Options
Helpdesk - Most common fixes for problems.
Comments
-
Options
CodeBlox Member Posts: 1,363 ■■■■□□□□□□
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.
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".Currently reading: Network Warrior, Unix Network Programming by Richard Stevens -
Options
Roguetadhg Member Posts: 2,489 ■■■■■■■■□□
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.In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.
TE Threads: How to study for the CCENT/CCNA, Introduction to Cisco Exams -
Options
veritas_libertas Member Posts: 5,746 ■■■■■■■■■■
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. -
Options
rep21 Member Posts: 51 ■■□□□□□□□□
Forsaken_GA wrote: »
Sometimes I mess with our clients and ask them if they have tried turning it off and on again in a british accent.WGU - MS in Information Security and Assurance: May 2016 Start
WGU - BSIT: Software
AAS - Systems Admin/Networking -
Options
J_86 Member Posts: 262 ■■□□□□□□□□
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!". -
Options
supasieu Registered Users Posts: 1 ■□□□□□□□□□
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 -
Options
MickQ Member Posts: 628 ■■■■□□□□□□
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. -
Options
kurosaki00 Member Posts: 973
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 againmeh -
Options
About7Narwhal Member Posts: 761
Lotus Notes issues day in day out. Although, I have yet to hear a solution to "User error." -
Options
NexusC Member Posts: 6 ■□□□□□□□□□
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. -
Options
CodeBlox Member Posts: 1,363 ■■■■□□□□□□
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.Currently reading: Network Warrior, Unix Network Programming by Richard Stevens -
Options
Psoasman Member Posts: 2,687 ■■■■■■■■■□
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. -
Options
kremit Member Posts: 85 ■■□□□□□□□□
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.Pending:
640-816; ITIL 2011
2013:
Sharepoint, ITIL, CCNA -
Options
dontstop Member Posts: 579 ■■■■□□□□□□
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. -
Options
RockinRobin Member Posts: 165
Wow! This is a GREAT thread! Good to know pretty much what to expect at the helpdesk. -
Options
coreyb80 Member Posts: 647 ■■■■■□□□□□
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.WGU BS - Network Operations and Security
Completion Date: May 2021 -
Options
SoergBot Users Awaiting Email Confirmation Posts: 8 ■□□□□□□□□□
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? -
Options
ScrawnyRonnie Member Posts: 112
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 -
Options
SoergBot Users Awaiting Email Confirmation Posts: 8 ■□□□□□□□□□
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"