Why are people so dumb?!!!!!!!!!

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: timswim78

Originally posted by: lilcam
So this lady brings a laptop into my office yesterday as I was leaving. She needed Photoshop installed on it. Upon turning it on, I immediately saw how slow it was. She told me it was working fine and asked what I did to it! So, I rebooted it again thinking it was something minor but it still was slow. Anyways, to make the long story short, I had to take it home and now I'm formatting the hard drive. Well, she has documents she left on there and now I have to tell her the files will be lost.

We have a policy where you need to save your files on the file server and NOT on your personal desktop/laptop. Oh well, she'll be b!tching! What is wrong with ppl? They complain when you tell them how to do things right, and they dont wanna listen as it is.

GRRRRRRR, I need to leave IT

Yea, I wonder why people are so dumb.

There was this "IT" guy who found that a computer was slow. So, he decided to reformat the drive without backing up any of the files on it first.

Seriously. I can't blame the OP since its the "policy," but an IT group with a smart mgr would have a policy of making a backup image of a user's data before imaging. We have a couple 300GB external drives, backup all data to that first, reformat, and copy what looks like relevant data back.

 

[Czar]

gigapet,
do you work in IT?

 

[gigapet]

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: Turkish

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet
what will you put on the trouble ticket "Didn't feel like troubleshooting problem so I erradicated all her data instead and re-imaged. Case Closed"

There's also the more plausible:

"Troubleshooteted. Couldn't resolve in reasonable amount of time due to massive amounts of unapproved software/spyware installed. Reformatted. Good thing policy states to save all data to network."

You see, 99% of the time when I ran into the OP's situation it was always the same assholes getting themselves into trouble. Visiting malicious websites, installing unapproved software (that had jack to do with their jobs) and even hardware, dicking around in the registry, magnets attached to the side of the case, you know - everything the user SHOULD'T be doing to the computer.

Honestly, I could give a rat's ass if they lose their data; especially when policy (dumb or not) backs me up. It's a fine line, but your data is your responsibility until you put it on my server.

It is not the users fault IT failed to protect their machine from spyware, unapproved software etc. Like I said it sounds like IT is a sloppy operation where he works.

Not every business has the resources to take appropriate / necessary actions to manage their entire network infrastructure. That's when they need policies, which are, most of the time, cheaper and easier to explain to idiots.

Its not expensive to Lock down win2k and winxp machines to stop users from installing or changing registry settings without admin privaleges --- in fact it just takes one person with knowledge of the OS. It is also extremely inexpensive to block malicious websites on the network most firewalls have this feature builtin.

That's not remotely enough to totally protect users from themselves. You can do that and still have people bork their systems.

The fact of the matter is the company had a policy. The user ignored it and it resulted in the loss of their data. In fact, if that data was mission critical and the loss caused severe consequences, the user should be reprimanded (assuming they formally acknowledged the policy when they were hired... usually by signing it, as is very typical).

I'm not saying it shouldn't spark debate for a better policy, but that's tomorrow. We're talking about today. Heck, maybe it will prove to the executives that all those times IT requested a higher budget they weren't just blowing smoke out of their asses.

of course its not a failsafe method but 90% of issues are users that have non standard/ non approved software installed on their machines and spyware/adware/virus that should have never been allowed on their machines in the first place. Of course 10% of users will still find a way to bork their system like you said but you can never stop that completely.

 

[Stuxnet]

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet
what will you put on the trouble ticket "Didn't feel like troubleshooting problem so I erradicated all her data instead and re-imaged. Case Closed"

There's also the more plausible:

"Troubleshooteted. Couldn't resolve in reasonable amount of time due to massive amounts of unapproved software/spyware installed. Reformatted. Good thing policy states to save all data to network."

You see, 99% of the time when I ran into the OP's situation it was always the same assholes getting themselves into trouble. Visiting malicious websites, installing unapproved software (that had jack to do with their jobs) and even hardware, dicking around in the registry, magnets attached to the side of the case, you know - everything the user SHOULD'T be doing to the computer.

Honestly, I could give a rat's ass if they lose their data; especially when policy (dumb or not) backs me up. It's a fine line, but your data is your responsibility until you put it on my server.

