Post your most annoying "Comptuer Guy" calls

[Scootin159]

Inspired by This Thread

For those of us who are (unfortunatly) the "comptuer guys" for your friends & family, this is your chance to vent. List the most annoying 'life and death emergencies' you had to fix for people.

Mine: I ended up spending the first week here pretty much just installing people's computers onto the network. HELLO, ITS has PAID people to do this for you...you don't need me to do it.

(edit for fixed link)

 

[Cooltech2k]

Someone Changed My Home Page & Now Every Time I Sign On I Get Porn Pop-ups Everywhere & I Cant Close em... Please Fix it Before My Wife & Kids Get Home...

 

[Odoacer]

"whenever i move the mouse, it flickers across the screen."

 

[HappyFace]

I just hooked in my old 17" monitor and it says "invalid vsync," why isn't it working? (hello, lower the resolution!

)

 

[AnthraX101]

The most anyoing problem I got?
"Hey man, why isn't my computer working?"
"Can you be a little more general?"
"It won't surf the internet"
"That's cause it has to be pluged into the network"
"Oh"

5 min later, he returns to me

"Hey, how do I conect it to the network"
"You need a NIC"
"Oh"

A few days later

"Hey, I hooked into the network, but it still won't surf the net"
"Did you set the proxies?"
"Oh."

10 min later

"Hey, whats a proxy?"

That guy was a peice of work. The most anoying experiance I had with a tech guy was involved with my warenty, they had to put in the new floppy instead of me doing it. Apparently it involved loging into my computer (yeah, red flag, I know, but I gave them a non-admin account), and then reformating :/

Armani

 

[ShadowFox]

My Dad: "i just downloaded a such and such program that is for engineering blah blah blah..."
Me: "AND?"
My Dad: "its in a zip format so how do i install it, do i have to..."
Me: "double click the file, find the setup file, double click it"

the sad part is that he knows perfectly well how to do it, but decides to ask me

also:

My Mom: "How come when I put something on my favorites on this computer it doesnt show up on the other computer?" (we have 2 networked pc's in our office)
Me: "Thats not how windows works over a network"

 

[Ns1]

<< My Dad: "i just downloaded a such and such program that is for engineering blah blah blah..."
Me: "AND?"
My Dad: "its in a zip format so how do i install it, do i have to..."
Me: "double click the file, find the setup file, double click it"

the sad part is that he knows perfectly well how to do it, but decides to ask me

also:

My Mom: "How come when I put something on my favorites on this computer it doesnt show up on the other computer?" (we have 2 networked pc's in our office)
Me: "Thats not how windows works over a network"
>>



OH YEAH!?!? YOU CAN'T BEAT ME!

get this, my dad is A+, MCP, AND MCSE CERTIFIED!~

and he has NO IDEA HOW TO UNZIP FILES! i swear to god every other week i gotta reteach him. he gets confused with deleting files, installing programs in general, basic tasks in win2k/win98 like putting shortcuts onto the quick launch bar, it's freakin absurd!

 

[SinNisTeR]

<<

<< My Dad: "i just downloaded a such and such program that is for engineering blah blah blah..."
Me: "AND?"
My Dad: "its in a zip format so how do i install it, do i have to..."
Me: "double click the file, find the setup file, double click it"

the sad part is that he knows perfectly well how to do it, but decides to ask me

also:

My Mom: "How come when I put something on my favorites on this computer it doesnt show up on the other computer?" (we have 2 networked pc's in our office)
Me: "Thats not how windows works over a network"
>>



OH YEAH!?!? YOU CAN'T BEAT ME!

get this, my dad is A+, MCP, AND MCSE CERTIFIED!~

and he has NO IDEA HOW TO UNZIP FILES! i swear to god every other week i gotta reteach him. he gets confused with deleting files, installing programs in general, basic tasks in win2k/win98 like putting shortcuts onto the quick launch bar, it's freakin absurd! >>




yep.. thats by far the worst ive seen.

 

[Scootin159]

How about the comp. sci. prof. who can't figure out how to make rules in outlook? (mind you he asked me how to do this for him about 2 hrs before he taught his "Microsoft Office" class).

 

[Kadarin]

I gave my mom my old iMac so she could have something to surf the web with.. Now every once in a while I get something like:

"It's not working right, when I check my, you know, my email."
"What kind of problem are you having?"
"I don't know, it just doesn't seem to be working right. Can you just come over and check?"
When I come over and check, it's working fine, and she can't reproduce the "problem".

