Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I was hanging around one day with a friend who works for

a small computer retail store here in Mexico. A

client had brought his computer (Pentium 133)

to make a memory upgrade.

The machine had 2 hard disks, so we had to dismount the

heat sink and the cooling fan of the processor so we can

reach the SIMM slots. We then proceeded to turn the machine

on without replacing them (as long as the Pentium is not

turned on for more than 1 minute, it will not overheat),

to check if the machine could detect the new memory, check

parity errors, etc.

The client, who had been standing next to us

all the time, asked what the heatsink an the small fan were

for. "It's for cooling the processor, because it heats up

when it's turned on", was the answer. "Really?" said the

client, and before anyone of us could do anything to stop

him, he generously moistened his right thumb with saliva

and pressed it on the Pentium, just over the "Intel (tm)"

logo.

CRACK!!!

The Pentium's ceramic package neatly cracked in 3 pieces, a

whiff of smoke elevating from it. My friend and I looked

astonished at each other for a moment and then bursted

into hysterical laughter. Oh my, I laughed so hard that I

thought I'd burst a gut. The user, looking petrified at

his now-dead computer, asked in a lame voice:

"Uh, can you guys glue it back togheter?"

(new burst of laughter)

"Uh, is it covered in the warranty?"

(almost fell out from my chair)

Well, the Pentium was defunct and the motherboad on the

fritz, so he had to buy a new one. He said that he should

get them free, on the basis that it had broken in the

store. What a plonker. And, (poetic justice) he had his

thumb with the Intel logo literally "branded" for a week.

Maybe you guys will not belive me, "no one could be so

idiotic, you know" but I was there, and it was the joke of the

month in the store. From now on, we do not repair computers

in a place where the clients can see them.

The moral of this story: "Saliva is not

Intel (tm)-compatible"

I worked as a Computer Technology & Applications Specialist for a large college in Portland, Oregon.

I got a call from the Academic Dean of the college pleading for help to solve her latest computer problem.

She couldn't understand why she was getting the most vile and suggestive email from all over the world. On a good day, she would get anywhere from 200 to 300 messages. This was really putting a crimp in her management style as everyone in the office was laughing at her.

The source wasn't hard to discover. Everytime she had a student into her office for discipline, she sat at her big desk, handing out punishments and suspensions.

Since she wasn't technically proficient, on the whiteboard right behind her desk she had scribbled down her user name and password to the college's system. Under that, she had written the phone number for outside access to the system.

I walked over to the whiteboard and erased the information from it.

She let out a scream saying "I didn't have that memorized ! What am I going to do now ?"

We issued her a new password on the spot and I then proceeded to write down the new information on a little piece of paper and told her to put it in a place where no one could see it.

Two weeks later, I get another call from her. The same thing was happening again.

Once in her office, I cleared out her email then I proceeded to scan the room.

Sure enough, there in plain view of anyone sitting across from her was my little note with her logon name and password, neatly taped to the backside of her computer monitor.

I work at a help desk for pc support for a large corporation with many locations around the US. I received a call the other day that still gets the department smiling... Here goes:

Help Desk, can I help you?

Yea, I got this new Dell PC and I am not sure if my sound card is working or if I have a sound card. (Very thick foreign accent using a speakerphone and talking from the other side of the room)

(At this point, I verified that the user had ordered a sound card with the PC and that he was running WIN95). We then needed to go to Device manager. I then verified that he had a sound card listed and we checked the properties to make sure that it was working properly. I had to keep asking them (2 gentlemen with thick foreign accents) to please come closer to the phone so that I could hear them. After verifying that he truly DID have a sound card I asked:

What have you done to test the sound card?

(Both gentlemen at once) Well....

OK, let's go into the control panel and then into sounds. Click on any sound that has the speaker icon.

Huh? Click on what?

Do you see the speakers on this screen?

Yes

Take your mouse and point to the speaker, then double click to play it.

Nothing happens.

Are your speakers plugged in correctly? Make sure that they are plugged into the jack in the back of the PC

What speakers?

Sir, if you want to hear the sounds come out of the PC, you have to attach the speakers. It's like a stereo receiver without speakers. It may work, but you won't hear it without speakers.

Oh, OK thanks, bye. (click)

As a technician for a City government, I provide basic computer training to a variety of employees. While training a room full of firefighters, I noticed one of the fireman sitting quietly in the back row. He was working digilently but seemed to be struggling with the hands-on training.