It is not the users fault IT failed to protect their machine from spyware, unapproved software etc. Like I said it sounds like IT is a sloppy operation where he works.

And if IT does everything at its disposal to protect the users from themselves, then IT is a bunch of assholes because they've locked people down so tight they can't do their jobs. I've been in both situations. In the first scenario, we locked everyone down and had virtually ZERO support issues related to software/hardware. However, people were frustrated as hell because as their responsibilities flexed, they found themselves to be too restricted. Finding a happy medium is impossible when the users' jobs are so dynamic.

On the other hand, when you give users the space they need to do their jobs without constantly asking for access modifications, there's an inherent risk.

So I guess the question is, as a user, for what reason do you want to be pissed off at IT? Take your pick.

While the policy at the OP's company definitely isn't the best, the only thing that ultimately hurt the user was his or her failure to adhere to it.

business folks dont need to have admin on their machines and their are very very few exceptions to this rule. EDIT: a business user has no business even being allowed to access malicious websites or install software....there is no need for it. That should be out of their control. Backing up documents should be the only thing they concern themselves with.

You're making huge assumptions about the "business". You have no idea what the "business folks'" jobs are, for one thing. What about salespeople who travel? They're accessing the Internet most of the time without even being on the company network. I work for a software development firm. Our salespeople, training specialist, implementation teams, etc., all travel very extensively. In fact, at any given time, anywhere from 25% - 50% of the employees are GONE and at a customer site. They ALL require the ability to install/uninstall software because of the nature of our business and what their job requires, and they are frequently accessing the Internet from someone else's network or from a hotel hotspot.

You can't just lay down hard and fast rules like that. Every company is different. You have no idea what the user needs are at the OP's company. There are cases where users need freedom and the the biggest tool for protection is a well-defined policy that everyone is forced to read and sign.

 

[gigapet]

Originally posted by: Czar
gigapet,
do you work in IT?

I used to work for the Desktop standards group that established policy and standards hardware, software and help desk for a company with 200k employees.

 

[BriGy86]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: timswim78

Originally posted by: lilcam
So this lady brings a laptop into my office yesterday as I was leaving. She needed Photoshop installed on it. Upon turning it on, I immediately saw how slow it was. She told me it was working fine and asked what I did to it! So, I rebooted it again thinking it was something minor but it still was slow. Anyways, to make the long story short, I had to take it home and now I'm formatting the hard drive. Well, she has documents she left on there and now I have to tell her the files will be lost.

We have a policy where you need to save your files on the file server and NOT on your personal desktop/laptop. Oh well, she'll be b!tching! What is wrong with ppl? They complain when you tell them how to do things right, and they dont wanna listen as it is.

GRRRRRRR, I need to leave IT

Yea, I wonder why people are so dumb.

There was this "IT" guy who found that a computer was slow. So, he decided to reformat the drive without backing up any of the files on it first.

hehe

I don't let the IT morons at work touch my machine...well theres one good one.. a UNIX admin but the rest are dumb dumb.


We are probably going to can them all and outsource IT.

im just curious as to why the IT guys at your work are "morons"

 

[Czar]

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: Czar
gigapet,
do you work in IT?

I used to work for the Desktop standards group that established policy and standards hardware, software and help desk for a company with 200k employees.

ok that explains it, you are seeing this from such a massive scale, a company which has the budget to spend all that money and manpower


brb.. meeting

 

[crownjules]

Originally posted by: gigapet
business folks dont need to have admin on their machines and their are very very few exceptions to this rule. EDIT: a business user has no business even being allowed to access malicious websites or install software....there is no need for it. That should be out of their control. Backing up documents should be the only thing they concern themselves with.

You think you have the easiest solutions, but they are not so cut and dry. Locking down admin rights means developers can not run their development applications. These programs require administrative rights on the box. So you grant them said accesses. Oops. Now spyware can install itself again. Back to square one.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Originally posted by: sao123
I'm sorry maam, your hard drive fried... you lost all your files...
Its what you tell the sheep when you format over their files.

I did this just this week.

