Internet Security

Although not overly strict, we have considerably tight filters on our firewall that scans and filters websites and applications from the internet. Protection from unwanted "nasties" such as malware and viruses. These days it is essential to any business and home use alike.

Every once in a while a site that is required may be found to be blocked; we review it and unblocked it if we deem it suitable.

One day a guy comes in with his laptop complaining that it is "running slow" and the software he had installed was reporting hundreds of viruses. He also took the time to tell us how vulnerable our network was and that we should be protecting against such things. He even took the liberty of telling all about viruses and how dangerous they could be. He also complained that he could pick up malware but couldn't get to sites he wanted or certain applications.

Obviously we are always open to being told our jobs by someone with a laptop in the condition it was in and remained in a silent loathing while we checked it out.

Internet Problems (An ID10T Error!)

One day I get a phone call from a rather flustered lady from our upper management.

"Hello, I am having problems getting on to the internet with my laptop." She tells me.

"How far are you getting? Are you getting an error?" I ask.

"Its says 'Page cannot be displayed." She reads. So far so good.

"Sounds like you are not connected to the network. Where abouts are you?" I ask.

"I am at home." She says alarm bells starting to ring.

"I see so you are trying to connect your laptop to your home internet."

Pulling the Plug

It's that time of year again when our computer rooms have to be completely wiped and reconfigured. We do this by imaging all the computers in bulk, one room at a time from a preconfigured image on our server.

All we have to do is boot each computer in to WinPE, select the image and away they go. They take anywhere from 50 minutes to 2 hours depending on how big the image is. Once they are done we name them, add the printer and move on to the next room. Sounds easy...

One particular year we had been having a few problems with the imaging freezing and "bombing" out halfway through. It took us several days to sort the problems out, including many late evenings and early mornings. Needless to say we were running out of time and we still had over 1000 computers to be imaged.

Now our "temporary fix" was to have a portable server in the room we were imaging. This was considerably slower, but it did the job.

The "Broken" Hard Drive

So our favourite amateur computer technician is "on the scrounge" looking for computer parts. It was a standing joke within our department; that whenever we tried to dispose of old scrap computer parts. Old, broken parts that will probably never work again and are about to be scrapped. This guy would turn up looking for handouts. Sometimes we had to almost "fend him off with a big stick" to prevent him from taking new equipment by mistake. Even worse once our scrape had been taken away, all of the stuff he couldn't use or fix miraculously turned up again.

We show him the pile and let him help himself.

On this particular day myself and a colleague had been working on a broken PC. We had discovered the hard drive was faulty and had replaced it. When the guy walked in to ask about the parts my colleague had a idea to have a little fun.

Software Licence

Every year we have the same problem. The licence on a particular piece of software runs out and we have to wait for the new one to be emailed through. This can't be ordered in advance, you have to wait until the old one has expired. This normally takes a few days, but during that time no one can use the software.

One year we were on the second day of waiting for the email. An email alert had been sent out a few days before explaining the situation. However a guy rings up demanding he be allowed to use the software.

We explain to him the situation. That the licence has expired, we have ordered a new one and that we are waiting for it to be sent. Until it arrives there is nothing we can do to get the software working.

The Great Laptop Rebuild Disaster

The worst kind of person to report IT problems has to be those that "think" they know what they are talking about. These are computer enthusiasts that have played about with an old 486 over the weekend, installed Windows and immediately believe they are IT Professionals.

One such person contacts us on a regular basis and is the subject of many humorous and frustrating stories. A lot of our guys do their very best to avoid having to deal with him.

On one particular day I was very unfortunate to receive a phone call from him.

"Did you know your wireless system is faulty?" He tells me.

"What makes you say that?" I ask.

"The laptop I have here will NOT connect." He explains.

Scheduled Shutdown?

In an attempt to "go green," save energy, and reduce the companies electricity bill, it was decided to create a Group policy to create a scheduled shutdown. This would power off ALL workstations at 10pm everyday.

This worked well. It ensured that no computers were left running over night.

One day we were discussing the shutdown schedule with an employee who insisted that it didn't work on his computer.

We decided to check this out. Examining his computer we found the scheduled task was there and running upon it manually it succeeded in shutting down the PC. However...

"It's not that computer that I am having the problem with." He tells us. "It's my old one under my desk."

Exchange Server Down

The other week our Exchange Server had a serious issue that prevented about 2 to 3 hundred of our 3500 users not being able to get to their email. Due to the type of problem it was going to take around 24 to 48 hours to fix the problem. We put up an alert up on our website and got to work. During that time we received numerous phone calls from different users:

1. "Hi there is the email down?"
   We explain the situation...
   "Well please can you just get it going again now just for me?"
   

Data Restore

"Some of my files have disappeared" announces a lady on the phone.

"Disappeared?" I ask.

"Yes they are just gone" she tells me.

"Are you sure they haven't been deleted or moved to another folder?"

"Well I was doing a little 'housekeeping' yesterday" she confesses. "Can you get them back?"

"Where were they saved to?" I ask.

"On the server" she says.

"Which one?"