I walked up behind him and asked him how it was going. He said he understood the instructions, but was having a difficult time clicking the buttons on the mouse. I was able to diagnose his problem right away. I reached over, picked up the mouse and, as I turned it around, reassured him it would be easier if the buttons were positioned on the top of the mouse for use by his fingers instead of under his palm.

He happily agreed this way was easier.

We are selling modems with answering machine capabilities.

Last week we got a call from a women who was not able to

make the answering machine work.

Have you checked the cable between the PC and the Modem ?

Which PC ?

The one you need to listen your messages ?

But it is not written on the box that we need a PC to use

the modem...

I do not know who sold her the modem ... But I am sure he is

really good ... He sold a modem to someone who does not

have a computer !!!

I was a computer repairtech in Texas - We had a huge area to

cover which meant sometimes driving 2 hours to spend 15 minutes

working on their equip. and 2 hours back (If they were that far out

they paid from the time I got in my car till the time I got

back which was $75 an hour doesn't sound like much but this

was about 10 years ago). Anyhow we get a call from John Smith

Co. (Name changed to protect the ignorant). His computer was

not working I get there and hit the power switch nothing looked

at the plug it was unplugged, told the office manager that they just payed me $150 to plug in their comp.

About 2 weeks later got a call from the same company

computer not working again. This time I spoke to the office manager

and asked her to check the plug she said this time it was plugged

in. I drove for 2 hours walked in the door walked right to the plug plugged it in voila it works. I again told her she paid $150 for about 10 seconds of work.

This happened about three more times every time I called and asked her to check the plug every time the plug was unplugged. So finally I asked her to check the plug while I was there and she walked right over to the printer and checked the printer cable and said "see its plugged in!". I said "that's the printer cable". She said "ya its a laser printer and

the computer gets more power from the laser so I unplugged the

power cord".

Far be it for me to tell tales on a

fellow tech...

This nice guy had just been hired to help me

with a backlog of calls, and one of the first he

took was "I can't see my printer."

Enthusiastically, he headed out

and spent quite a bit of time checking

out the printer.

I got a phone call: "...I hate to admit

it, but I just can't figure out what's

wrong with this printer. Can you

come take a look at it?"

When I got there, I listened as he explained

what he had done; all good troubleshooting but

with one piece missing. I reached around the

back and jiggled cables. "Click" we heard

when I got to the ethernet connector.

"No!" he said. "I can't believe I missed that!"

"Don't worry. Follow me."

We walked over to the customer and

verified it was back online.

"What was it?"

"Oh," I said, with a glance at my partner,

"it was a hardware problem, but we

fixed it."

During 88', out on a contract in an African (not to be mentioned)

country, supporting an IBM System-38 environment,

I was overseeing the last throes of capturing inventory

into the Jurassic database. I noticed during the morning

session that one of the customer's order entry clerks, was

staring at the screen in front of him, with no keyboard

activity.

This was none of my business, being a contractor

and a foreigner and all, and we were really wrapped up in

the development of inventory reports. The team (my RPG

programmer and myself) did notice this inactivity during the

whole of that day though, carrying itself over into the next

day and into day 3.

The RPG guy's curiosity got the better of him, and he

strolled over to the by now, conspicously inactive order entry

genttleman. "What are you doing, man?" he inquired, in a

friendly yet curious overtone. "I'm busy!", came the reply.

The RPG analyst streak kicked in; "Busy what?", he asked.

"BUSY, WAITING!", was the 'conversation over' final answer.

(I took down the terminal number, went to the System 38

console, and there it was - for IBM'ers only - 'verified OFF'.)

As soon as the busy clerk took off, we rebooted the terminal

and the man was presented with the logon id screen he was

so busy waiting for ([patiently) for nearly 3 days!

I used to work for a large organisation supporting VMS. One

day, a customer called up sounding very quiet and mumbling

that he was having a few problems. I asked the nature of

these problems and he said:

'well.. its rather embarrassing actually. We're having a few

problems with safe sex. We just can't seen to get it right.

It's quite crucial at the moment and seems to be failing

every night.'

Safe sex I said? He had caught me totally off guard, and I

didn't really know what to say. Going bright red and having

visions of having to tell him that we were customer support

and not the family planning centre I quickly asked him to

spell it to me.

Yes, he said, s.a.f.e. s.e.x. You know, its what you backup

VMS files into.

Ah I said, you mean SAVE SETS.

Oh, he said sounding very embarrassed. After a long stunned

silence from both parties, he said 'I'm new.. I bet thats

my colleagues idea of a joke!'