 

[gigapet]

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet
what will you put on the trouble ticket "Didn't feel like troubleshooting problem so I erradicated all her data instead and re-imaged. Case Closed"

There's also the more plausible:

"Troubleshooteted. Couldn't resolve in reasonable amount of time due to massive amounts of unapproved software/spyware installed. Reformatted. Good thing policy states to save all data to network."

You see, 99% of the time when I ran into the OP's situation it was always the same assholes getting themselves into trouble. Visiting malicious websites, installing unapproved software (that had jack to do with their jobs) and even hardware, dicking around in the registry, magnets attached to the side of the case, you know - everything the user SHOULD'T be doing to the computer.

Honestly, I could give a rat's ass if they lose their data; especially when policy (dumb or not) backs me up. It's a fine line, but your data is your responsibility until you put it on my server.

It is not the users fault IT failed to protect their machine from spyware, unapproved software etc. Like I said it sounds like IT is a sloppy operation where he works.

And if IT does everything at its disposal to protect the users from themselves, then IT is a bunch of assholes because they've locked people down so tight they can't do their jobs. I've been in both situations. In the first scenario, we locked everyone down and had virtually ZERO support issues related to software/hardware. However, people were frustrated as hell because as their responsibilities flexed, they found themselves to be too restricted. Finding a happy medium is impossible when the users' jobs are so dynamic.

On the other hand, when you give users the space they need to do their jobs without constantly asking for access modifications, there's an inherent risk.

So I guess the question is, as a user, for what reason do you want to be pissed off at IT? Take your pick.

While the policy at the OP's company definitely isn't the best, the only thing that ultimately hurt the user was his or her failure to adhere to it.

business folks dont need to have admin on their machines and their are very very few exceptions to this rule. EDIT: a business user has no business even being allowed to access malicious websites or install software....there is no need for it. That should be out of their control. Backing up documents should be the only thing they concern themselves with.

You're making huge assumptions about the "business". You have no idea what the "business folks'" jobs are, for one thing. What about salespeople who travel? They're accessing the Internet most of the time without even being on the company network. I work for a software development firm. Our salespeople, training specialist, implementation teams, etc., all travel very extensively. In fact, at any given time, anywhere from 25% - 50% of the employees are GONE and at a customer site. They ALL require the ability to install/uninstall software because of the nature of our business and what their job requires, and they are frequently accessing the Internet from someone else's network or from a hotel hotspot.

You can't just lay down hard and fast rules like that. Every company is different. You have no idea what the user needs are at the OP's company. There are cases where users need freedom and the the biggest tool for protection is a well-defined policy that everyone is forced to read and sign.

maybe you should look into a VPN for them if you have so many travelling and accessing networks from outside the main campus. Sales people need to install and uninstall constantly??? why???? I don't get taht at all please explain. The user at the OPs company was a typical business person....they wanted photoshop put on their already diseased machine. And the process wfor getting software installed was hey here is my machine install it....great.

 

[Jack Ryan]

I hate when IT developers and lumped in with moronic IT Helpdesk people as "IT" whenever badmouthing an A+ certified retard.

 

[I Saw OJ]

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: Czar
gigapet,
do you work in IT?

I used to work for the Desktop standards group that established policy and standards hardware, software and help desk for a company with 200k employees.

It sounds like you live in an IT vacuum devoid of problems and filled with perfect end users....

 

[gigapet]

Originally posted by: crownjules

Originally posted by: gigapet
business folks dont need to have admin on their machines and their are very very few exceptions to this rule. EDIT: a business user has no business even being allowed to access malicious websites or install software....there is no need for it. That should be out of their control. Backing up documents should be the only thing they concern themselves with.

You think you have the easiest solutions, but they are not so cut and dry. Locking down admin rights means developers can not run their development applications. These programs require administrative rights on the box. So you grant them said accesses. Oops. Now spyware can install itself again. Back to square one.

read the bold again. I'm with you on that. I agree that some folks especially IT folks need to have unlocked machines. But at the same time they are also fluent enough with tech to troubleshoot most things on their own.

