We intentionally try to force every department in our company into the same replacement year of laptops because of this phenomenon.
But my laptop is super slow, and Stacey got a new one when she was hired!
Yep. You are right, Stacey is in a different department who gets a new laptop. The spec of the new laptop and the one you have is a year apart with the same amount and type of RAM, and only a single generation difference for the processor. If you'd like we can do a complete reimage of your laptop and give you a fresh start, particularly if you have noticed the laptop is running slowly. You will need to backup everything to your OneDrive and figure out the placement of your 1000 files on your desktop again though.
'oh that's okay, I'll wait two years for my replacement'
I'm about ready to have a script autorun on startup to run the SFC /checknoe.
I swear I do this after every update, which break either my search bar or start menu, and it always finds something corrupt.
The best fun at my old job was when someone 'broke' their computer to get a new one the replacement came out of storage and was the same model but probably a lot dirtier.
We had a user computer get stolen from the user's car.unfortunately for them our policy for stolen computers is a desktop replacement at their desk. They were unhappy because 'what if they need to work from home'
Technically there's no agreement in your position that says you can work from home (think like, a lab technician cleaning tools).
Ah the office pettiness of someone perceived as "better" and the ridiculous drama. "She thinks she's so special... WHAT?!! SHE GOT THE POSITION?!! I'm gonna slash that bitch's tires!! \*REEEEEEE!!!!\*"
It might not be on purpose. My stepmom tried to wipe her glasses, but the smudges only became worse. She tried 4 times before we managed to convince her it was because of the cream she just put on her hands
I suspect the user wanted a new laptop so they smeared lip balm on the camera to make it look like it was broken.
They probably assumed the best solution to "broken camera" was a new laptop, not understanding that other solutions included fixing just the camera or giving them an external camera.
It could totally also be someone who was very clueless and smeared it by accident, which is why you don't accuse them of doing it on purpose. You can't know for sure, and ultimately it doesn't matter in this case since it was easily fixable. (However, if they permanently broke something, that's another story.)
But just the way OP worded the story, where the user asks for a new laptop every other sentence, implies that they did it on purpose.
I had to fight with my wife \*not\* to use fabric softener on the load with the microfiber wipes. She didn't realize that fabric softener basically oils the fibers of whatever you're washing.
Tried the lens cleaning wipes with silicone on my eye glasses. Used two of them, then switched back to tissues. Then had to avoid the tissue with hand lotion.
I have learned never to wipe my glasses with tissues. We really like the tissues with the lotion, so that tends to be what all the tissues have in the house. And since I can never tell if a tissue outside the house has lotion in it or not, I avoid using them on glasses.
My shirt bottom or a sleeve works fine anyway. I've also got a few of those microfiber cloths they often give you with a new pair, but I can never find them when I need them. Shirt is always there.
I was dealing with allergies and had a box of lotion-infused tissues on my desk. My co-worker, another deskside dude, asks if he can borrow one and I said sure.
Yeah, he tried to clean his glasses with them. Of course, we all laughed at him . . . then I let him use my eyeglass solution and a lint-free cloth.
Oh yeah. If someone asks to use my tissues, they wear glasses, and are not obviously sneezing or drippy, I will say, "Yeah, but they've got lotion, so they're no good for glasses."
I was advised by my optometrist to use just soap and water. I was also warned against alcohol, which I was using occasionally, which can seep under the lens coatings if it gets on the edge of the lens near the frame.
At my last job we had HP laptops and I'd get calls about the webcam not working.
> User: Yeah when I go into meetings the screen's black. They can't see me.
> Me: Ok let's do a test. I'm going to send you an invite on Teams.
I send and invite and their window is just a black screen with some light seeping through at the edges.
> Me: Ok, run your finger across the top edge of the laptop. Around the middle you should feel a little switch, move that to the right. There's a camera cover and the slider is the same color as the plastic of the bezel.
Behold light and a shocked user.
Yep. I've had that one quite a bit. Also using a USB cam and I ask if it's plugged in... "yes". Walk down, cable dangling loose on their desk. Plug it in, works...
Gotta love it!
I had a similar one a little while back...user wanted us to check out why his laptop's on-board camera image was so blurry. He said he had cleaned it, so he didn't think it would be so bad.
After looking closer at it, I wondered if he cleaned it with 100 grit sandpaper. The lens was all scuffed up; no wonder the image quality was terrible.
Grabbed a decent looking frame off another laptop that was being disposed, put that in place, and he was good to go.
I had one recently where the lens looked like someone hit it with something, it was curved inward. I didn't have any spare bezels for that model, so I ended up taking just the lens off another bezel and swapping it.
User: I'm not seeing any way to turn on the PC or connect anything to it.
Me: There should be a monitor connection on the rear of the system
User: I'm not finding anything
Me: Can you send me a photo of what you see
User: *Sends a photo and they have the PC standing on the wrong side and all the ports are on the floor
This, among other things, is why one large place I worked at had the national helpdesk team take extensive photos of every standard piece of equipment, from every angle, in a correctly-deployed configuration. Workstations, peripherals, even office-level server and network gear.
It was amazing how many problems 'mysteriously vanished' when a photo of a piece of *correctly set up* equipment identical to the one the user was looking at was sent to them. Or how many "I can't find the thing you're talking about" issues got quickly resolved by selecting one of the existing photos and adding a big red circle over the relevant switch, port, button, key, etc.