Sigh.

 

[Ns1]

seriously though, the thing that pisses me off about people in general is they don't even bother trying

it's liek freak, how do you think i learned how to do all that stuff? by experimenting, for better or worse

i mean if you gave it a shot and failed then yeah i have no problem helping you, but if you don't even bother and come callin, that pisses me off ^_^

 

[mplogic]

Oh geez! Try doing it for a living. Every little thing is always some earth shattering emergency. I have this one client where I swear they making me drive all the way over there for the STUPIDEST things. The one that really gets me is they are constantly deleting their drive mappings to the filesharing box. "My G Drive is gone and I don't know what to do!" I swear I've walked them through remapping it a thousand times and they just can't get it. Finially I got smart and created a batch file that just maps the drives on startup. Then they complain: "there is this box that flashes by when I start the computer. I try to click on it but it goes by too fast, can you delete it?"

Or they decide to swap computers around every other week, without letting me know. I get "I'm receiving so and so's email and need to get mine back, I keep deleting it but it just keeps coming, I don't know what's wrong, I logged in with MY password."

Or the ever-popular "The network is down! The network is down!" when I arrive I find that the network is fine, DSL is active, mail servers are up, and the "network" that is down is actually some website they visit that is temporarily unavailable. And I love the glossy eyed blank stare you get as soon as you try to explain the difference between "a website" and "the network".

And it's ALWAYS the computer techs fault: "Well YOU were the last one to touch it" or "It worked fine before YOU installed my email" or "My computer at home reads DVDs just fine, why can't YOU make this one do it?"

The all time classic computer problem (still makes me cringe as I hear it at least twice a month): "OMG!!!! My hard drive CRASHED!!! What am I going to do!!! All of my work is on there!!! (Of course, they never back anything up) Me- "Well, what is the computer doing?" Them- "It just says Invalid System Disk, I've restarted a dozen times and that is the only message I get! How did my System Disk get Invalid???!!!" Me (trying to hold back)- "um... sir... please take the floppy disk out of your A drive and restart."

It's truly amazing that these people can even do their jobs. Sad thing is, most of them make more than I do.

Arrrggg! Don't get me started, it's the weekend.

 

[Hossenfeffer]

Just picked up Remote Administrator to help alleviate some of these calls. They load up the server program, I use the viewer to take control of their machine remotely... Saves me the agony of driving an hour to find out they clicked on a wrong link or something.

 

[Bellgoody]

In the case of hard drive crashes and the attendant FDISK, FORMAT, and reload:

I look 'em in the eye and say, (with a straight face, almost),
"Don't worry, (Madam, Sir, Sonny), you only lose the data you didn't save."

I enjoy the inevitable second or two as the truth of the matter hits 'em right between the eyes...and they begin to blubber.

Don't get mad, get even.

 

[bugsysiegel]

Had a goofball call and sing the ABC's to me a couple times. Off key, of course. He sounded like the wacko in "Silence of the Lambs"....


"Would you f*ck me? I'd f*ck me... ABCDEFG..."


that was humorous.

 

[Jerboy]

"I need you to help me with this, I can't get this f'in mouse to work and I need to get this paper done!!" a chick squeeks as she madly pace her mouse back and forth. Everything is fine except she's got a mouse that belongs to the computer next to her's. Her mouse was behind her monitor

 

[veryape]

Luser "What do I put in the box that says name"
Me "Uhm, your name!"
Luser "How about the box that says password?"
Me "OK, carefully type the letters "I M N 1 D 1 0 T"
Luser "Thank you very much. Now that will work for me?"

 

[venk]

I hate doing Tech Support for my Family over the Phone

Probably the main reason i built them a P4 non Via system

 

[Linux23]

i once had a call where this guy couldn't connect to our service. i asked him:

Me: "sir can you ping your default gateway?"
Cust: "i don't have a Gateway, i have a Dell!"
Me: **busts out laughing before i could hit the mute button**
Cust: "what was that?"
Me: "i got a touch of the flu!" **giggles again**


and the cycle begins over and over each day.

 

[nagger]

The worst thing I did was when I was working at a Hospital switching computer cause of Y2K...