 

[PlatinumGold]

Originally posted by: KMDupont64
I hate when IT developers and lumped in with moronic IT Helpdesk people as "IT".

i hate when hardware people get lumped in with ignorant develpers into a group calle "IT".



j/k btw.

for the record, the worst abusers of hardware support i've encountered has generally been from coders that THINK they know hardware. their attitudes don't help either.

 

[gigapet]

Originally posted by: I Saw OJ

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: Czar
gigapet,
do you work in IT?

I used to work for the Desktop standards group that established policy and standards hardware, software and help desk for a company with 200k employees.

It sounds like you live in an IT vacuum devoid of problems and filled with perfect end users....

their are tons and tons of problems and one off cases believe me. If you have processes in place it works. I havent had a virus or spyware installed on machine in 3 years. I can get any software/hardware upgrade I want within a weeks time and much sooner if they have whatever it is on hand and its not a special order.

 

[PlatinumGold]

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: crownjules

Originally posted by: gigapet
business folks dont need to have admin on their machines and their are very very few exceptions to this rule. EDIT: a business user has no business even being allowed to access malicious websites or install software....there is no need for it. That should be out of their control. Backing up documents should be the only thing they concern themselves with.

You think you have the easiest solutions, but they are not so cut and dry. Locking down admin rights means developers can not run their development applications. These programs require administrative rights on the box. So you grant them said accesses. Oops. Now spyware can install itself again. Back to square one.

read the bold again. I'm with you on that. I agree that some folks especially IT folks need to have unlocked machines. But at the same time they are also fluent enough with tech to troubleshoot most things on their own.

not true with most coders i've encountered. by and large they are the worst group to provide hardware support for, mostly they know just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to really know what they are doing.

 

[gigapet]

Originally posted by: Czar

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: Czar
gigapet,
do you work in IT?

I used to work for the Desktop standards group that established policy and standards hardware, software and help desk for a company with 200k employees.

ok that explains it, you are seeing this from such a massive scale, a company which has the budget to spend all that money and manpower


brb.. meeting

it can be done on a smaller scale. We have many many remote sites still on dial up with no on site IT support. Setting policies on the Operating system level is very inexpensive and highly scalable.

 

[Stuxnet]

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: Turkish

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet
what will you put on the trouble ticket "Didn't feel like troubleshooting problem so I erradicated all her data instead and re-imaged. Case Closed"

There's also the more plausible:

"Troubleshooteted. Couldn't resolve in reasonable amount of time due to massive amounts of unapproved software/spyware installed. Reformatted. Good thing policy states to save all data to network."

You see, 99% of the time when I ran into the OP's situation it was always the same assholes getting themselves into trouble. Visiting malicious websites, installing unapproved software (that had jack to do with their jobs) and even hardware, dicking around in the registry, magnets attached to the side of the case, you know - everything the user SHOULD'T be doing to the computer.

Honestly, I could give a rat's ass if they lose their data; especially when policy (dumb or not) backs me up. It's a fine line, but your data is your responsibility until you put it on my server.

It is not the users fault IT failed to protect their machine from spyware, unapproved software etc. Like I said it sounds like IT is a sloppy operation where he works.

Not every business has the resources to take appropriate / necessary actions to manage their entire network infrastructure. That's when they need policies, which are, most of the time, cheaper and easier to explain to idiots.

Its not expensive to Lock down win2k and winxp machines to stop users from installing or changing registry settings without admin privaleges --- in fact it just takes one person with knowledge of the OS. It is also extremely inexpensive to block malicious websites on the network most firewalls have this feature builtin.

That's not remotely enough to totally protect users from themselves. You can do that and still have people bork their systems.

The fact of the matter is the company had a policy. The user ignored it and it resulted in the loss of their data. In fact, if that data was mission critical and the loss caused severe consequences, the user should be reprimanded (assuming they formally acknowledged the policy when they were hired... usually by signing it, as is very typical).

I'm not saying it shouldn't spark debate for a better policy, but that's tomorrow. We're talking about today. Heck, maybe it will prove to the executives that all those times IT requested a higher budget they weren't just blowing smoke out of their asses.

of course its not a failsafe method but 90% of issues are users that have non standard/ non approved software installed on their machines and spyware/adware/virus that should have never been allowed on their machines in the first place. Of course 10% of users will still find a way to bork their system like you said but you can never stop that completely.

