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Hey everyone,

Working in IT, we all come across strange and unexpected technical issues that leave us scratching our heads. Sometimes, the solution is obvious—other times, it feels like pure magic!

:small_blue_diamond: Have you ever encountered an IT problem that completely defied logic?
:small_blue_diamond: What’s the weirdest fix you’ve had to implement?
:small_blue_diamond: Any bizarre hardware, software, or network issues that stand out?

Let’s hear your craziest IT war stories! Looking forward to some entertaining and mind-boggling experiences. :rocket:

15 Spice ups
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Not my story, but this post reminded me of this gem: https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles

9 Spice ups
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Worked at a company that had an older wifi setup, ran TKIP. Now when Win10 rollout came to be there was an issue as none of the wireless devices, Cisco Aironet series, would work with the protocol.
Now the easiest thing to do would be to upgrade the wireless network and future proof at that point as what was in place was old and out of date, but as they were 24/7 they didn’t want any downtime. Therefore a lot of research was needed to get the Win10 devices to work with tkip, probably would have found the answer here quicker but no, off down the tangent of various other forums i went.

8 Spice ups
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The new guy in the department suddenly presses the BIG RED BUTTON on the UPS, as shown in the picture, just out of curiosity. Obviously turning off all the equipment, servers…
The button has a sign who says: “Don’t touch”

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13 Spice ups
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I had someone connected to our company, but fortunately not on the company network, report to me that his computer had been hacked. I asked him how he knew that it was hacked. Apparently, he had one of those fake security alerts pop up on his laptop. He basically did everything he shouldn’t have. He called the number, gave the scammers his phone number and remote access to his PC. He reported it to me after the scammer had instructed him to go buy gift cards.

I quickly shut down the internet connection, terminating the scammers Teamviewer session. While I was looking at the computer for signs of malicious activity, the scammer called his cell phone. I told him to let me answer it. The scammer asked if the gift cards had been gotten yet. I told him that I was the IT department and that I had been alerted to a scam being run on his computer, which I had terminated. The scammer wasn’t happy that I had terminated his teamviewer session and called him out on the scam. He said that he had one question for me, to which I asked “what?”.

“What is your name?” he asked and then he hung up before I could respond. Ah, if only I had a mug marked scammer’s tears at that time, I would have celebrated.

19 Spice ups
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Old physical appliance Time Server had a fixed calendar. When the last date programmed was reached it caused a flood of issues.

7 Spice ups
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Had a user with a standing desk. They could only type in their computer password correctly when they were in the seated position of the desk, not in the standing position. Took several hours to troubleshoot:

  1. Was keyboard cable pinched when desk was raised? no, keyboard cable was more likely to be pinched in seated position but working properly.
  2. Was there an “on/off” button in the chair to turn on or off the keyboard? no, but wouldn’t that be fun?
  3. Could others type their passwords successfully in the seated/standing positions? yes and no. Those using muscle memory were fine. Those that had to look at the keyboard to type were unable to login on the computer. – The plot thickens.

The issue was the keyboard had been dropped and keys were dislodged. The person who picked up the keys just put the keys back onto the keyboard as they were being picked up, not into the correct location on the keyboard. So, when the user sat down to change their password, their hands were in the natural home key situation and they didn’t need to look at their keyboard. When they moved the desk to the standing position, they were “two-fingering” the keyboard and using hunt/peck to type in their password. Basically they were not using muscle memory to type the password.

So, if they thought the password was password, but the ‘s’ and ‘d’ keys were reversed, their password was actually paddwors. No computer entry allowed.

24 Spice ups
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User would randomly lose network. Took about 3 days to figure out that they had hidden a mini fridge in a cabinet plugged into the same power strip as their dock, phone and everything else in the office. When the compressor for the fridge turned on almost all 15 amps were used and the power brick for the voip phone pass through didn’t turn off but couldn’t push enough power to keep the phone online and pass network. The kitchenette is literaly 30 feet away with a ful size fridge.

13 Spice ups
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Not entirely unexpected, because end-users. But I was once called out to troubleshoot poor WiFi signal strength.

The customer, a carpenter and cabinetmaker, had constructed an attractive wooden box to house his router. As in fully enclosed. He had also stuffed all the slack from every network cable inside.

10 Spice ups
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Before WFH was a thing (+5yrs ago) and I was just occasionally working from the family room, I noticed every now and then my wired network would briefly disconnect.

Eventually I recognized that it happened when my old washing machine, one room over, changed cycles!

Now I’m in a separate room, updated laptop and networking equipment, and most importantly a new washer! :smile:

10 Spice ups
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Only an IT issue in that electricity was involved (many of you know how that goes).

