Cont: Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 11

[The Man]

That's not a certain radio frequency warehouse in DeKalb, is it? For months/years we had an issue where their RF would kack at random, and somehow they always blamed the system software. Well, they finally put sniffers on the lines and did a bunch of other stuff at the warehouse (we handled all programming support remotely), and finally found it was some breaker like the above. I finally stopped getting those particular 3am support calls.

Naw, but amazing what some high powered RF can do. I once lived in a apartment about a quarter mile from a 65 thousand watt transmitter. I had these three way touch to switch living room lamps. At about 2am or so they would just start cycling trough the settings. I had to replace the touch system with 3 way switches so it didn't look like a disco in my living room at 2am every night.

 

[novaphile]

That's not a certain radio frequency warehouse in DeKalb, is it? For months/years we had an issue where their RF would kack at random, and somehow they always blamed the system software. Well, they finally put sniffers on the lines and did a bunch of other stuff at the warehouse (we handled all programming support remotely), and finally found it was some breaker like the above. I finally stopped getting those particular 3am support calls.

Oh! Oh! Oh!

Forgive me if I've mentioned this before...

I was working at a mainframe computing site, that had very complex security systems around the site.

(Movement sensors, heat detectors etc.)

The alarms kept false triggering in the building's ceiling space.

After months of replacements etc. not curing the problem, the security company sent some technicians with 'microwave detectors'.

They traced the source of the 'signal' that was triggering the alarms, to a snack bar a couple of doors up the street.

When the snack bar was busy, the owners and workers were starting and stopping their microwave ovens by opening the doors of the ovens. Each time they did that, they would release a burst of microwave energy that was sufficient to trigger the detectors in our ceiling space. (I'm assuming that we had microwave emitters and detectors up there as part of motion detection or perhaps smoke detection.)

(Those microwave ovens were on a shelf at head-height in the snack bar, to this day, I wonder if the users ended up with cataracts from that practice.)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0039625788900884

 

[arthwollipot]

How's this for an official instruction?

Under the heading "How do I delete folders (from a shared mailbox)", one of the reasons a folder cannot be deleted:

There are too many deleted folders in the deleted items folder; Delete all the deleted folders from the deleted items folder and it should allow you to delete more folders.

 

[catsmate]

How's this for an official instruction?

Under the heading "How do I delete folders (from a shared mailbox)", one of the reasons a folder cannot be deleted:

Other than the 'Delete' after the semi-colon that seems fine.

 

[The Man]

How's this for an official instruction?

Under the heading "How do I delete folders (from a shared mailbox)", one of the reasons a folder cannot be deleted:

"Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked."

 

[Norman Alexander]

It lives!

"Catch-22” is a provision in army regulations; it stipulates that a soldier's request to be relieved from active duty can be accepted only if he is mentally unfit to fight. Any soldier, however, who has the sense to ask to be spared the horrors of war is obviously mentally sound, and therefore must stay to fight.

 

[arthwollipot]

Yo dawg I heard you like deleted folders so I put some deleted folders in your deleted folder so when you need to delete some folders you can delete the deleted folders from the deleted folder and then you can delete your folders.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Yo dawg I heard you like deleted folders so I put some deleted folders in your deleted folder so when you need to delete some folders you can delete the deleted folders from the deleted folder and then you can delete your folders.

Heavy, man! *BIG INHALE NOISE!*

 

[arthwollipot]

I tell you what. We've done some pretty significant updates to our ICT environment in the time since I've been working for this department, including some updates to the OS. The project to update all Windows 7 and 8 computers to Windows 10 was not seamless, but it seems to me that it was a lot better than the current Windows 11 rollout.

We appear to be getting a remarkable number of (usually) very minor, very specific issues that are only affecting Windows 11 computers. Example: headset microphones plugged into regular audio jacks and the internal microphones of laptops return very quiet sound regardless of audio settings, while USB headset mics are normal. Also, if multiple monitors have different scaling settings, the Snip & Sketch tool just ******* doesn't work. This is consistent, and common, and predictable. And, apparently not something that UAT for the new OS picked up.

 

[Norman Alexander]

I tell you what. We've done some pretty significant updates to our ICT environment in the time since I've been working for this department, including some updates to the OS. The project to update all Windows 7 and 8 computers to Windows 10 was not seamless, but it seems to me that it was a lot better than the current Windows 11 rollout.

We appear to be getting a remarkable number of (usually) very minor, very specific issues that are only affecting Windows 11 computers. Example: headset microphones plugged into regular audio jacks and the internal microphones of laptops return very quiet sound regardless of audio settings, while USB headset mics are normal. Also, if multiple monitors have different scaling settings, the Snip & Sketch tool just ******* doesn't work. This is consistent, and common, and predictable. And, apparently not something that UAT for the new OS picked up.

Clearly had the wrong test subjects. They probably picked experienced users who would not be overly phased by and capable of dealing with all those fiddly issues you get with a new OS release. They would not be concerned that the Start button is a different colour, and the icons look a bit different, or that Office 365 is a different look to Office 2017, etc.