I totally agree that the cause of most issues is "illegal" software, but the problem is that in some environments you can't prevent a user from installing that software without preventing them from being able to do their jobs.

At my current company most people have a lot of control over their own PCs, and interestingly enough, there are virtually no support calls. We have two network admins. They handle everything from the routers to the servers to the desktops to the laptops. Heck, I even think the phone system is theirs. Anyway, we have a responsible user base that hardly ever has problems. I wish I could pinpoint exactly why, but our policy is very clear. In short, don't fvck around .

 

[altonb1]

Originally posted by: timswim78

Originally posted by: lilcam
So this lady brings a laptop into my office yesterday as I was leaving. She needed Photoshop installed on it. Upon turning it on, I immediately saw how slow it was. She told me it was working fine and asked what I did to it! So, I rebooted it again thinking it was something minor but it still was slow. Anyways, to make the long story short, I had to take it home and now I'm formatting the hard drive. Well, she has documents she left on there and now I have to tell her the files will be lost.

We have a policy where you need to save your files on the file server and NOT on your personal desktop/laptop. Oh well, she'll be b!tching! What is wrong with ppl? They complain when you tell them how to do things right, and they dont wanna listen as it is.

GRRRRRRR, I need to leave IT

Yea, I wonder why people are so dumb.

There was this "IT" guy who found that a computer was slow. So, he decided to reformat the drive without backing up any of the files on it first.

THTA'S WHAT I WAS THINKING!!! 1st step should have been a search of the hard drive for .doc, .xls, .ppt, .pst and other common file names. I'd say maybe you SHOULD leave IT.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet
what will you put on the trouble ticket "Didn't feel like troubleshooting problem so I erradicated all her data instead and re-imaged. Case Closed"

There's also the more plausible:

"Troubleshooteted. Couldn't resolve in reasonable amount of time due to massive amounts of unapproved software/spyware installed. Reformatted. Good thing policy states to save all data to network."

You see, 99% of the time when I ran into the OP's situation it was always the same assholes getting themselves into trouble. Visiting malicious websites, installing unapproved software (that had jack to do with their jobs) and even hardware, dicking around in the registry, magnets attached to the side of the case, you know - everything the user SHOULD'T be doing to the computer.

Honestly, I could give a rat's ass if they lose their data; especially when policy (dumb or not) backs me up. It's a fine line, but your data is your responsibility until you put it on my server.

It is not the users fault IT failed to protect their machine from spyware, unapproved software etc. Like I said it sounds like IT is a sloppy operation where he works.

Beleive it or not, some programs can be installed without admin privlidges. Then like where I work, all users with laptops are made local admins because if they are traveling in China or in Europe, and they call or service desk they service desk guys have to be able to walk them through uninstalling ect.

You have to walk a fine line in IT, Especially when you support the IST departments. That sucks. I have about 400 users I support that are IST people. Programmers, network admins ect, and most of them are completely clueless to computers when it falls outside the scope of their primary role, coding, data migration, ect.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: BriGy86

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: timswim78

Originally posted by: lilcam
So this lady brings a laptop into my office yesterday as I was leaving. She needed Photoshop installed on it. Upon turning it on, I immediately saw how slow it was. She told me it was working fine and asked what I did to it! So, I rebooted it again thinking it was something minor but it still was slow. Anyways, to make the long story short, I had to take it home and now I'm formatting the hard drive. Well, she has documents she left on there and now I have to tell her the files will be lost.

We have a policy where you need to save your files on the file server and NOT on your personal desktop/laptop. Oh well, she'll be b!tching! What is wrong with ppl? They complain when you tell them how to do things right, and they dont wanna listen as it is.

GRRRRRRR, I need to leave IT

Yea, I wonder why people are so dumb.

There was this "IT" guy who found that a computer was slow. So, he decided to reformat the drive without backing up any of the files on it first.

hehe

I don't let the IT morons at work touch my machine...well theres one good one.. a UNIX admin but the rest are dumb dumb.