We had a form to fill for each single machine that was added to the network so one I went to some 'Male secretary's office to finalize the OS instalation, check what proggies were needed, and stuff...

I get there and the computer was allready off-box, fully assembled and allready had a CD-Rom drive built into it (only mission critical computers had CD-Roms)

I asked the guy and he said that he was tired of waiting on me (2 hours) to show up so he installed the computer, cause he knew how to assemble one, blah, blah, blah (everyone thinks they're computer geniuses).

I filled the form, got the hell out of there, spilled the beans to my manager and surprise, surprise two days later the same 'Male Secretary' shows up at our office claiming that the computer had a virus...

My manager asked me to clean the computer virus, I said that I would get to work on it when I had the time (busy schedule u know the drill)...

Three weeks l8r I cleaned the virus, the CD-Rom drive, etc.

The 'Male secretary' came to pick up the computer and was a bit p!$$ed when I told him that the CD-Rom drive was faulty and that I removed it.

He went to my manager to complain and guess what he told this 'Male secretary' bastard that that computer was for working purposes only, If he wanted to hear music CD's that he needed to buy a portable CD-player, and that he should quiet down because he could be charged with computer fraud, illegal computer access, mismanagment of government property, etc, etc, etc because he didn't follow procedures...

 

[Jhill]

I was showing one of the secretaries at my work how to use spell check. Yes, you heard me right. And I went to a website on her computer and she gets fooled by every one of those stupid ads on websites. "It says I have a message waiting for me, click it", "it says to click here to optimize and speed up your computer, click it".

 

[Electrode]

This has happened to me more than once. My mother, who knows NOTHING about how computers work, often wants me to order things online. She always calls URL's "Internet numbers" and a dialogue like this is disturbingly common:

Her: I want you to buy something on the computer line for me.
Me: Uh, ok.
Her: The number is 1-800...

:|

 

[mattyrug]

Sorry for the long story, but i thinks it's comical!
My friends won't leave me alone for computer advice, but they are 'Know it all' guys. I don't wanna post details, as he's a lurker here sometimes, but a friend was called to a local school to install a few, Video Capture Boards, he ccouldn't get 'em working for the life of him. They had Dell's, which opening them up voided the original warranty, They were running Win2k. He never checked to see if they were win2k compatible, when I told him they weren't, he WENT THROUGH THE ROOF! He bought them, couldn't return 'em, and the school is FURIOUS!
His solution? First, he calls MS w/a complaint that Win2k is GARBAGE! ROFL, like MS cares! Then he tells the School that they have to go back to Win98! Buhhhhwahhhh, LMFAO! He calls Dell to complain, and to lodge a complaint with the BBB, because they Pre-Install Win2k. HAHAHAHAHA!!! Then he installs not quite legally obtained editing software, and when it dosen't work, who does he call?? the Mfgr of the software. at this point i'm pissing myself laughing! They ask for the schools product ## for the software! haaaahhhhhaaaaa!! He hangs up on 'em, soooo mad! I go there, and he's got the CPU open, pulling cards w/ the computer on! LMFAO Even more! I tell him to pull the plug, and he FREAKS on me, starts telling us 'Computer Experts' (which is a laugh in itself) to shove it, and that we don't know crap!
I get MAD now, I put the card in, DETERMINED to make the card work, come hell or high-water, just to show this little prick up. What happens? I bypass the 'Detecting New Hardware' bit, go and install it manually, use the NT Driver, and the freakin thing works!
I whack him w/ a bill for $160, and ask who's the 'Expert' now? Who do they call when they get way in over their heads??
He claims that he would've figured it out. After 3 weeks, and over 100 hours already, I highly doubt it.

This is what I go through every day. and these are my Friends, not even co-workers! My co-workers know better than that!
This is the same guy who tried to tell me that Win2k isn't a 32 bit operating system, and that there's no such thing as DDR Ram, and a Larger PSU makes NO difference, I could go on....... oh and BTW folks u also HAVE and NEED to install Drivers in Windows when u change/add ram, go to device manager, and look it up.
amb#cog, if you're reading, please see if u can remember any more of our friends stupidities!
LMFAO!! Now u guys know why my Icon is the Angry Guy?? hehehehe....

 

[Blain]

Matt,
... only a $160 charge???

 

[mattyrug]

Yeah, I was feeling generous, I only charged him a 4 hour minimum! and that's my friends and family rate!!