I know many of you are in IT

[darkxshade]

I don't have much problems with my computer that I would request the help of an IT, mainly because I know enough to troubleshoot and fix the problems myself which are usually the most common. However, there are times a problem arises where I do not have the permission/access to make said fix and have to call the helpdesk.


phone conversation goes as follows:

me: Hi, for some reason when logging in this morning, the computer took me to my default new user profile instead of my own... all my shortcuts, computer settings, etc are gone and I need them to work. I've already tried turning off as well as restarting the computer a couple of times and tried to log in again but it's not working. This is known to happen to co-workers of mine and has to do with some problem with the registry but I don't have access to it to see what's wrong.

helpdesk: ok, have you restarted your computer?

me: yes several times, tried turning it off and on too.

helpdesk: ok why don't you try restarting again

*just to appease him, I do it and a min later*

me: ok done, still not working

helpdesk: ok I'm gonna log in via remote access, it's probably some registry problem

*what I would have liked to say at that point*

me: well no shit? you don't say... are you absolutely sure? maybe I should restart my computer a few more fuckin times just to be on the safe side. It may finally get the hint and start working again.


So yea, is it like in the manual and to follow procedure you must ask the user to restart his/her computer even if they already done it ahead of time?

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Are you bitching about having to restart when you're on the phone with the tech or that you don't have access to just "do it yourself"?

 

[darkxshade]

I'm not really complaining... I want to know if they are required to ask me to do something that I've told them that I already done again.

 

[Ramma2]

These are the same people that claim "I didn't do anything!" every time something breaks on their PC. Just can't trust em.

 

[hiromizu]

Are you blind? Do you not realize that restarting your computer completely restarts the computer? This is huge. If you restart the computer, applications that starts on start up starts. With that, you'll know what has started including programs that should not be starting - and there's your hint. Without that knowledge and you approach the computer, you'll never know what the problem is because such programs may have already shut down and not rear its ugly head until you *restart* the computer. When I troubleshoot a problem, I restart the computer before and after I troubleshoot - several times. It's the ONLY way to be sure.

 

[Riverhound777]

No, he's just a dumb ass. If a user says they just rebooted, i'm not going to ask them to do it again. If they haven't said anything, I will say "You've probably done this already, but if not, would you mind restarting your PC?"

 

[JDub02]

I worked at a help desk for 8 months. That was 8 months too long.

At least you got someone to take a look into the problem. The help desk at my company just tells people to submit a trouble ticket via the help desk web page and hangs up.

 

[Commish]

When I used to work on the help desk, and asked a person if they've rebooted, they would always say yes. Uptime.exe would always say different, almost always. Unfortunately, you got a hold of someone that is in need of much more training (obviously).

If he/she knew about the utility or knew how to read event viewer remotely, they wouldn't have had to ask the question, they would already know and progress on to the next step toward resolution of your problem within a minute.

 

[ultimatebob]

Unfortunately, most users aren't as smart as you. As an IT guy, I can tell you that 80% of most user's computer problems can be solved by a reboot. That's why we have you do that first.

And, NO, we don't believe you when you say that you already tried rebooting. If (and usually when) the reboot fixes the problem, why am I supposed to believe that you already tried doing it before reporting the problem?

 

[isekii]

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
No, he's just a dumb ass. If a user says they just rebooted, i'm not going to ask them to do it again. If they haven't said anything, I will say "You've probably done this already, but if not, would you mind restarting your PC?"

Major rule of help desk.

never trust the end user.

I get the "I restarted the system." And they haven't done any of the sort.

 

[Pacemaker]

Originally posted by: isekii

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
No, he's just a dumb ass. If a user says they just rebooted, i'm not going to ask them to do it again. If they haven't said anything, I will say "You've probably done this already, but if not, would you mind restarting your PC?"

Major rule of help desk.

never trust the end user.

I get the "I restarted the system." And they haven't done any of the sort.