We are probably going to can them all and outsource IT.

im just curious as to why the IT guys at your work are "morons"

Well we have about 14 of them and I had to get my Rocks linux cluster up and running because they were all too clueless after about 7 meetings and a month of trouble shooting I did it myself (with the UNIX guys help) in weekend. So you tell me should a materials engineer know more about computers than IT guys? I coulds go on basically forever but they might be watching..they sure aint working.

 

[gigapet]

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: Turkish

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet
what will you put on the trouble ticket "Didn't feel like troubleshooting problem so I erradicated all her data instead and re-imaged. Case Closed"

There's also the more plausible:

"Troubleshooteted. Couldn't resolve in reasonable amount of time due to massive amounts of unapproved software/spyware installed. Reformatted. Good thing policy states to save all data to network."

You see, 99% of the time when I ran into the OP's situation it was always the same assholes getting themselves into trouble. Visiting malicious websites, installing unapproved software (that had jack to do with their jobs) and even hardware, dicking around in the registry, magnets attached to the side of the case, you know - everything the user SHOULD'T be doing to the computer.

Honestly, I could give a rat's ass if they lose their data; especially when policy (dumb or not) backs me up. It's a fine line, but your data is your responsibility until you put it on my server.

It is not the users fault IT failed to protect their machine from spyware, unapproved software etc. Like I said it sounds like IT is a sloppy operation where he works.

Not every business has the resources to take appropriate / necessary actions to manage their entire network infrastructure. That's when they need policies, which are, most of the time, cheaper and easier to explain to idiots.

Its not expensive to Lock down win2k and winxp machines to stop users from installing or changing registry settings without admin privaleges --- in fact it just takes one person with knowledge of the OS. It is also extremely inexpensive to block malicious websites on the network most firewalls have this feature builtin.

That's not remotely enough to totally protect users from themselves. You can do that and still have people bork their systems.

The fact of the matter is the company had a policy. The user ignored it and it resulted in the loss of their data. In fact, if that data was mission critical and the loss caused severe consequences, the user should be reprimanded (assuming they formally acknowledged the policy when they were hired... usually by signing it, as is very typical).

I'm not saying it shouldn't spark debate for a better policy, but that's tomorrow. We're talking about today. Heck, maybe it will prove to the executives that all those times IT requested a higher budget they weren't just blowing smoke out of their asses.

of course its not a failsafe method but 90% of issues are users that have non standard/ non approved software installed on their machines and spyware/adware/virus that should have never been allowed on their machines in the first place. Of course 10% of users will still find a way to bork their system like you said but you can never stop that completely.

I totally agree that the cause of most issues is "illegal" software, but the problem is that in some environments you can't prevent a user from installing that software without preventing them from being able to do their jobs.

At my current company most people have a lot of control over their own PCs, and interestingly enough, there are virtually no support calls. We have two network admins. They handle everything from the routers to the servers to the desktops to the laptops. Heck, I even think the phone system is theirs. Anyway, we have a responsible user base that hardly ever has problems. I wish I could pinpoint exactly why, but our policy is very clear. In short, don't fvck around .

I've seen and heard just about every excuse or reason why someone needs an unlocked machine....95% don't hold any water. I said before aside from Developers and IT folkks most users don't need to CONSTANTLY be installing software. They may need 3-5 non standard image applications on their machine be these should be known already before hand and the liscenses should be avialable. I mean can you give me a scenerio when you think someone in the business world needs to CONSTANTLY install/uninstall ??

 

[gigapet]

Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: gigapet
what will you put on the trouble ticket "Didn't feel like troubleshooting problem so I erradicated all her data instead and re-imaged. Case Closed"

There's also the more plausible:

"Troubleshooteted. Couldn't resolve in reasonable amount of time due to massive amounts of unapproved software/spyware installed. Reformatted. Good thing policy states to save all data to network."

You see, 99% of the time when I ran into the OP's situation it was always the same assholes getting themselves into trouble. Visiting malicious websites, installing unapproved software (that had jack to do with their jobs) and even hardware, dicking around in the registry, magnets attached to the side of the case, you know - everything the user SHOULD'T be doing to the computer.

