Helpdesk - Most common fixes for problems.

So I'm still working on this Helpdesk as a tier 1 and I'm just wondering what you guys though were your most common fixes for problems that came into your helpdesk. This goes for people currently on the helpdesk or those who were. On this helpdesk, there is one extremely common fix for problems which is "rebuilding the profile". I've even seen it get abused and done even though the problem wasn't the persons profile to begin with. And at the end, the person still has their problem. I only do it as a last resort and if I think it's related, but I've seen people do it and some of the times the customer will get mad because the person neglected to copy some data to the newly created profile (this is in a domain environment) or when the person did it, they didn't think about how customized the person had outlook and fail to restore anything. Profile corruption seems to be the biggie around here. Another has got to be refreshing GPOs. what have you guys got? I'll admit, recreating the profile does fix a lot of problems, but it seems to be like a brute force move requiring little troubleshooting.

Find more posts tagged with

Save $250 on 2025 certification boot camps from Infosec!

Book now with code EOY2025

Button

Comments

CodeBlox

cvuong1984 wrote: »

Oh man I remember those...

Here's one,

User: My PC isn't booting up.
Me: Is it plugged in?
User: Is what plugged in?
Me: The PC, is it plugged into the power jack...
User: Oh......silence
Me: Have a good day sir.

LOL... cleaning crew would unplug their stations all the time, YET they always call helpdesk first.

Same goes for network cables.
User: I can't connect to exchange, the internet, or my share drives. You guys "pushed some software to my machine that messed things up"
Me: * Does a continuous ping and notices that they time out *
Me: * Instructs the user to plug in the network cable *
Me: * Connectivity is once again present.

We get a lot of people blaming any problem on us "pushing software to the computer over night".

Roguetadhg

CodeBlox wrote: »

Same goes for network cables.
User: I can't connect to exchange, the internet, or my share drives. You guys "pushed some software to my machine that messed things up"
Me: * Does a continuous ping and notices that they time out *
Me: * Instructs the user to plug in the network cable *
Me: * Connectivity is once again present.

We get a lot of people blaming any problem on us "pushing software to the computer over night".

Troubleshooting with Dell:

Good times. As much as I've already ripped a computer apart and boiled it down to a motherboard failure. Yet, I was still get asked "Let's troubleshoot, sir". This was a while ago, 2 years? I believed it was the first time I cried on the phone, ever since then I've learned to say "It's been swapped with", and if they have further questions I push again "It doesn't work". If the guy wants to push again, I yield and think "F- it. I don't get paid enough for this. Let's have a conversation." I troubleshoot and go through all the hoops like a good dell user.

Oh yeah, apparently I was told to unscrew the keyboard, apart - while the guy was on the phone. To make sure that I was not lying, and I think he got annoyed when I asked him "I don't want to open the keyboard, because it might void a warranty." He asked the supervisor to make sure that It wouldn't. Good times.

But users. That's just. ...Man. I've learned to not give people slack. If they get some, they take all and run with it. I've grown a bit cynical to person's problems when viruses hit their computers. We have a policy that states "Reimage. No chances." Don't have time to search around and manually clean. If you have wedding information on company computers - consider it fair game when there's a virus and you can no longer boot. Actually that is a real example.

We had a virus issue down here, down for a week. I wasn't here during that time but from what everyone says it was nasty.

veritas_libertas

Psoasman wrote: »

I have found with profiles on Windows 7, if I am going to delete a profile, I will go through the system > advanced system settings > user profiles and delete the profile there. We had an issue at work regarding cloud email and deleting the profile the the XP way, in the Docs and Settings, won't work right in 7. You end up with the user getting a temp profile, which can't access the certificate store for email setup.

We make our users store their data on network shares, so if we need to delete a profile, they generally won't lose any data. I have found that user education is one of the best fixes.

