Fridays in IT...

Emp_Fab

A few more from me....   Got a call from a woman in an office in North Wales that the printer wasn't working.  After talking to her to make certain she'd checked the leads were all in properly etc, I reluctantly set off - from Bridgend.  Having never driven to North Wales before, I looked at the map and chose the shortest route....  right up the middle.  I finally arrived there 5h30 later - at about 4.45pm.  I got stuck behind a Belgian camper van doing 28mph for 40 miles on twisty roads that were impossible to overtake on.  As I walked into the office, I could see from twenty feet away that the parallel port cable was hanging out of the back of the printer by one clip only.  Two second fix - another 5h journey home.  The real pisser was that I had to go back up there to a different call the following day too !

Another was a similar call but at the HQ of Revlon cosmetics in the centre of London - two days before Christmas.  The journey from the A4/M4 junction to their HQ took longer than the journey from Swansea to London.  After another 45 minutes of trying to find a place to park and a further 20 minute walk, I eventually made it there.  It was a blown fuse in the power lead.  They hadn't even tried another lead.

One of my best though was when we used to look after the loyalty card system at Somerfield supermarkets.  Again, a few days before Christmas, I was called out to a fault on that system at their Tenby store.  I was taken to the office upstairs and left to get on with it.  I was facing three monitors stacked vertically and three keyboards.  I could see the system I need to work on was on the middle screen.  99% of the time, all problems with this thing could be resolved just by rebooting the controller PC, which, as this was back in the days of DOS, consisted of just pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del.

So, I did....   but nothing happened.  So I did it again.... and again......   but still the screen hadn't changed.  It hadn't rebooted.  Then I heard a little beep....   the one you get when a PC reboots.  It was then that I noticed that the screen at the top of the stack was showing a boot sequence.   I'd hit Ctrl-Alt-Del on the wrong keyboard !

I had no idea what computer it was that I'd just rebooted, but within about 30 seconds, several phones in the office started to ring.  I noticed a small window nearby that overlooked the store and peered through it at the swarms of shoppers, with big queues at the checkouts as everyone was getting their big Christmas shop.  Then - I noticed all of the checkout operators looking at each other and gesturing to one another - and I realised to my horror that I'd just rebooted their EPOS system - taking out ALL of the tills.  I watched, frozen, as the system came back up and everything that had been scanned up to the point I killed it had to be moved back and scanned again - on every one of the 15 or so checkouts.  I said nothing to anyone, and - unbelievably - nobody at the store made the connection to the EPOS system going down and a computer guy working in the office !!

boogieman

Emp_Fab said:

A few more from me....   Got a call from a woman in an office in North Wales that the printer wasn't working.  After talking to her to make certain she'd checked the leads were all in properly etc, I reluctantly set off - from Bridgend.  Having never driven to North Wales before, I looked at the map and chose the shortest route....  right up the middle.  I finally arrived there 5h30 later - at about 4.45pm.  I got stuck behind a Belgian camper van doing 28mph for 40 miles on twisty roads that were impossible to overtake on.  As I walked into the office, I could see from twenty feet away that the parallel port cable was hanging out of the back of the printer by one clip only.  Two second fix - another 5h journey home.  The real pisser was that I had to go back up there to a different call the following day too !

Another was a similar call but at the HQ of Revlon cosmetics in the centre of London - two days before Christmas.  The journey from the A4/M4 junction to their HQ took longer than the journey from Swansea to London.  After another 45 minutes of trying to find a place to park and a further 20 minute walk, I eventually made it there.  It was a blown fuse in the power lead.  They hadn't even tried another lead.

One of my best though was when we used to look after the loyalty card system at Somerfield supermarkets.  Again, a few days before Christmas, I was called out to a fault on that system at their Tenby store.  I was taken to the office upstairs and left to get on with it.  I was facing three monitors stacked vertically and three keyboards.  I could see the system I need to work on was on the middle screen.  99% of the time, all problems with this thing could be resolved just by rebooting the controller PC, which, as this was back in the days of DOS, consisted of just pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del.

So, I did....   but nothing happened.  So I did it again.... and again......   but still the screen hadn't changed.  It hadn't rebooted.  Then I heard a little beep....   the one you get when a PC reboots.  It was then that I noticed that the screen at the top of the stack was showing a boot sequence.   I'd hit Ctrl-Alt-Del on the wrong keyboard !