Honestly, I could give a rat's ass if they lose their data; especially when policy (dumb or not) backs me up. It's a fine line, but your data is your responsibility until you put it on my server.

It is not the users fault IT failed to protect their machine from spyware, unapproved software etc. Like I said it sounds like IT is a sloppy operation where he works.

Beleive it or not, some programs can be installed without admin privlidges. Then like where I work, all users with laptops are made local admins because if they are traveling in China or in Europe, and they call or service desk they service desk guys have to be able to walk them through uninstalling ect.

You have to walk a fine line in IT, Especially when you support the IST departments. That sucks. I have about 400 users I support that are IST people. Programmers, network admins ect, and most of them are completely clueless to computers when it falls outside the scope of their primary role, coding, data migration, ect.

We have admin rights that expire for 24 hours for traveling people. I agree their is a fine line but still there is no reason why a users computer should be slow due to virus/spyware thats pretty basic for all machines. EDIT: I know trillian doesnt make changes to the registry so it can be installed. But what legitamate programs that business people NEED to do their job can be installed without making a registry change...then ask......why are these programs not on the standard image.....

 

[DaShen]

Originally posted by: PlatinumGold

Originally posted by: KMDupont64
I hate when IT developers and lumped in with moronic IT Helpdesk people as "IT".

i hate when hardware people get lumped in with ignorant develpers into a group calle "IT".

j/k btw.

for the record, the worst abusers of hardware support i've encountered has generally been from coders that THINK they know hardware. their attitudes don't help either.

LOL. Yeah I have met some coders that think they know everything about developing and hardware, because they had a Fortran job 20 years ago and now they are doing mainframe. It isn't like you need a Computer Science degree or certification for either of those. :roll:

BTW, I have done my fair share of hardware and programming because of the jobs that I have done, but I won't even get into the new server stuff they have out there. I will be the first to admit some of that stuff I have never learned before.

And, yeah, it is dumb to lump up software developers with hardware IT. They are two different entities and should work side by side, but not as one unit.

 

[Stuxnet]

Originally posted by: gigapet
maybe you should look into a VPN for them if you have so many travelling and accessing networks from outside the main campus.

You're assuming that company XYZ can afford the hardware and additional support costs of such an investment.

But for what it's worth, we do have a VPN. However, many of our customers are government sites. You walk into a restricted building and tell them you're VPN'ing to another network . Because of this, our people need to be able to access the Internet with or without. I know it's a bit of a unique situation, but it's one you weren't aware of. How many other unique situations could there be that we don't have firsthand knowledge of; situations that prevent such neat, canned solutions. I'm not trying to be smug, I'm just saying that for every perfect scenario out there, there are any number of exceptions.

Originally posted by: gigapet
Sales people need to install and uninstall constantly??? why???? I don't get taht at all please explain.

Software updates that are released while they're on-site is just one of many reasons. The only groups in my company that don't have "power user" needs are accounting, finance, and marketing. Everyone else needs it, whether it's because they need the ability to add/remove software when they're on the road or because they software they're running requires administrative privilages.

Originally posted by: gigapet
The user at the OPs company was a typical business person....they wanted photoshop put on their already diseased machine. And the process wfor getting software installed was hey here is my machine install it....great.

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but it's a reasonable possibility that had the user taken that approach with EVERYTHING they installed, including Kazaa, she wouldn't have had a problem. Likewise, had she saved her data where she was told to, she wouldn't have had a problem. We all know that machines don't just "slow down" because they get tired one day. She did something to it. We all know that there's about a 1% chance that she didn't fvck it up beforehand.

I used to work for the Desktop standards group that established policy and standards hardware, software and help desk for a company with 200k employees.

Honestly, that probably gives you a great background. I think that would have been an interesting job and you probably have a lot of insight you could offer companies who need consulting in these areas. However, you do need to realize that many IT departments are severely constrained by their budget. Whether or not you had to take that into account in your previous position, I don't think you're giving it the attention it deserves in this discussion. It's a very real problem in many IT departments.