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Tech Tips: Clues for the Clueless

Are you a computer user?  If so, today’s post is aimed squarely at that bullseye on your forehead.  Tech people already know the list below by heart, but the common user seems to be oblivious to the following 10 tips on how to get better tech support.  This list was put together by me based on my own experiences in tech support of corporate clients.  If you re-use this, please link back to this site.

Here’s my Top Ten list of things to consider when you need tech support:

1. If you want our help, please get up from the chair and let us get access to the PC.  This is an immediate clue as to the intelligence level of a given user if they ask for help but don’t think to get up and let us work.  If you really want to piss us off when we ask to see your PC, just swivel the keyboard around and stay seated that way we have to balance on one foot to keep from touching the unholiness that is your presence which is dumb enough to think that this actually helps.  We don’t want to catch whatever you have.
2. Hovering over our shoulders while we work is not only irritating but often times distracting.  Unless we specifically need your input or are trying to show you how to do something… give us space.  We don’t need you to constantly take the mouse out of our hands to show us things that are completely irrelevant to the problem at hand.  Also, unless we are really close friends, we don’t need to hear all about your family and where you went on vacation while we are trying to fix your PC.  Hearing about your fantasy vacation to an elite resort on a private island could cause something unexpected.  Like your hard drive being mysteriously formatted.  I’m just saying….
3. Sitting in a chair across the desk from where we are working and continually whining about your deadline or lost data or missed appointment will not speed things up.  Crying will also not help.  It kinda freaks us out.  Just because you need your PC to be working right now does not alter the fact that it’s not working.
4. Please don’t call us for help with a problem and give us no information to go on.  This is especially annoying when you tell us that your PC is down when in fact, you just have Internet Explorer set to Work Offline and nothing more.  Better yet, call me in the middle of the night and tell me that the network is down because you can’t get your e-mail from home.  There are about 8,326,287,491 possible causes of this problem and only one of those is the network being completely down.  OMG.
5. If you are getting error messages on your PC, please please please take a screen-shot of that message or at least write it down.  Don’t be that user that just automatically clicks OK on every pop-up no matter what it was and then wonder why nothing is working.  Those error messages are sometimes clues as to the problems you are having.  They are important.  At least read them.
6. If you’re going to drop your PC off on our desks, leave something that will give us a clue as to what we are looking at.  I’ve found unlabeled notebook PCs sitting on my desk or chair before with no note, no name, no contact number, no indication of a problem… nothing.  Then at the end of the day So-and-So will call asking if their PC is fixed.  The answer is always going to be NO.  At least leave a Post-It note with your name or number so we know who to call to find out why we have an orphan in our office.  Even a snapshot of you with your dog would be more desirable than nothing if you can’t be bothered to write even your own name.
7. If you know that you will be getting a new PC setup at your desk take a minute or two to clean up around the hardware that will be replaced.  If you aren’t sure what will be replaced, then just clean it all up.  That includes removing all the Post-It notes, toys, pictures, shwag, stickers, make-up, food, mobile phone adapters, USB aquariums, etc. that are obviously going to be in the way of us helping you change your equipment.  Or if that’s too much trouble, then don’t complain when you find all your precious “stuff” swept off to the edge of your desk in a ball of clutter that would make the King of the Cosmos weep with pride.
8. If your PC is having a problem and we ask you if you installed anything on the PC - don’t lie.  We are not that stupid.  You’re only making yourself look bad when you lie about things like that.  More than likely we, or someone on our team, built that PC you are now using.  So when we look at the problem computer and see that Yahoo Instant Messenger, Ask Toolbar, 1001 Smileys, Free Animal ScreenSaver, Bejeweled, Nokia Mobile Connect, etc. are installed on your PC we not only know that you lied but you have given us proof.  Everything installed on a PC can potentially change how the whole system works.  We don’t just ask this for fun.  If you lie it’s not going to change the reality of what you did.  Just be honest.  We may think you are ignorant for not knowing better but at least you can look us in the eye with some sense of dignity.
9. If you don’t like an answer you’ve received to your PC questions, then by all means ask for explanations or clarifications.  Not all tech people are as open and friendly as I am.  Many techs have the social skills of a badger suffering from crack withdrawals.  Sometimes you may need more info.  But whatever you do, DO NOT get angry with us if we have worked on your problems and given you an honest answer that you just don’t like.  The best way to ensure that you will never receive quality tech support again is to yell and scream at the servicing technician because there is no way for them to recover your files off a crashed hard drive or a failed USB thumb drive.  Threatening our jobs because you don’t think we’ve done our jobs right, even though we’ve told you that what you are asking for is impossible, will also not get you very far.  Even if you succeeded in getting that particular tech fired, you will quickly run out of IT people when they all give you the same answer.  Attend some anger management classes but do not take out your problems on the tech.
10. You don’t need us to do or see every single thing that happens on your PC.  If you got a message in Internet Explorer that said it will be showing you both secure and unsecure items, yeah OK, no problem.  That’s normal.  If your screen flickered once and never again… probably a fluke or you kicked the power cord under your desk.  And if you get an error or warning message on your PC that comes complete with an explanation of the problem you are having and instructions on how to fix that problem then by all means please try it out.  Not only does it save time and gives you a certain sense of pride that you were able to fix your own computer problem but it also keeps you from wasting our time.  Many programs do offer fixes for the problems that can arise.  Most developers also make these message “dummy-proof” so even the most computer illiterate person can understand and follow the instructions.  We are not here to hold your hand every time the computer beeps.  It’s not scary.  It will be OK.