A friend of mine told me a story about how he'd been asked

to go and help this guy who was having problems with his

printer and scanner.

My friend duly turns up to find that this man had thought

that he could create his own photocopier.

Rather ingeniously he had bought a scanner and a printer and

had taken the scanner cable, fixed it to a male-to-female

port converter, and then plugged the resulting plug into

the back of his printer. He had thought that if he did this

the scanner would print directly to the printer, thus

creating his own photocopier!

This happened late last year. I was working the noon to eight shift

at my office. As PC/Lan support for a 200+ user network, I have

heard it all... or so I thought. I got a call from a particular lady:

"My computer won't shut off" she said.

"Won't turn off?" I asked, mystified.

"Yes! Really, I've tried for 30 minutes! and I have to

go home! I don't have time to argue with this thing" She ranted.

"OK, ok, I'll be right up" I replied.

So, I walked up to the next floor where she sat. All the while

thinking all manner of strange things like wiring shorts, or

perhaps a faulty power supply... I had an image in my mind of

her jerking the cord out of the wall and it leaping out of her hands

and plunging itself back in to the socket!

I found her sitting there with three or four others watching this

bewitched machine. I watched as she demonstrated her problem.

Sure enough, she hit the button and paused as the machine began

to count RAM and boot up.

"SEE!!!" she said completely vindicated.

I asked her to repeat it once more and watched her very closely.

As it turns out she was tapping the "reset" button repeatedly...

This was back in the days of 5.25 inch floppies. A colleague in a different office had wiped a program from his hard disk and needed it back so, to save time, I decided to give instructions down the phone. The session went something like this:-

Me: Do you see Disc number one?

Him: Yes.

Me: OK. Put that into the slot - make sure the label is facing the wall then close the little door like thing.

[There followed the reassuring sound of a floppy door clicking shut]

Him: Done that.

Me: Good. Now type the word 'Install' and press the reurn Key and read out what happens on screen. If stuff schrolls too fast, don't worry. the main ting i need is to know when it finishes.

Him: (eventually) It says Insert Disc Number 2.

Me: great! go ahead and do that.

[There followed a rather less reassuring sound a what appeared to be something of a struggle]

Him: This one must be the wrong size, doesn't fit.

Me: Errr Isn't it part of a set?

Him: Yes but it doesn't fit.

Me: Isn't it the same size as the first one?

Him: I think so.

Me: Can't you tell?

Him: No, do you want me to try and get the first one back out to have a look?

There was a user who had the same problem over and over again, when the techie was not

there: The computer was beeping all the time. After several attempts to find what was

happening, the techie just stayed beside the user to see her work, until she got the failure. What

happened is that her chest was so big that it overlayed the keyboard when she was not

working with it.

While trying to explain, over the telephone, how to map a

network drive under Win95, I ran into an interesting

situation:

Me: "now, type in \\serverna..."

User: "there's no more room in the field. It just beeps..."

Me: "that can't be. Just erase everything out of the field

and start over. \...\...s...e...r...v...e...r...n...a..."

User: "out of room!"

Me: "okay, this time, cancel out of the window and start

again by right clicking on..."

this went on through a few more attempts until the user

finally stopped in the middle of the Nth try and asked:

"oh, is 'backslash' one word or two?"

I should have known!

A friend of mine who does individual client contracting told me this story.

At once time, a friend of mine had a rather good contract with a smaller company in a

"rent-by-the-month" kind of office. He has heard about the "experience level" of some of

the workers, and dreaded the worst. But for the most part, he had very few on-site calls,

since a majority of the problems involved "how do you save a file in WordStar 4.0" and so

on.

Then one day, he was called to say he had to come on site, because a secretary was having

problems with her mouse. In the background, he heard someone shout, "Tell him it’s

haunted!" This he had to see.

This secretary was no dummy. She tried everything to fix this problem, including calling

the support department at Logitech. They simply didn’t believe her. This was the problem:

Once in a while, at random times during the day, the mouse pointer went crazy, jumped all

over the screen, clicked and moved random icons, launched programs, emptied her recycle bin,

and acted on a mind of its own. Then it would stop. If she used the mouse, she could

"fight" it, but the pointer would become more vicious, and the problem would last longer, as

if to say, "I’m in control here, AHAHAHAAAaaa!" The computer was the talk of the office.