I had no idea what computer it was that I'd just rebooted, but within about 30 seconds, several phones in the office started to ring.  I noticed a small window nearby that overlooked the store and peered through it at the swarms of shoppers, with big queues at the checkouts as everyone was getting their big Christmas shop.  Then - I noticed all of the checkout operators looking at each other and gesturing to one another - and I realised to my horror that I'd just rebooted their EPOS system - taking out ALL of the tills.  I watched, frozen, as the system came back up and everything that had been scanned up to the point I killed it had to be moved back and scanned again - on every one of the 15 or so checkouts.  I said nothing to anyone, and - unbelievably - nobody at the store made the connection to the EPOS system going down and a computer guy working in the office !!

Similar kind of story. At one time with BT I was on the diesel generator group. Every telephone exchange has a back up generator to supply power in case the mains goes down or drops below a set voltage. We used to service the generator set ups every three years and then run them for a few hours to a dummy load (basically a massive fan heater) to check everything worked properly and to burn off all the accumulated crap out of the exhaust system. 

So at one big exchange we switched the building over to mains power only and ran the generator to the dummy load. At the end of the run the guy I’m working with throws the switches to put things back to normal, but he forgot to do it in the right sequence and cut all the power to the building. Now normally this isn’t a problem as the phone equipment will happily run off back up batteries for an hour or so, but this building happened to be a major computer hub as well. When the mains went down it knocked off the whole computer system for South London, which allocated the work for every BT engineer in the area. And there was no UPS to keep the system going. Ooops. 

We managed to bullshit our way out of it when a high level manager turned up to ask questions by pointing out that all the switches were interlocked and it was impossible to leave the building without power (which was patently bollocks, but luckily he didn’t know that.) I imagine there were a load of happy engineers that day with no way of getting jobs off the system. 

prowla

guitartango said:

prowla said:

1. The latest Windows 10 doesn't offer you the option of creating a local account, unless you install it without Wi-Fi enabled (either in the BIOS or if there's a switch).

No need to turn off Wi-fi , just click on the "No internet connection" on the left and when it asks for a user, just put in a blank password and change later. 

Have you tried the latest Windows 10 installation?

prowla

I always think this icon is a frowning cyclops...

Axe_meister

I think you have to hit the learn more button to get the option of a local account. Had me puzzled recently

Snags

The Windows things - it behaves different in S & Home to Pro and above, which may be some of the confusion on direction on how to avoid it. But yeah, with S or Home, don't make the Internet connection when it asks, then you can create a local account and set t'Internet up later.

prowla

Snags said:

The Windows things - it behaves different in S & Home to Pro and above, which may be some of the confusion on direction on how to avoid it. But yeah, with S or Home, don't make the Internet connection when it asks, then you can create a local account and set t'Internet up later.

Have you tried the latest release?

richman6100

CoffeeAndTV said:

Working as the IT Operations Manager at an NHS Trust.  The worst people were the old school surgeons who bullied and shouted their way through life.  

There was one time a maxillofacial surgeon was working in the theatre and couldn’t get an application working which displayed the X-ray images.  He asked a scrub nurse to “get some one from IT down” to fix it.  He didn’t want us to connect remotely and look at the problem.

I had to go down to the theatres, scrub up, and walk in while a patient was on the table.  He started screaming and I mean screaming to the point one of the nurses said that I didn’t have to put up with this.  

I opened the correct link, he’d been opening the wrong desktop icon all along.  There were two similar but separate icons, one local, the other regional. 

This thread has cracked me up. Like others, I've had countless dealings with arrogant people when providing IT support. The most memorable happened in the first month working at the university that's (miraculously) employed me for over 25 years. I was still in a probationary period at the time.

Much like medics, some academics can be pretty challenging. Combine the two and egos sometimes balloon. 

So, I was a newbie, managing a help desk phone line, when I was called by an academic from the dept of Medicine. He had a visiting lecturer position at our university - he was employed by a different one. The issue he presented was related to his email account at the other university he worked at - his primary employer. I explained that he would need to speak to the IT dept at that university because we had no access to their systems. It soon became apparent that he'd pissed them off so badly that they now refused to deal with him. Our conversation took many turns and his rudeness increased with every minute. His frustration with me grew, mine, with him, went ballistic. Get this, he ultimately demanded that I contacted the IT dept at his other university every day, obtained access to his personal email account, checked his new messages, printed them all and took them to his office for 9am each day. In those days, I would describe my temperament as more than a little volatile. I was fuming at this arrogant twat and, after he started swearing at me, I told him to f*ck off and hung up.