Ah yes. I don't care which version of Windows it is, I hate profiles.

rep21

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Obligatory:

IT Crowd - Have You Tried Turning It Off And On Again? - YouTube

This thread is pretty much about my life.

Sometimes I mess with our clients and ask them if they have tried turning it off and on again in a british accent.

J_86

CodeBlox wrote: »

Same goes for network cables.
User: I can't connect to exchange, the internet, or my share drives. You guys "pushed some software to my machine that messed things up"
Me: * Does a continuous ping and notices that they time out *
Me: * Instructs the user to plug in the network cable *
Me: * Connectivity is once again present.

We get a lot of people blaming any problem on us "pushing software to the computer over night".

Ha! I love when people blame updates for problems. "It must have been those updates from last night!".

supasieu

CodeBlox wrote: »

Hahaha, a lot of times that fixes stuff but it seems like a lot of the customers "caught on" and do it before calling in. Some do it so many times that it creates problems. Like hard rebooting until you get a BSOD about an UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME...

I've moved to a classified helpdesk, and A LOT of the calls are related to outlook. Here are some of the fixes

1) Recreate the outlook profile
2) Check the exchange properties of the account for restrictions, like say, the user is only allowed to send/recieve from themself.
3) Reinstall addins
4) If all else fails, as stated in earlier post I at least try to recreate the roaming/local profile before escalating ( that fixes a lot )
5) Check to see if the account is viewable in the GAL
6) Plenty of people call to have information updated in their accounts, which is easy to do in AD
7) Make sure they actually have outlook configured for the correct exchange server

People usually call about not being able to access websites too. Usually "Internet explorer cannot display the webpage"
1) Add to trusted sites
2) check that the proxy settings are correct, and present
3) change trusted site security to low
4) check and correct the DNS suffix search order as necessary
5) Ask if the same thing happens to everyone. If yes, you may end up needing to refer them to the website admins
6) Refer the customer out for things we don't support (Lol, happens a lot )

Misc
User unable to print
- Make sure they are mapped to the correct printer
- Make sure they have the correct driver!!
- I had internal support call me because he could not get the customers computer to print. He wanted ME to fix his problem despite him being part of a higher group. Well after remoting in, I discovered that the internal support guy installed the wrong driver... -_- 3550 instead of a 3350 model driver. If he went back over what he'd done, he'd have caught that.

Hardware not recognized
- start with device manager and see if the drivers are installed properly

You can always google stuff if you don't know. Googling an error message has saved me many times. Usually I can find a fix with in 10 minutes. I don't spend too long googling though. If it's been 20 minutes and I'm not on the path to resolution, I escalate and keep track of the ticket to see what the fix was. We're supposed to escalate after 15 minutes because of SLAs

We have tools on the helpdesk that consolidate a lot of common fixes into one GUI. I used them a little to make things quicker but I wouldn't fall trap to relying on them. If the tool for some reason doesn't work, you need to know how to do that stuff manually on the computer. And thats what I'm able to do. Besides, you go to another job and there isn't going to be such a tool there. Some people thing troubleshooting is running literally every script in the tool, even if it's wayyyy unrelated. I see spaghetti chucking all the time here on the helpdesk haha

+1, tyvm

MickQ

rep21 wrote: »

Sometimes I mess with our clients and ask them if they have tried turning it off and on again in a british accent.

Really? I do it in an Irish accent

We have a top 5 "trouble makers" list. The "winner" gets a prize each year. They also get a slower response to their problems as we have agreed in our contracts.

kurosaki00

djfunz wrote: »

I think CodeBlox and snokerpoker pretty much summed it up.

Re-imaging
Rebooting,
Reset passwords,
Mail client configuration,
Un-installing/installing applications,
IE settings to proxy etc.
Blackberry or ipad connection issues,
VPN configuration,
Printer setup,
Documentation writing
Hardware upgrades or replacement

This
when you deal with a lot of stuff, there is no time for finding whats wrong with every one single computer
Troubleshoot the basics, doesnt work? re-image!
Unless its your boss or something lol

another problem we get often... like every 4 months
is that around 60% of the company changes the exchange password the same day
then they ignore the password expiring soon messages and 4 months later is chaos all over again

About7Narwhal

Lotus Notes issues day in day out. Although, I have yet to hear a solution to "User error."