Instead, you really do need to pick the dumbest of the dumb that you can find. The ones that Helpdesk quake at taking their calls because they are mindbendingly chaotic and timewasting brainspaces. The impenetrably stupid ones who should not be let loose with a plastic fork for fear of harming themselves. The scared and timid ones who flinch badly when the icons move about on the screen (auto arrange). They should be your test group. Because they invariably find ALL the little operational gotchas and problems like neodymium magnets.

 

[malbui]

Having spent the weekend installing a new machine for an elderly relative who was beside himself with panic because not all his favourite shortcuts were in exactly the same place and because the icon for Excel has changed, I agree completely.

When I was prepping this new machine and applying all the updates, it did report that it was ready for Windows 11. I chose not to install it because I knew I’d never cope with the meltdown that that would generate.

 

[alfaniner]

I'm still using Windows 10 Pro on my home laptop. I can't think of any reason to upgrade to Windows 11. I guess it's been around long enough to be stable, but I'm not going to risk it.

 

[Yalius]

I have this one user who is just flummoxed by any change whatsoever. She will call in, sounding like she's close to tears, saying "Oh Eric, I just don't know what I'm going to do. Yesterday the 'Email' was on the left and the 'Chrome' was on the right, but now 'Email' is all wonky and nothing works. It doesn't open my email when I click on my email."

And it turns out that she accidentally dragged the Email shortcut to the right of Chrome, but was still clicking on the shortcut on the left... clicking on "Chrome" and assuming that since it was in the place of the email icon, it would open email, regardless of what the labels or icons actually said. And she would literally be holding back tears, talking about how if she can't get her email to work she can't send out her Ebay orders or Tupperware orders or Avon orders or whatever it is she sells. She almost brings me to tears whenever her name shows up on caller ID.

 

[novaphile]

I have this one user who is just flummoxed by any change whatsoever. She will call in, sounding like she's close to tears, saying "Oh Eric, I just don't know what I'm going to do. Yesterday the 'Email' was on the left and the 'Chrome' was on the right, but now 'Email' is all wonky and nothing works. It doesn't open my email when I click on my email."

And it turns out that she accidentally dragged the Email shortcut to the right of Chrome, but was still clicking on the shortcut on the left... clicking on "Chrome" and assuming that since it was in the place of the email icon, it would open email, regardless of what the labels or icons actually said. And she would literally be holding back tears, talking about how if she can't get her email to work she can't send out her Ebay orders or Tupperware orders or Avon orders or whatever it is she sells. She almost brings me to tears whenever her name shows up on caller ID.

My instinct is that this user may also have a visual or cognitive impairment (that she may or may not be aware of).

 

[arthwollipot]

I'm still using Windows 10 Pro on my home laptop. I can't think of any reason to upgrade to Windows 11. I guess it's been around long enough to be stable, but I'm not going to risk it.

I have 10 on my high performance gaming machine, which I am not using at the moment but have plans for, but 11 on my laptop. Both work.

The biggest annoyance I have with Windows 11, which I have mentioned before, is the inability to put the Taskbar on any side of the screen other than the bottom. Vertical real estate to me is more valuable than horizontal real estate.

 

[arthwollipot]

So we just had a weird issue. Peoples' USB devices suddenly stopped working. Keyboards, mouses, headsets - all their USB stuff. This appears to affect pretty much everybody on Windows 11, and judging from the way our call volumes spiked, all at the same time.

We now have a fix that involves a gpupdate and Intune sync, but damn that was ******* weird.

 

[malbui]

We had an odd one yesterday. One of our apps generates pdfs of account statements and suddenly started producing ones containing empty page after empty page. This was seemingly caused by having removed from users’ machines a font that is long since deprecated and in theory not used anywhere.

 

[Mongrel]

My instinct is that this user may also have a visual or cognitive impairment (that she may or may not be aware of).

If so it's shared by a lot of people.

More likely IMO, some people are so convinced that they're not 'computer people' that they don't contemplate what they're doing, it's all by rote memorisation. To open their E-mail they click on the icon at x,y and that's as far as they're internal processes go.

They're uninterested in learning how to use their device and basic troubleshooting and are often enabled by managers in a work environment, as mentioned at the start of the OG post and span all ages.

 

[alfaniner]

If so it's shared by a lot of people.

More likely IMO, some people are so convinced that they're not 'computer people' that they don't contemplate what they're doing, it's all by rote memorisation. To open their E-mail they click on the icon at x,y and that's as far as they're internal processes go.

They're uninterested in learning how to use their device and basic troubleshooting and are often enabled by managers in a work environment, as mentioned at the start of the OG post and span all ages.

Having seen that acronym a lot lately, I finally had to look it up. In context I thought it stood for "Original Guy".

 

[TragicMonkey]

We had an odd one yesterday. One of our apps generates pdfs of account statements and suddenly started producing ones containing empty page after empty page. This was seemingly caused by having removed from users’ machines a font that is long since deprecated and in theory not used anywhere.

I had a weird font-caused error years ago with a very old application. Turned out that if a particular font was installed on the user's computer the application would attempt to use it but fail for some reason, causing a complete crash of the application. But if the font were absent from the user's computer the application would cheerfully use another font with no problems. I could only speculate that back in the early 90s when that application was created the font in question was different from a later version in some way. But I got some very odd looks when I explained the fix for a crashing surgical supply inventory application was uninstalling a font from Windows.