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Admin
Or you can look at the error count for that interface.
Admin
Recently my DSL crashed. I had no clue how I could resolve this problem from my side. I did everything I could, but my router gave me PPPoE timeouts. So I called the guys from tech support and after 10 minutes in an queue that asked me every 20 seconds to be a little more patient I got soeone that wanted to know my telephone password. I couldn't give hime that because my roomate had it and was for a stay in japan. He would'n help me, he knew that I couldn't access the internet and wouldn't fix the problem. But hey it seems to be my problem, I pay those people to do nothing :(
Admin
Chuckling to myself, I had a quick look around to see if anyone had a bin close to their PC. Luckily they didn't. Worryingly the guy sitting next to me has magnets on his tower holding pieces of paper on it. And he is tech support. Sigh
Admin
I hate to say it but generally having magnets on or near a case does nothing. Static magnets won't affect electronics, so that only leaves motors (in the fans and drives) and the actual magnetic disks (floppy or hdd). The motors are likely significantly stronger than any note magnet, and the drives are going to be shielded anyway, to stop them interfering with each other.
The only possible problem would be corrupting floppy disks by putting them near the magnet on the case, but who still uses those?
Admin
As far as I'm concerned, the only purpose for calling tech support is to let them know THEY f'ed something up and need to fix it. If the problem has anything to do with my computer I can fix it myself.
Every time my cable modem goes down I call Comcast support. I explain to them how my computer computer works. I walk up to it and turn it on. When it comes on, I can access the Internet. Now I can't access the Internet because something is wrong on their side. I haven't changed anything on my computer. They still insist on trying to troubleshoot my computer.
Which blinky lights are on? Unplug the modem for 30 seconds. I tell them I already did that prior to calling. I eventually tell them, I have to go. Surpress the charges for this week and like always, my service will "magically" start working sometime overnight.
They should have two tech support phone numbers for stupid people and smart people.
Admin
That sounds pretty much like a widely-used fix for broken iPods. There was apparently a cable which unseated inside and giving it a good bang on a table, or dropping it from a height onto a firm surface, reseated the cable. I wouldn't recommend a concrete floor though.
Admin
Sometimes techs who say this just want you to reseat the connectors. It also works to get certain operating systems to do DHCP over again if the caller doesn't have administrator rights. But if you just ask a caller to unplug it and plug it back in, many won't do it. And if you try to explain why it needs to be done, you either confuse or annoy most of them.
Admin
WINDOWS! (Though a re-seat may have fixed it. I've always heard that connectors could oxidize and by re-seating, it scraped the dreck off. Putting the card into a different slot may have done it too as that would use different RAM for interfacing.)
Admin
[quote user="SomeLlama"][quote user="Well, yes and no"] As for the trashcan, there has to be some other explanation, from my experience i can say i have seen many a ticket submitted that was caused by a space heater to close to the tower, or a tower too close to the user (one user had printing problems with their usb printer, turns out they kept kicking the usb cable loose), or a trash can that is possibly restricting airflow or pulling cables loose?!?
[/quote]
I had a user that was VERY electric -- statically. She'd shock the world all the time. Finally figured out that was causing her crashes. Didn't really see full stability until the next machine later as the energy seemed to have done in the parts.
Admin
The gender thing is possibly (a) the fact that the user didn't feel confident enough to question the advice, and (b) that the helpdesk person even considered abusing their power in this way once the user had fallen for it. I agree with Tom. I can't imagine two blokes or two women behaving like this, still less the roles reversed. The helpdesk person may have been a jackass, but I can't see him pursuing this with a male user... Or am I just prejudiced
Perhaps she should have asked for confirmation of this advice in an email, then she would have had some actionable evidence.
Speaking for myself, it was just this scummy supercilious attitude that got me into IT in the first place - I was buggered if I was going to let some bottom-level techie put one over on me
Admin
lol
Admin
[quote user="Tom Parker]#2 Why is it that it is always guys who treat women like this, they should be up for harassment.[/quote] The way I see it, the one perpetuating stereotypes is you.
Admin
Maybe she should try unplugging her cable modem, waiting 30 seconds, and then use the cable to strangle the less useful members of tech support. She would be saving the company money, and reducing the possibility that the human race evolves into that.
Admin
Poor Maria - evil Nick ... somehow a classic ...
From my personal stories - I had a friend who suffered not just occasional crashes but you could say "frequent". Now it was the time of good'ole Windows 98 so more or less frequent crashes were not that surprising (I once even saw a made-up error message saying something to the extend of "Your Windows 98 Computer has run error-free since 23:58 minutes. That's why we are running an maintenance reboot in 2 minutes") - so I paid him a visit, he had recently renovated his room (still living with his mother). After a getting a fresh paint on the walls (or wallpapers) he got some new furniture - especially a big desk with beautiful steel legs (to be more precise stainless steel, round about 3" thick pipe). As I'm sure you all have experienced - while still living at home, or with a wife - the "standard" working environment below a desk isn't really appreciated (basically tons of cables laying around, onto that some power distributors to support monitor(s), printer, computer and other periferals). In his case his mother either took action - or made him do it - as I came ALL powercables and most other cables were nicely spun around one of the desk-legs (remember steel pipes) - thus forming some kind of resistor. After analyzing his constantly rebooting pc (it didn't really crash I was surprised to see). Luckily I could bring in my new gained knowledge from my electrotechnical engineering studies - he managed what many access-point manufacturers fail, he had in fact build a sender, that influenced his computer - more specific the thin wire between reset switch and the according connector on the motherboard. I advised that he immediately get rid of the "resistor-sender" he had created. But the frequent crashed did only stop after I pulled that reset-wire with running computer off .... - If you ask what was happening: the resistor acted like a weak transformer, inducting a foreign current on the thin reset wire (and probably other cables too - but they arent harmful), the reset wire / reset switch of a typical computer works with shortening "logic" - if you press the reset-switch the reset-line is shortened , which pulls the regular low voltage (5 V in his old computer ) downward. Now with inductivity you have the effect that the induced current is working against the reason it was "produced" - in this case it worked against the little voltage on the reset-line .. and after pulling it down from 5 volts below 4.5 -> bingo RESET .... I explained all that to him and his friend calling it "applied electrotechnics" ....