But it happened so infrequently, that the owner could never reproduce it on command. My

friend looked in Windows, did a virus check, and nothing came up. He re-installed the mouse

drivers, called Logitech back, and everything seemed fine. Luckily, it happened while my

friend was trying to fix it, and it did seem to have a life of its own. It opened programs,

dragged things into the recycle bin, and if you "fought against" it, it would move quicker,

and moved with such precise measure, you would think it was being controlled by a sentient

force (that is, didn’t randomly zip all over the place, it *looked* like someone else was

controlling the mouse). It was a cordless mouse, so his first thought was an error in the

receiving unit, but Logitech ran a diagnostics on it that passed every time.

My friend then asked if anyone else used a cordless mouse, and everyone in that office did,

but the secretary was the only one who had any problems with it. My friend pondered what

could cause such interference, until he had an idea, and went to the office next door. Sure

enough, on a printer server they had, they had the same problem. It turns our that the

receiver was close enough to the wall to be picked up by the secretary’s receiver. The

computer was only used a few times a day, and the person in charge of it never told anyone

because she thought she just wasn’t using the mouse right, and everyone would think she was

crazy. After they repositioned the secretary’s desk, she never had the problem again.

This is an older story, but involves a friend of mine who answered a call from a guy

who said his disk wouldn’t eject. He said it could read the floppy, but not eject. So they

sent out a tech, and she looked in the drive, and didn’t see a disk. They man insisted he

could read it, and sure enough, in DOS, drive A: had data on it. She looked in the disk

drive again with a light, and saw something that looked like gooey caramel pudding. She

asked the man how he got the "disk" in there.

"Well," he said, "I removed it from its black envelope"

Yes, he actually cut open his 5.25 floppy, and inserted the light-brown disk. For some

reason, the drive could read it, but without the "black envelope," could not eject it.

I work for a third party maintenance company, one day our largest account call

complaining that their CD-Rom drive was failing to read any CD-Roms.

A tech was duely dispatched with a replacement CD-Rom drive. On arrival the tech found that

the customer had no CD-Rom drive and had been inserting Encarta 97 into there 5.25" floppy

disk drive.

When the tech pointed out their mistake the customer swore blind that he had had one

yesterday and that they must have been switched over night.

I own a small computer shop in Banbury, England and have had a few "interesting"

customers like the one who:

Purchased a CD Rom Drive while I was away for a few

days with someone else watching the shop. Upon my

return I was asked to speak to this customer as he was

very dissatisfied with his purchase.

The following day he came in to the shop to tell me that

he wanted his money back on his CD Drive. I asked him

what was wrong and he replied nothing, it appears to work

absolutely fine. I further asked then why did he want to

return it? He replied to me in the most honest face I have

ever witnessed, that he did not have any CD's so the

drive was useless to him! Since we didn't "sell" the drive

to him, he simply came in off the street to ask to have one

fitted, I had to ask why he purchased it in the first place.

He again ever so honestly stated that all his friends had

them and told him he should get one. At this point I felt

sorry and said that despite his asking for it and us fitting

it, I would be glad to take it back since it really had not

been used. Then thinking, I said that wouldn't he be

happier if he had CD's to use in it? He said yes, but he

had spent all he could afford at the moment on the drive

and couldn't afford them.

I reached below the counter and gave him several magazine cover disks, a demo from Dorling

Kindersley,

and an AOL and Compuserve free CD pack.

Needless to say, the customer walked away looking as if

he had won the lottery!

Another "engineer" customer of mine was building a system from some of our old spare parts

that we had

collected in a box for him.

He was happily taking away ISA controller cards, old

hard drives and floppies to get this cheap system up

and running. From all accounts he was doing a good

job as we had daily accounts from him on what he

found that worked and did not.

Then after not seeing him for several days, he comes in

looking like he had lost his best friend. He explains that

while fitting one of the cards the system simply went up

in smoke and he can't figure out why. As he was so

glum, I told him that if he brought it round I or one of the

guys would have a look at it to see if we could help

That afternoon he brought the system round and opened

up this box that smelled as if someone had tried to toast

marshmellows inside. After a step by step of what he had

done to the machine we finally found what had caused the

"burning sensation" the machine experienced.

The second hand video card given to him by a friend was

the long 32 Bit vesa local bus type and it would not fit

over the voltage regulator in the sytesm. He figured he

would cut off the bits that interfered with it and proceeded

to chop off 1/8th of the card...naturally the wiring inside

lit up like a christmas tree when he plugged it in!

Finally, my last favorite was one of my customers who

insisted that he could make his system work by cutting

a motherboard in two, and attaching his 486 dead

motherboard bits onto a cheap (free) 286 motherboard

to get his system up and running.