There you go.  That ended up being a lot longer than I had thought it would be.  I think the next Tech Tips will cover the opposite angle and focus on the techs themselves.  Users are always to blame but we have to share some of the burden sometimes.  Sometimes.

Colors & Shapes

Here’s something I made while just having some fun with Adobe Illustrator.  Nothing fancy, I was just playing around and thought I’d share the results.

There’s still alot of things that I prefer Photoshop for but Illustrator is really growing on me.  If only I could merge my favorite features of both applications….

Meh.

Lego Indiana Jones

So we’ve watched the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie (which I still say is an outrageuosly long title for a movie).  Before that we refreshed our Indy knowledge rewatching Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  [Have you noticed that the first move now has "Indiana Jones and" prepended to the title on the newer releases?  It wasn't like that when it released.]

So you would think I’d be all work out at this point of anything with a fedora and a whip.  But I really want to play the new Lego Indiana Jones game.  Muse and I played the Lego Star Wars II game on Playstation 2 for a bit but we never really got very far.  I thought it was a lot of fun though and I can see how the Indiana Jones franchise could really take advantage of the Lego game formula.

I just need to add it to the ever growing list of games I want to buy before I leave Hong Kong.  XBox360 and PS3 games are quite a bit cheaper here since the market won’t support the ridiculous $60 USD per title price that is charged in the United States.  Most games releasing in Hong Kong start at or around $39 USD per title when they come out and you can always find some older/cheaper ones too.  I will definitely miss that when I’m gone.

Microsoft Office problem

I am writing this post, not to get help, but to give help. I came across a problem with Microsoft Outlook today and when I searched and searched for the answers, I found the only ones who gave them were asking for up to $13USD per month to get them. This my friends is highway robbery and I will not stand for it. So, since I spent my time figuring this out myself, I will give you the situation, trial-and-error and eventual solution that I came up with. Free of charge.

We received a new Dell Optiplex 745SFF computer recently and I decided to set it up with all the newest programs since it was the newest PC we had. I installed Internet Explorer 7 and Microsoft Office 2007 on this and explained that the file extensions were different in this version of Office. I then got a call a day later asking for the Microsoft Proofing Tools for the Chinese translator. Unfortunately the version of Office 2007 I received does not have this and so I had to revert back to Office 2003. I fully uninstalled Office 2007, rebooted and installed Office 2003 followed by the Office 2003 Proofing Tools. This is when I found the error.

In Outlook 2003 the user would try and Reply to All and get the following error:
The messaging interface has returned an unknown error. If the problem persists, please restart Outlook.

Reply and Forward worked just fine. This only affected Reply to All. Needless to say that restarting Outlook had no effect on the problem. I uninstalled Office 2003, restarted and installed once more. I noticed that when I went to setup the Outlook profile that it was already setup from before. And when I went in and tried Reply to All, it still gave the same error. I remembered that the Outlook profile was the same one that was created in Outlook 2007 so I deleted the profile and created a new one. Once I did that the problem went away.

Now I have done this same thing many times just using Office 2003, but this was the first time that Office 2007 was involved. This seems to be an issue with removing Office 2007 and installing the older 2003 version. This is also probably why I had such a hard time finding a simple answer to this problem without blackmail.

Hopefully someone else will find this information useful. If so, leave a comment and let me know.