3. Enough Funny Stories to Drive You Crazy

All stories in this section are from Craig Bruce who clearly has heard it all. These are all internal helpdesk stories.

Is There a Floppy in There?

Person - Help, we have an urgent presentation to do and the computer is saying "unable to find OS, press any key".

Me - Is there a floppy disk in the floppy drive?

Person - No.

Me - Have you pressed the eject button on the floppy drive?

Person - YES, we've already checked that! You need to send a tech around right NOW!

Me - Okay I'll send someone over.

Tech visits person, presses the eject button on the floppy drive, floppy disk pops out and PC boots normally.

Computer On, Nothing Happening

Person - Hi this is ... I've just come in and turned on my computer and nothing is happening.

Me - Are you getting any power lights?

Person - There's one on the PC but the monitor is blank.

Me - Can you turn the monitor on?

Person - What do you know? It's working now!

No Network Drives

Person - I've just logged in and I'm not getting any network drives.

Me - When you logged in, was Workstation Only selected?

Person - How do I find out?

Me - Log out, and underneath where you type your password will be a check box saying Workstation Only.

Person - Okay I've just logged out, yes that is selected.

Me - Okay, unselect it because when that is selected you won't connect to the network, you'll only be logging onto your Workstation itself.

Person - Oh, Okay.

This happened regularly with this person, always resulting in a call and always the same solution, which always worked.

Broken Laptop?

Person - Hi, my laptop has just shut down on me and I can't turn it back on.

A dead laptop?

Me - Is the external power cable plugged in?

Person - Let me check . . . ah no its not.

Me - Okay, sounds like your battery has discharged, plug in the power cable and try turning it on please.

Person - It's working now, thanks.