After warning him about the expected outcome, we

never saw him with the two motherboards again. He

purchased a system the following day and refused to

discuss the outcome of what he had done. Did say

though that his wife was planning a trip back to her

mothers!

I used to work Internet support for an ISP.

One day we got a call from a customer who had purchased an

account and wanted help setting it up:

US: Support, can I help you?

HIM: Hi, I need help getting my access to work.

US: OK, what type of modem do you have?

HIM: Modem? What's that?

US: It's the box that connects to your phone line.

HIM: Nope, I don't have one of those.

At this point, we probably should have given up in disgust,

but no... having established that he needed to buy a modem

before he could go online, we tried to be helpfull:

US: Why don't you give us a call when you've bought one, and

we'll talk you through connecting it to your computer.

HIM: Computer? I need a COMPUTER???

I think he thought the Net came through the TV or something...

True story, I promise!

About a year ago I was doing remote an onsite support for a company in the UK

I had installed a new PC for a novice who had not used a PC before, having installed the PC

I went back to my office on a separate site for the rest of the day.

A few hours later she called back saying that the screen was very bright and there difficult

to read. I spent about an hour (very hard work!) talking her through changing the

brightness and contrast controls on her monitor, this did not solve the problem and I had to

admit defeat and said that when I visited their site the next day I would take a look.

The next day I went to site and immediately realised what the problem was, I went up behind

her and CLOSED THE CURTAINS which were right behind the user!!! This solved the problem and

the user was very grateful if not a little embarrassed!

A school teacher friend of mine actually caught two members

of school staff extending the mouse pad with text books to

move the mouse pointer to a desired area of the screen!

S: How can I help?

C: There are no colours on my screen, is my browser broken?

S: Which page are you looking at?

C: The home page

S: What do you see

C: Well, everything's white apart from the text, which is black.

There's just a strip of blue along the top.

S: So apart from the black, white and blue there are no other colours.

C: Yes, what's wrong, do I need a better monitor? Is it a problem at your end.

S: No, it's supposed to look like that. That's the way we designed it to look.

Exact transcript of message left on answering machine -

Hello this is the XXXXXXX Museum here

01XXX XXXXXX.

I’ve got a message coming up on the computer saying "divide overflow"

Um-uh, never, the thing is perfectly formatted and online, uh, the floppy and also and the

hard disk and I’ve never had any problem about overflow because it’s an already formatted

errr, work, and I just don’t know what I’m meant to do or how I divide an overflow or what

overflow there is, I wonder if you could er give me some advice please, I would be grateful

‘cause I can’t erm, really work on it properly, while it’s, ‘cause it’s, it won’t do

anything until I’ve, um, obeyed the command and I’m not quite sure what to do. Thank you

very much.

We were supporting a PC application for a client of ours who was more used to using

Macs.

Whilst trying to talk them through looking at the "My Computer" properties on their Windows

95 machine, our man said "Highlight the My Computer Icon, and click the right mouse button".

However, this didn't seem to bring up the window we expected.

After several minutes of frustration at both ends, our man asks "You are clicking the RIGHT

mouse button aren't you?"

To which, the even more frustrated Mac-using client asks; "Is there a WRONG mouse button??!"

.... and it's true!

One very busy afternoon, after taking a long how do I install call,

I received a phone call from a very frustrated person, the converstation,

went something like this...

Help me please!!!

I'll do what I can, what's the problem?

I just bought a modem, so I could get on the internet, but it won't work.

Ok, what is it doing/not doing?

Well I plugged it in and turned it on just like the book said,

but I can't find the internet.

(thought to myself at least they read the book)

I take it that this is an external modem.

Yeah

Ok well lets check the cables and make sure they are connected properly.

Check and make sure there are lights on, on the front of the modem.

And turn it on.

Yep, it's already on.

Ok now check the phone line is it plugged into the wall jack.

Uh Yep.

Ok now which plug do you have it plugged into on the modem, the one

with the picture of the phone or a picture of a jack??

The one with a jack!

Ok good, so far.

Now the other funny looking cable where is it plugged in?

In the back of the modem.

Ok, the other end is it plugged into the computer.

What computer!

Your computer.

I don't own a computer, I went to the store and bought a modem.

The guy at the store said just plug it in and away I go. He never

told me I need a computer.

Yeah, you do (trying not to laugh)

Well I'm not spending $3000.00 dollers just to get e-mail.

Forget it. CLICK