive a second email:
"I can gather from the lack of response to my previous email that you had felt that I had answered my own question. I did a reinstall and everything works great. A word of advice: Even if I answer my own question, please at least acknowledge that I'm going in the right direction."
Sigh.
My response: "I went to the fair this weekend. I ate a lot of strawberry shortcake. The ferris wheel was really big. Sorry I couldn't get to your email sooner." with a little smiley face after the sentence to show I wasn't just trying to be an ass.
OK... I was kind of being an ass. But I put in the next sentence, "Feel free to bounce off of me any other issues or questions that you may have as I will be in the office every weekday this week until 7PM." A second smiley face here WOULD be construed as sarcasm.
My first phone call yesterday was over the top. The customer bought everything from another company... we'll call them NewPost... except for the video card, which was bought from my work. The PC would POST, but lock at the "CMOS Checksum Error".
It doesn't hurt to at least try to help someone even if they only bought $40 worth of stuff from you, so I asked himm a few questions:
"Does the keyboard work in another PC?" I ask.
"Yes." he says.
"Do the lights come on on the keyboard?"
"Yes."
"Does it properly recognize the CPU and RAM?"
"Yes."
"Tried other RAM or RAM one stick at a time if you have multiple sticks?"
"Yes."
"Try clearing the CMOS and giving it a second try?"
"No. I don't know how to clear the CMOS." the customer responds.
"OK. I'd start there. Other than that, I don't know what the problem could be. Could be bad CPU, board, power supply... I just don't know."
"Well, how do I clear the CMOS?" he asks.
"I wouldn't know because I've never worked on a IZM brand motherboard before. Usually there's a jumper near the CMOS battery. What's the manual say?"
"I don't have a manual. If I find the clear CMOS and it still doesn't work, what do you think the problem is?"
"Dude. You need to call NewPost. If it was stuff we sold, I could tell you that the behaiour is indicitive of a bad such and such based on previous experience. I have no experience with that brand. You need to call them any way to find out where the clear CMOS is."
"They don't have tech support."
"Sorry man. You only got the video card from us."
"What do I do?"
"Call NewPost." I insisted.
"They don't have tech support. They thought the problem I was having had to do with the video card."
I had to break it to him "You don't really believe that do you? You know they say that because that's the only part you didn't buy from them, right?"
"Yeah... I know" he said as he hung up the phone.
The next call was my typical "let's write a rant" customer.
He bought a Gigabyte board and a Duron CPU and couldn't get it to POST. He called for an RMA. He didn't call for tech support or to ask any questions about the board. Just an RMA.
I asked him my usual barrage of questions, one of which being "did you change any of the jumpers?"
His response was, "Save the questions. I'm an IT for the Pentagon and I'm A+ certified and Cisco certified and my mom is an MCSE and...." You get the picture.
I started typing up the RMA and was just talking because I hate just "dead air" when I'm on the phone. Besides, if I keep talking then the guy can't keep telling me how many certs he has. I decided to explain to him why I do the "usual run of questions" with every customer regardless of their background...
"Yeah, like that 'did you move any jumpers' question... I know that board off the shelf is set to a 100 MHz front side bus by default, so regardless of what CPU you put in it, it should fire up. Of course with that Duron you're using it should be set to 100 MHz."
"Huh?" he responded, "I called up my tech buddy to ask him where I should put that jumper and he told me 133 MHz because I was using PC133 RAM."
"So," I said, "Despite what the manual says, that the jumper is for CPU frequency, you set it to 133 MHz before even trying to fire up the PC at least once without changing anything?."
"Well, I didn't get a chance to read the manual."
"But you were in doubt about where a jumper was set, so you called your tech buddy instead of reading the manual or waiting for Monday to call us?" I say trying not to sound agitated.
"I guess I don't need that RMA number after all."
Guess not.
I Even have "Monday moments" when dealing with manufacturers. I was talking to Biostar about an issue I was having with the M7VIB motherboard not posting with certain high end AGP cards. I was told that the BIOS chip was bad, so I asked if flashing the BIOS fixed the problem.
I was told that the problem was the BIOS chip itself and that a flash would not correct it, so I asked what the solution was just short of swapping out the BIOS chip with another one.
They told me that the board works with an AGP card if a PCI video card is installed and the BIOS is set to "AGP" for the primary display type (not default). I figured, "Great! So you put in a PCI video card, set the BIOS appropriately and then pull the PCI card out."
Umm... No. I pulled the PCI card out and the board quit posting. It turns out that the PCI card has to REMAIN in the system!!!
I call them back; "Umm... Guys... How many new BIOS chips can you send me?"