I very quickly regretted letting my anger get the better of me and, assuming I'd blown my probation, I went to see the director of my dept. I explained what had happened, covering every detail, and told him that I'd sworn at this guy and hung up. He listened to my explanation without expression. I fully expected to be dismissed on the spot. When I finished, he responded succinctly and I will never forget this. He told me that he'd probably have told the guy to f*ck off too and, if things blew up, I should direct the individual in question to him. Priceless. It was a sad day when the director retired a few years later.

On a lighter note, one of the funnier calls I took was from a rather curt woman who was having a printing issue. I asked her if the printer was black and white or colour (they ran on different systems). Her answer? The printer was neither black and white or colour, it was 'sort of beige'. She then realised her mistake, screamed, said 'f*ck', and hung up.  :-)

prowla

Axe_meister said:

I think you have to hit the learn more button to get the option of a local account. Had me puzzled recently

At risk of labouring the point, have you tried the latest release?

This is what pressing "Learn more" gives - the only option is to create a temp online account, login once, and then change it to local.

Snags

prowla said:

Snags said:

The Windows things - it behaves different in S & Home to Pro and above, which may be some of the confusion on direction on how to avoid it. But yeah, with S or Home, don't make the Internet connection when it asks, then you can create a local account and set t'Internet up later.

Have you tried the latest release?

Depends what you mean by latest? We've certainly done plenty of 2004 versions and I think the 20H2 versions are starting to come through pre-installed. However, anything we get for work purposes is Pro, so I've only done the odd S & Home for friends, which is the first time I came across the issue with the bloody thing forcing an MS account if it sniffs out an Internet connection.

It cannot force an MS account if there's no Internet connection, because it needs an Internet connection to either setup or initialise on the device.

Danny1969

They keep making it harder to go with a local account but disabling the net access while creating an MS account will lead to a somethings gone wrong message and the ability to setup a local account. Prior to the latest version you could just click I don't have internet.

Win 10 really is the biggest pile of OS shit ever released and that includes vista 

darthed1981

Have to remember MS are moving to becoming a services company, so they want you to log on with your MS account as much as possible, I can understand why people don't want to, but also Win 10 with everything living in OneDrive is a model I've followed since it came out, so I am a bit biased in favour of it.

Windows basically being "free" (pay for it once with the device, then upgrades are free forever) with a monthly or annual fee for "the good stuff" (office, onedrive, teams, xbox game pass ultimate - yes really its great) is a pretty solid model.

MAKING you log on with a pin for windows hello.... now THAT I have a problem with

Jalapeno

Bit late to the party .... we had this recurring bug at approx 7:30 everyday, causing server processes to abend regularly. Took months to resolve - turned out to be a cleaner, who'd come into the computer room (which was normally a lights-out place so nobody saw it) with her hoover, unplug a peripheral and plug in her hoover !

Snags

darthed1981 said:

Have to remember MS are moving to becoming a services company, so they want you to log on with your MS account as much as possible, I can understand why people don't want to, but also Win 10 with everything living in OneDrive is a model I've followed since it came out, so I am a bit biased in favour of it.

Windows basically being "free" (pay for it once with the device, then upgrades are free forever) with a monthly or annual fee for "the good stuff" (office, onedrive, teams, xbox game pass ultimate - yes really its great) is a pretty solid model.

MAKING you log on with a pin for windows hello.... now THAT I have a problem with

The trouble is, there are an awful lot of businesses who are far too small to go down the Enterprise VLK and DISM model, or to pony up for the absolute nightmare of half-finished poorly documented bullshit that is Azure AD and InTune, who therefore need to have accounts that are controlled by their organisation, not a frigging MS Account underpinning it all.

I strongly suspect MS thought "Oh, look, Apple have got away with forcing everyone to have an iCloud account/Apple ID, and ChromeOS doesn't work without a Google account, we can do the same thing" without considering (or giving a monkeys about) the nature of a significant part of the userbase.

darthed1981

Snags said:

darthed1981 said:

Have to remember MS are moving to becoming a services company, so they want you to log on with your MS account as much as possible, I can understand why people don't want to, but also Win 10 with everything living in OneDrive is a model I've followed since it came out, so I am a bit biased in favour of it.

Windows basically being "free" (pay for it once with the device, then upgrades are free forever) with a monthly or annual fee for "the good stuff" (office, onedrive, teams, xbox game pass ultimate - yes really its great) is a pretty solid model.

