The 10 rules for tech support.....

[Kittish]

11. Remember the advice on the cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Don't Panic. Computers can smell fear.

Shouldn't the Don't Panic be in a nice, cheerful red?

I've got a friend who terrifies computers with his mere presence. No matter what the problem is, if you try to show it to him, it works perfectly. Up to and including various OS refusals to load at all.

[Gizmo]

Turned out the line that ran to our box on the side of the house from the phone pole at the corner had been chewed almost in two!!!

Didn't take long to put two and two together: the squirrel who lives in our big maple tree, Peanut, must have been trying to make a long distance call or something.

We had this too - the pigeons had been eating the wire. Of course the joke "the poor birds were trying to hack into twitter" was launched at me half a dozen times.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Turned out the line that ran to our box on the side of the house from the phone pole at the corner had been chewed almost in two!!!

Didn't take long to put two and two together: the squirrel who lives in our big maple tree, Peanut, must have been trying to make a long distance call or something.

I had a similar problem with my phone line. The line that ran from the inside to the outside was not designed for outside use, and was exposed to the sunlight. Over the years the sunlight degraded the insulation and exposed the wires, causing intermittent shorts. I thoroughly shielded the replacement wires.

[Geek King]

Repeat after me: RAID is not a backup. RAID is not a backup.

RAID will not protect you when user accidentally deletes a file, or when a program bug overwrites half of the database with garbage. RAID will also not protect you when several disks die at once (more than one with RAID5, more than two with RAID6), and yes, this does happen (I've seen 2 drives die in a RAID several times - and in only one case this was in RAID6). You can use RAID to store backups, but this still won't protect you if both RAIDs are near eachother, and you're hit with an earthquake.

It also won't protect you in the case that the hardware drive controller fails completely and you lose the entire array--and they don't make the @$#%ing replacements anymore for your five year old server model. Good news: We have tape backups. Bad News: Having to wait for a new server to ship and get set up (because they don't think we need a spare server just laying around, and won't pay for one). Worse News: a week of getting demanding phone calls for status updates.

[rose_metal_nz]

Rule #12 - Murphy's rules are always absolute All hail Saint Murphy, patron of our industry!

Rule #13 - sometimes a blood sacrifice is involved (hardware techs know what I'm talking about)

Rule #14 - sometimes you're just not holding your tongue right

[Jay 2K Winger]

Rule #12 - Murphy's rules are always absolute All hail Saint Murphy, patron of our industry!

Or, as I like to put it, "Technology works great, right up to the point when it doesn't."

Rule #13 - sometimes a blood sacrifice is involved (hardware techs know what I'm talking about)

KALI MA! KALI MA!

[EricKei]

After a mainboard is replaced, Windows tends to freak out and make certain hardware like sound etc non-functional until you.... format and reload

Well, there IS an easy fix for this one that eliminates the need to reformat after a major hardware change...If they're running Windows 9x

Just reset the hardware enumerator (delete rename the folder called "enu" buried somewhere inside c:\windows) and reboot. 9x will then go thru the "found new hardware" process all over again as if you had formatted and reinstalled

[rose_metal_nz]

Or, as I like to put it, "Technology works great, right up to the point when it doesn't."

AH! Lubs u Jay!!! That's my line whenever someone says "This was just working yesterday/last week/this morning/etc!!!"
Me: "Well, generally things work, up until the point where they DON'T"