Things They Say 3

Did you know that the MWAVE country code for Iceland is 28 ? How do I know this ? Well I've just had a customer on who had run the master CD through his Packard Bell, and it had installed all the settings for an Icelandic computer. And I mean all the settings, Windows Regional Settings, Both DOS and Windows Keyboard settings, as well as all the MWave settings. And to add insult to injury he was using the English Master CD.

I've just bought this game for my printer .....

Guy phones up with his P-Bell not saving incoming Faxes or Phone calls. Anyway took him through all the settings (it was Faxworks), and as a last resort went to MS DOS and got him to do a DIR. Turned out he had 1MB of free disk space, despite removing Navigator and installing no new software onto his machine. Anyway deleted all his TMP files, which gave him 4MB, and as a last resort went back into Windows and searched for all files over 1MB in size. Suddenly the answer became clear when it pulled up a 495MB Scandisk CHK file. He was also quite surprised at how quick his computer ran after we deleted it....

Just had a very pleasant chap on the phone, who has joined a computer software club. With his first order he was supplied free a Surf Master Internet bundle, giving him free access to the Internet. "Can I help him install it" he asked, "Sure" I replied. I proceeded to take him through the installation. He said "What comm port do I choose?". I replied, "Do you know what comm port you're modem is on?". He said "I don't have a modem!!". Here endeth the conversation.

Received a call from a deaf gentleman complaining about no sound on his Packard Bell! As if that wasn't enough, the call is being parlayed by the operator in a different building entirely who is using a phone with a digital readout to pass on messages! He will be phoning back when he finds an audio CD to test his speakers!

Customer rings up requiring EMS to run his brand new game. Technical Advisor says certainly Sir I think we can sort this out.

"Go to the config.sys and identify the line that contains the words EMM386.exe"
"Now then we are going to put some switches into this line so that the line reads:
Device=c:\windows\command\Emm386.exe NOEMS i=e000-efff ram
"There you go I think you will find you will have no problems now"

Would you believe that he still couldn't get his game to run.

Anyone want a cheap copy of MSCDEX, only £259 ?
What do you mean outrageous, I've just had a punter quoted £260 by Microsoft!

Why? Well an engineer has to come and load it for a start! Not enough, well to get an engineer out, you need to pay a yearly subscription for servicing!

Why does the punter want MSCDEX? Because the CD-ROM driver that comes on his Advent doesn't supply it! Has he made his backups.... Well he was doing this when his system crashed leaving him without CD-ROM, MSCDEX, or create system disks!

I've just had a customer on the phone that has had a job booked by on of our Technical Advisors. He booked out a new motherboard, because the old one was American?

Well it must have been an American Motherboard, because all of his characters were in American, like the $ sign.

I went into Windows and changed his country code and it worked find.

I was just speaking to a woman about her fax machine, she said she was getting nothing when she picked up the telephone and could not send or receive faxes (but it could do a local copy). She didn't have it under warranty, so I explained about £75, and pointed out that it could actually be something as simple as the telephone cable, she then said "Oh actually the guinea pig ate part of the cable last week, do you think that could be the problem?".

Anyone want to do a field visit?
Got a call from a Lady at 3.00am with a hardware problem on her Laptop which she bought from a store in Slough. She was demanding next day service.

Whats wrong there I hear you say........

Well she was calling from the Good Old United States of America where she now lives. She called us over here to book a service call.

Woman just reinstalled from master cd because she had no sound - unfortunately the volume control on the side of the speaker was on low, so reinstalling didn't help.

Guy messing around on the internet got an icon " I love you" on his desktop. Clicked on it, it swore at him and wiped his harddisk.

Store rings up:
"Hello, I wonder if you can help... Just had a customer in who heard on the news today that come the year 2000, all PC's will explode....."

(we begin this story at 5:40pm after a particularly l-o-n-g spell with no phone calls)

Engineer went on a call to PB corner unit with no power. The customer was pressing the reset button!

A customer rings up with problems installing a modem to a PB

CASE:

They also seem to happen at night only, as no evidence was found to support his claims this morning.

VERDICT:

Just had a store phoning in with an angry customer ... there's a surprise. Basically the punter has bought Corel's latest all singing and dancing DTP extravaganza, which keeps causing Windows General Protection errors whenever he tries to paste several 800x600 BMP's on his documents and import text from Word - this is on a P75 with 8MB.

Well, I sayz, try shutting down Word and just import the file manually or more realistically, put some more RAM in the machine so that it has a chance of copying ....

The chap from the store says "Well, you know Corel's a Windows program ...Well if Windows is using so much memory, can't we just shut Windows down and run Corel on its own ...?

I told him that he'd have fun trying ... "OK he says, I'll go and try that", and hangs up on me ...

* Machine is now rebooted - mouse not working in DOS, so we re-check the line he's typed in *

* And you've guessed it the mouse worked perfectly through DOS, Note this is the edited highlights of the conversation which took over 50 minutes *

* Dead on cue we hear the normal Windows 95 startup sound in the background *

I’m at the C:\WINDOWS prompt and I need to get to MS-DOS, can you help me ?

Just had a lady on the phone who was very annoyed with one of our technicians...

I've just formatted my printer ....

I've got 95 windows....

* There is a click as the punter cuts himself off, 2 minutes later, he comes back

And, you've guessed it, upon checking our fax machine there was a lovely computer generated fax from the punter....NB both these calls came through on the same night, from the same punter.....

I was having problems with an error message in the System.ini file, so I moved the Windows folder into the Recycle Bin. When I went to put it back, the Bin was empty. Now when I start my computer up it gives a load of error messages and doesn't go into Windows. What do I do?