This

 

[rasczak]

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
No, he's just a dumb ass. If a user says they just rebooted, i'm not going to ask them to do it again. If they haven't said anything, I will say "You've probably done this already, but if not, would you mind restarting your PC?"

but for the helpdesk agent, he doesn't know for sure that the user restarted. usually this is first procedure if it's not a network access issue. reboot to see if the issue fixes itself, (sometimes users leave their machines on for 10000000 hours which causes registry and memory errors.) next thing to ask is what they were doing when the problem fisrt occurred. many helpdesks have a procedure they need to follow from the moment you answer the phone. it's just established protocol.

<-------worked at a helpdesk for a couple years

 

[oddyager]

Originally posted by: JDub02
I worked at a help desk for 8 months. That was 8 months too long.

At least you got someone to take a look into the problem. The help desk at my company just tells people to submit a trouble ticket via the help desk web page and hangs up.

Unless your company is brimming with support folks, your average company will not have enough help desk techs to support every issue that comes in. This is where a ticket system comes in play so that problems can be prioritized based on priority and how quickly they can be resolved.

 

[Spineshank]

Originally posted by: darkxshade
I don't have much problems with my computer that I would request the help of an IT, mainly because I know enough to troubleshoot and fix the problems myself which are usually the most common. However, there are times a problem arises where I do not have the permission/access to make said fix and have to call the helpdesk.


phone conversation goes as follows:

me: Hi, for some reason when logging in this morning, the computer took me to my default new user profile instead of my own... all my shortcuts, computer settings, etc are gone and I need them to work. I've already tried turning off as well as restarting the computer a couple of times and tried to log in again but it's not working. This is known to happen to co-workers of mine and has to do with some problem with the registry but I don't have access to it to see what's wrong.

helpdesk: ok, have you restarted your computer?

me: yes several times, tried turning it off and on too.

helpdesk: ok why don't you try restarting again

*just to appease him, I do it and a min later*

me: ok done, still not working

helpdesk: ok I'm gonna log in via remote access, it's probably some registry problem

*what I would have liked to say at that point*

me: well no shit? you don't say... are you absolutely sure? maybe I should restart my computer a few more fuckin times just to be on the safe side. It may finally get the hint and start working again.


So yea, is it like in the manual and to follow procedure you must ask the user to restart his/her computer even if they already done it ahead of time?

I know here we always say it because 95% of the people either havent or to them restarting is turning the monitor off and on.

 

[alkemyst]

It has to do with about 90% of the time a network PC is fixed by a simple reboot.

Our help desk (I also) require this because 9 times out of 10 the 'expert' associate thinks their problems are beyond a simple reboot.

The funny thing is when they are telling me they did and I see 30 days uptime in AD.

Reboot...problem solved.

I really don't know what your 'registry' problem was though that affected MANY people...sounds like it was something they had deployed to you.

 

[Taxation]

Originally posted by: isekii

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
No, he's just a dumb ass. If a user says they just rebooted, i'm not going to ask them to do it again. If they haven't said anything, I will say "You've probably done this already, but if not, would you mind restarting your PC?"

Major rule of help desk.

never trust the end user.

I get the "I restarted the system." And they haven't done any of the sort.

QFT

 

[darkxshade]

ok so I get the part where you think 100% of the time the user is a plain idiot, I won't disagree with you on that but I did mention up front that this is a known issue with the registry. Knowing what this is alone should've scored me a few points, could've saved yourself and me some time.

 

[buck]

Originally posted by: Pacemaker

Originally posted by: isekii

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
No, he's just a dumb ass. If a user says they just rebooted, i'm not going to ask them to do it again. If they haven't said anything, I will say "You've probably done this already, but if not, would you mind restarting your PC?"

Major rule of help desk.

never trust the end user.

I get the "I restarted the system." And they haven't done any of the sort.

This

^That.

 

[isekii]

Originally posted by: alkemyst
It has to do with about 90% of the time a network PC is fixed by a simple reboot.