MAKING you log on with a pin for windows hello.... now THAT I have a problem with

The trouble is, there are an awful lot of businesses who are far too small to go down the Enterprise VLK and DISM model, or to pony up for the absolute nightmare of half-finished poorly documented bullshit that is Azure AD and InTune, who therefore need to have accounts that are controlled by their organisation, not a frigging MS Account underpinning it all.

I strongly suspect MS thought "Oh, look, Apple have got away with forcing everyone to have an iCloud account/Apple ID, and ChromeOS doesn't work without a Google account, we can do the same thing" without considering (or giving a monkeys about) the nature of a significant part of the userbase.

Oh totally agree for Pro - though in that case I've found connecting to my local AD domain to be very easy, though the idea that an MS account is the default for Pro I agree is nonsense, but only two or three clicks (including on 20H2 I installed that on a pc from the media tool last week) gets you back to the old local account with no password so you can join later.

I was talking about the Home usage scenario where buying into Office 365 is something MS are clearly very keen on.  Their latest move is buying Discord which is almost certainly about pushing teams into the home, which will never have been easier post every school using it to enable learning for a year.

The business I'm in is very much in the category of too small for Enterprise and far too big to have no management, so I'm anticipating having local AD for a few years yet.

If anything Azure AD and inTune offer "hope" in that MS usually pull a good product from half-assed beginnings in the end. 

I'm currently running a "hybrid" model to run exchange so my local AD and MS 365 play nicely, and to be fair it works, but it's rather daft that I need to keep a local exchange server around just for management... thats clearly an attempt to push users to Azure AD and not really cricket.

prowla

Snags said:

prowla said:

Snags said:

The Windows things - it behaves different in S & Home to Pro and above, which may be some of the confusion on direction on how to avoid it. But yeah, with S or Home, don't make the Internet connection when it asks, then you can create a local account and set t'Internet up later.

Have you tried the latest release?

Depends what you mean by latest? We've certainly done plenty of 2004 versions and I think the 20H2 versions are starting to come through pre-installed. However, anything we get for work purposes is Pro, so I've only done the odd S & Home for friends, which is the first time I came across the issue with the bloody thing forcing an MS account if it sniffs out an Internet connection.

It cannot force an MS account if there's no Internet connection, because it needs an Internet connection to either setup or initialise on the device.

The latest is the one which came out most recently, ie. that which is available from the M$ site for download to create media (USB, DVD, ISO file) this month.

They also don't seem to offer the previous releases.

Snags

Most of our clients now are pure O365 for mail and infrastructure, and then standalone machines that we configure using local policies and so on for end users. A handful still have local AD just for network/authentication, but it's not integrated into 365 because generally they have around 10-15% of the workforce physically based in the office, and the rest never go anywhere near it.

It's a bit of a pain in the arse, and proper management/monitoring of certain things is "awkward", but it works, and is appropriate to their needs. The only real solution that would be viable for them would be to roll the whole lot up into AzureAD and InTune, or a third party MDM, all of which comes with significant cost (time and money) and overhead, For a solution which, every time I look at it, doesn't actually entirely work the way it should.

I'd love InTune etc. to work smoothly, and I'd be trying to get our lot to buy it like hot cakes if I could

I agree, I can see the strategy for the home, and ultimately it will just get steamrollered through. It's just a shame, as for all of the crap one has had to put up with Windows, one of the big plusses has always been the opportunity to fuck it up your own way, not their way.

Jalapeno

Snags said:

 Windows, one of the big plusses has always been the opportunity to fuck it up your own way, not their way.

Speaking of which .....  My missus has an "old" MacBook air - supposedly (according to Apple) the earliest on that can run MacOs 11.  Tried the upgrades - they start, but never end (and never upgrade), which is a right pain because one of the missus' clients is big on MS Teams - which will only install on MacOs 11. According to System Preferences it's all done, but About This Mac it still 10.x  If anyone knows of any sneaky tricks please let me know them !

Kittyfrisk

^ Few ideas.
* Have you got a minimum 20GB free space?
Have you downloaded the Catalina installer before installing (against running the update via System Preferences).
Try running the update in Safe Mode (hold shift key at startup).
Or boot into macOS recovery & try from there. Hold command+ R until started, then run Reinstall MacOS from Utilities.

Paul_C

Danny1969 said:

Win 10 really is the biggest pile of OS shit ever released and that includes vista 

Oi!

I'm still using Vista.