NexusC

Im interested in what you guys have going on in your environments that you have to rebuild profiles so often. In my current position supporting 600+ users on 250 pcs i think we get like 1 corrupt profile a year. most of these other things can be avoided with proper gpos. I would say 60% of our calls are password related issues, 20% i need x setup, 10% hardware related, 10% everything else.

CodeBlox

It's not so much the profile being corrupt. It's the fact that recreating the profile fixes so many problems. LOL!

Anyways, I finally got out of helpdesk and am doing Systems Admin work now.

Psoasman

CodeBlox wrote: »

It's not so much the profile being corrupt. It's the fact that recreating the profile fixes so many problems. LOL!

Very true. I can probably fix the issue, given enough time, but backing up their stuff and re-creating the profile is faster, especially with them breathing down your neck.

kremit

Most of the problems I run into are procedural. Everything listed here has been 100% true for myself but... I'd like to further common problems caused by people higher then me.

security updates that effect production environment. This could be simply fixed by asking the people at the front lines.
Application updates that effect production and company dollars. See solution #1

we really don't care how clueless the users are about computers. All we care about is them making the company money.

dontstop

Hmm where to start?

* Have you restarted your Machine? (this is not as silly as it sounds)
* Unlock accounts
* Reset Passwords

Are the most common for my old org, by a long shot. The biggest issue is when users want to run their systems for 40-100 days without a reboot. This wouldn't be so much of an issue if you have line filtered power, high quality PSUs, ECC Memory, Quality Disks & Solid operating system and applications. But they are consumer machines. They need to reboot, software leaks memory and users do some stupid things on their machines. I've sometimes spent hours going from bottom up, or top down of the stack troubleshooting when a simple reboot fixed the issue.

From a System Administrator perspective rebooting is the last option and doing so should raise alarms and requires some follow up from the team. Don't get me wrong i'm not advocating never rebooting. Software is not perfect & unless you want to do some tricky magic to upgrade the kernel in-place having a regular update/reboot schedule is very smart.

RockinRobin

Wow! This is a GREAT thread! Good to know pretty much what to expect at the helpdesk.

coreyb80

The issues posted in here are what I encounter the most. The biggest issue I've encountered was getting this particular software, Sprint Fonview, to function properly. Ended up having to image another machine and give it to the user to finally get it running the way it should.

SoergBot

I have been watching these forums for a while, and I created an account because this thread is the funniest.

Our fixes at the Hospital here are either restart it and call me back or disconnect from Citrix, in which the first one fixes.
I never thought I could get so frustrated with Nurses and Doctors not having the common sense to try that first?

ScrawnyRonnie

Too many times I've gotten calls from laptop users who can't connect to anything. I don't feel like I need to ask this, but most of the time it's:
Me: "Is your wireless switch in the off position?"
User: "Where is that?"
Me: "Along the front edge of the laptop."
User: "It's off! I swear I didn't touch it!"

I've learned that I have to start with basic layer 1 questions

SoergBot

ScrawnyRonnie wrote: »

Too many times I've gotten calls from laptop users who can't connect to anything. I don't feel like I need to ask this, but most of the time it's:
Me: "Is your wireless switch in the off position?"
User: "Where is that?"
Me: "Along the front edge of the laptop."
User: "It's off! I swear I didn't touch it!"

I've learned that I have to start with basic layer 1 questions

HA HA, at my old job we used to mess with one of our equipment guys who imaged and deployed everything, one time we shut all the wireless buttons to off, and we got a call "Yeah there's no internet on these, are we sure we ordered the right ones"