Our help desk (I also) require this because 9 times out of 10 the 'expert' associate thinks their problems are beyond a simple reboot.

The funny thing is when they are telling me they did and I see 30 days uptime in AD.

Reboot...problem solved.

I really don't know what your 'registry' problem was though that affected MANY people...sounds like it was something they had deployed to you.

This is very true. Reboot is solve it all for like 90% of the time.

 

[Balr0g]

Well your problem was this:

helpdesk: ok, have you restarted your computer?

me: yes several times, tried turning it off and on too.


With that, you sounded like a doofus to the tech, so he had to be a bit more strict with what he was telling you. Yes you restarted it. You also turned it off and on!! Which is the same as restarting it as far as Windows is concerned.

 

[darkxshade]

Originally posted by: Balr0g
Well your problem was this:

helpdesk: ok, have you restarted your computer?

me: yes several times, tried turning it off and on too.


With that, you sounded like a doofus to the tech, so he had to be a bit more strict with what he was telling you. Yes you restarted it. You also turned it off and on!! Which is the same as restarting it as far as Windows is concerned.

Because from past experience, they have also asked me to turn it off and on as well so I'm just doing things ahead of time in an attempt fast forward his most likely request. So I may have sounded like a doofus... but it's them who originally suggested it.

 

[buck]

Originally posted by: darkxshade
ok so I get the part where you think 100% of the time the user is a plain idiot, I won't disagree with you on that but I did mention up front that this is a known issue with the registry. Knowing what this is alone should've scored me a few points, could've saved yourself and me some time.

Doesn't matter.
Users are idiots %100 time, even if IT is wrong.

 

[bobross419]

I always ask users to restart the computer even if they claim to have already done this. A lot of the time they are just switching off the monitor or logging off/on, or restarting their browser. Most of the help desk work that I've done we didn't have any remote access to the computer, but when a "restart" takes 30 seconds I'm always pretty skeptical.

And in response to you saying that it was a known registry issue. If it had been me on the receiving end then I would have noted that, but I would have still had you go through all of the basic troubleshooting because it might not be the same exact issue. Users really are morons in the eyes of most helpdesk techs - if you could hear the things we say about users when we have you on mute or between calls you would probably get us fired quicker that we can say "PEBKAC". I've had tons of users say that they've restarted multiple times only to have a restart fix the issue. I've had tons of users tell me that a reboot won't fix their problem, but it does. I've had tons of users say that they know what the problem is, but they really have no clue. The last company I worked for provided helpdesk support for multiple colleges/universities and you'd be amazed at how idiotic Instructors and Students in the CS/IT departments can be.

A lot of it comes down to CYA practices. If I escalate to the Desktop Techs or Network Admins and they find out that the issue is actually that the PC needs to be rebooted they tell my boss who has to tell my supervisor who has to ream my asshole for not properly troubleshooting. Enough ass reamings and I could get fired. I'd rather assume that every user is an idiot and keep my job than take your word that you did something that I have no way of verifying.

I always start out a new help desk-user relationship by assuming that said user knows absolutely nothing about computers (e.g. "Go ahead and double-click on the My Computer Icon by quickly clicking the left mouse button twice"). Over the course of our conversation I can get a better feel for the user's proficiency, and if I have a user that I regularly work with that seems to know what he/she is doing then I might take his/her word for it that the PC has been restarted.


**Edited for spelling and clarity**

 

[bignateyk]

I like my helpdesk people.

I think they realize that most of us know as much about computers as they do, it's just that we don't have the authority to go in and fix the problems.

For example, I had a machine that just up and died a few months ago. I called the help-desk and told them what was wrong and that my guess was that the power supply had died.

Next day someone comes up with a new power supply, pops it in, boots it up good as new.

 

[Pepsei]

i work in IT, but since we're 3rd lvl support, for network and servers... we fix our own problems and skip the helpdesk.