Power went out to the entire building. Mgmt: Ich, why is our power out? Me: I don’t know - I’ll figure it out.

I found it. Squirrel bridged two connections on power pole transformer.

10 Spice ups
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A Mac user couldn’t install printer driver while the other users with the same operations system could easily do. Done everything I could have: a series of uninstallation and reinstallation, clean out caches, re-configure DNS, etc.

It was resolved with re-imaging the OS.

6 Spice ups
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This just reminded me of a user whose laptop began to randomly sleep. The behaviour was very intermittent and had been happening for around month before being reported. First we re-imaged and monitored, then swapped out the laptop but the behaviour persisted. After another month of head scratching, I did some Googling and found similar reports of this issue. I would never have found the root cause myself, as it wasn’t actually a fault. It turns out the magnetic lid shut sensor for the Dell Latitude 5490 is in near front right-hand corner beside the trackpad. And if you wear a metal braclet on your right-hand wrist, it can easily trigger the sensor. 100% reproducable. I really couldn’t believe it. The user found it hilarious. Luckily, I’ve not come across similar accessory based issues since we switched over to ThinkPads.

6 Spice ups
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I’ve faced was when a critical server crashed in the middle of a system upgrade. We were performing routine updates on the network, and suddenly, the server went offline without warning. It turned out the server’s hardware had failed, causing the entire network to halt. What made it more surprising was that the hardware failure wasn’t flagged by our monitoring system, so it caught everyone off guard. We had to quickly troubleshoot, replace the faulty parts, and restore services, all while minimizing downtime. It was a great reminder to always prepare for unexpected hardware failures, even when everything seems smooth.

4 Spice ups
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uuh, this is one of my fav stories :slight_smile:

way back, when Windows 98b was a fresh egg, we spent lots of time installing it, as it quite often was the only chance to get it running again.
The son of my roomie had some special gift regarding computers. (interestingly it never happened with his own computer)
He would come into the room, where we just finished a W98 installation again.
Computer works fine, we are just choosing, which games to put on. (btw. Diablo II and Warcraft II were the hot ones).
He would come over to the desk and very slightly move the mouse.
BSOD! Immediately.

I saw this happening thrice. Noone liked to let him in their rooms, when their PCs were running…

But he was a masterful Warcraft II player back then.

6 Spice ups
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Oh man, had a server refusing to boot—tried everything. Turns out, unplugging a single USB drive fixed it. BIOS was stuck on it like a bad ex. :man_facepalming: Tech logic at its finest!"

6 Spice ups
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Years and years ago, I had a call out to a customer who had a user whos PC broke mysteriously several times. This latest of many call outs, he just shrugged his shoulders and knew nothing about it. I decided rebuilding for a change wasnt the answer and that I had to try to figure it out.
The answer was p0rn, lots and lots of old guy searching and chatrooms full of the stuff.
The guy was a marketing/communications officer who really should have known better but it seems that he couldnt help himself to hours online on his office pc then when he had a twinge of regret, tried deleting the windows folder and anything associated to it. Needless to say, one boot disk and a repair later everything was there to see.
End result was I had to give evidence to the head guy and Mr P0rn never lost his job somehow. Never got any more faulty pc calls from that office though.

5 Spice ups
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One of our buildings got struck by lighting a couple months back, that was pretty unexpected.

4 Spice ups
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Good morning. I’ll share two odd issues.
1: About 20 years ago, in one part of the office, the WiFi would cut out for a couple of minutes around the same time every day. It turned out the microwave in the kitchen was emitting a frequency that was interfering with the WiFi signal.
2: A board member approached me stating their iPad would no longer accept their password. I had them try it a few times in front of me and they shared their password with me so I could try it. I explained that there is no way the password would change on it’s own but they were convinced it had. Just before the 10th attempt which would have wiped the device, I suggested we go to where the board meeting took place. Lo and behold, another board member had the EXACT same case for their iPad. Narrowly avoided wiping someone else’s iPad.

7 Spice ups
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I had a client who was running Small Business Server 2008. It was stored in their Records Store Room. Because of all the paper files kept in there, they had a powder Fire Suppression system in that room. One day the system decided to go off, coating the server in this fine dust. It got everywhere.
Their insurance wouldn’t pay for a new server, only a good cleaning. So we sent it out to a company that specialized in cleaning electrical equipment. The server lasted about two weeks before it started having all sorts of weird glitches. A couple of weeks later it gave up the ghost.
In the end, the insurance company paid for a new server. After having already paid to get the old one cleaned. It worked out to a whole bunch of billable hours so I was fine with whatever they wanted to do.

6 Spice ups