Our exchange server is hosted by our parent company in Sweden so we have no control over spam filters or any configuration other than setting up users. We have had an issue where one of our users could not get a very important email from on of our vendors and I spend the last twenty minutes with him trying to figure out why. Originally, we thought it may have been the attachment but we were able to send that by itself. Apparently, the people that host our exchange server thought that the guy’s phone number was unacceptable and it would not allow any of the emails through. He had it in his email signature and it would get blocked at some point along the way. I googled his phone number and there was nothing suspicious about it. Very odd.
Anyone else fix anything really strange recently?
12 Spice ups
CrashFF
(CrashFF)
2
a BSOD caused by one particular keyboard… on every computer I plugged it into…
5 Spice ups
edit, not recently but still strange
Late 90s, a programmer kept blowing fuses in his old crt monitor.
-Swapped monitor
-Different outlet
-Different surge protector
Finally I noticed he always had his shoes off and when he was coding he had this tendency to rub his feet back and forth on the carpet, right where the cables for the monitor were.
I had him leave his shoes on for a couple days and problem solved.
*eventually we just rerouted all the cables so he could take his shoes off
4 Spice ups
USB connected laser printer that would flake out periodically and would be flagged in device manager as “unknown”. Eventually narrowed it down to USB hub / coffee warmer (not kidding) the user had brought in and would plug into a front port now and then. When it was plugged in, the printer would flake out. Bad user, no cookie.
3 Spice ups
Phone number looking like credit card number?
1 Spice up
The only one I can think of right now…got some brand new computers/label printers/scales for our Shipping department last January. We had the new label printers before the new computers, and they ran fine on the old computers with Windows 7. The new computers have Windows 10. Those brand new label printers would sometimes print five labels, then start over, print five labels, start over…repeat.
The old Zebra label printers worked on 10, but not these brand new cheap OKI printers. I ended up having to connect them to the computers using a USB to Parallel adapter. They work great now!
1 Spice up
Many years ago when I was a new IT Pro, I once had a warehouse employee call and complain about the speed of his computer and that it died on a regular basis for no apparent reason. Because this warehouse was a three hour drive away, I tried my best to troubleshoot over the phone but I just could not get the guy to understand anything. There wasn’t a language barrier, but he just could not take directions. A few days went by and we had enough cases to warrant a field trip. My boss and I went out to take a look.
This computer was out on the floor of the warehouse. It was my first visit and I was shocked at how completely filthy everything was. I looked under his desk and his computer was covered in cobwebs. I pulled it out and opened the case and it was packed with dust.
But not ordinary dust. This was the consistency of paper pulp. Super thick and dark. So I began cleaning it out, which took a while. Eventually I found the processor and heat sink. It had a dead rat wrapped around it. Pretty gross.
I jokingly said to the guy, “You shouldn’t bring your pets to work and let them loose.”
Turns out that’s exactly what happened a few months earlier. He brought his pet rat to work and it got out of its cage. His problem started about a week after his rat went missing.
8 Spice ups
Monitor that would at random times get shaky. I could never catch it in the act, but the user complained of it often.
Turned out that the person in the next office had an oscillating desk fan on a credenza against the wall which put the motor inches from their monitor. Any time that fan was turned on, the screen jiggled.
3 Spice ups
When a keyboard key was pressed a random bunch of letters was entered. Only some keys were affected the worst was the control key locked the computer
I took it apart and cleaned it. Checked the keyboard settings, put a spare external keyboard on nothing worked
Took out mains lead and battery held down the power button for 30 seconds and the keyboard started to work.
When a keyboard key was pressed a random bunch of letters was entered. Only some keys were affected the worst was the control key locked the computer
I took it apart and cleaned it. Checked the keyboard settings, put a spare external keyboard on nothing worked
Took out mains lead and battery held down the power button for 30 seconds and the keyboard started to work.
This happened to me as well and I would also have to classify it as the weirdest as well.
We recently replaced all of our printers with contracted printers (Hallelujah!). When we were installing at one of our outer branches, we had to put the printer up while the other printer was still up so we could copy over settings. I grabbed a network cable out of the back room and plugged it into a phone so we could take the phones cable and use it on the printer (the phones cable was longer for the space we needed it in). The phone wouldn’t get an IP and the entire branch’s network connection went down. Thinking the correlation was something with the phone, I unplugged it and took the cable over to the printer and plugged it in to the new printer. Network went down again. Turned out, there was something wrong with the network cable that was causing a network storm and bringing the whole branch’s network down whenever that cable was in use. That cable has since been “retired”.
2 Spice ups