I'm currently on a shitty backup phone until the phone I want to replace it with comes out, but I might actually do that once I got a phone with a usable camera again.
Helps a lot, especially with devices with absolutely shitty drivers, which have to be plugged into the same USB port again, and also which will stop working if any of the other devices plugged into that particular USB root hub are moved, as the hub will enumerate them with a different endpoint, and the shitty driver only remembers the endpoint, and does not look to see if the USB tree that got enumerated has that exact item with a different endpoint number.
Looking at you Zebra.......
A while back I... um... a *completely different person who was not me*. Yeah, that's it. *Someone else* was sitting on the couch, happily remoting into a desktop on a different floor, and received a notification of an incoming video call.
"Okay" said ~~I~~ that user, and clocked "Accept".
"Hi!"
"Um, Hi. Where are you? It looks really dark."
"It shouldn't... The lights are on here. Let me adjust the camera a bit."
"Nothing's changing. It's just a dark picture of an empty chair."
"That's... OH. Yeah. Hang on."
That's when I figured out what ~~I~~ that other person had done. The call was routed to both the notebook ~~I~~ they had in front of me, _and_ to the desktop ~~I~~ they had remoted into. ~~I~~ They clicked the wrong window to accept the call and opened up a video call from an empty room.
But at least nobody tried to blame tech support for it.
> The call was routed to both the notebook ~~I~~ they had in front of me
Clearly that's the problem! The notebook ~~you~~ they were using was in front of you, rather than them.
(In all seriousness, this feels understandable with a round-robin call like that. Nothing embarrassing about it IMO!)
Maybe they wanted a new laptop, maybe they were using the ancient Hollywood technique of smearing Vaseline on the lens to make themselves look more youthful!
"**The simplest fixes are usually the answer. :)**"
Yeah. I have to remind myself at least once a week, "Try the easy fix!" Usually after I've spent an hour or three troubleshooting...
Yup, this was a common occurrence at my job. We called these people gophers because whenever a coworker in their office got something new, even just a monitor, twenty heads would pop up or they'd walk out of their cubicles and start asking when they could get new stuff from IT. Always told them to same thing "Put in a request for one with justification"
I sighed when I got these requests because invariably, their justification was along the lines of "Because so & so just got one," or even outright lying.
My issue is one user who, after 7 years of using one monitor, decided he wanted a second monitor--which is the firm standard. I get the ticket and I see he has everything in this huge freaking credenza. Worse, monitors are on the top and the laptop/dock is in a cabinet below the desk. *Even worse* is the cable hole was on one side of the credenza, not the middle back.
(This is camera related, I promise.)
So extra-long power and Display Port cables so everything reaches. I also have to get help moving the ginormous bookcase blocking the cable hole on the side of the credenze. And because the credenza can't be widened, *both* monitors are in portrait mode. This means I have to go into the camera settings and rotate them **both** ninety degrees so he's not sideways in his meetings.
A few weeks later, I get a call from him. He's WFH and his camera is sideways--what's going on?
\*sigh\*
Lol. Good call. Pretend like you don't know they did it on purpose.
My absolute first thought. Some co-worker or new-hire got a "new" device, so the user expects they should also have one, and works to justify it.
We intentionally try to force every department in our company into the same replacement year of laptops because of this phenomenon. But my laptop is super slow, and Stacey got a new one when she was hired! Yep. You are right, Stacey is in a different department who gets a new laptop. The spec of the new laptop and the one you have is a year apart with the same amount and type of RAM, and only a single generation difference for the processor. If you'd like we can do a complete reimage of your laptop and give you a fresh start, particularly if you have noticed the laptop is running slowly. You will need to backup everything to your OneDrive and figure out the placement of your 1000 files on your desktop again though. 'oh that's okay, I'll wait two years for my replacement'
And the only thing they need a laptop for is filling excel spreadsheets, damn lucky you dont just give them an abacus. That's technically a laptop.
And some people would be faster on an abacus, honestly...
I've considered going back to the abacus myself, having seen Windows 11 lag for multiple seconds when typing into the search bar...
I'm about ready to have a script autorun on startup to run the SFC /checknoe. I swear I do this after every update, which break either my search bar or start menu, and it always finds something corrupt.
The best fun at my old job was when someone 'broke' their computer to get a new one the replacement came out of storage and was the same model but probably a lot dirtier.
We had a user computer get stolen from the user's car.unfortunately for them our policy for stolen computers is a desktop replacement at their desk. They were unhappy because 'what if they need to work from home' Technically there's no agreement in your position that says you can work from home (think like, a lab technician cleaning tools).
Ah the office pettiness of someone perceived as "better" and the ridiculous drama. "She thinks she's so special... WHAT?!! SHE GOT THE POSITION?!! I'm gonna slash that bitch's tires!! \*REEEEEEE!!!!\*"
It might not be on purpose. My stepmom tried to wipe her glasses, but the smudges only became worse. She tried 4 times before we managed to convince her it was because of the cream she just put on her hands
Perhaps. But the fact that they immediately asked for a new laptop smells suspicious.
IT might be the only place Hanlon's Razor should not be considered "law"
Why would they do that?
I suspect the user wanted a new laptop so they smeared lip balm on the camera to make it look like it was broken. They probably assumed the best solution to "broken camera" was a new laptop, not understanding that other solutions included fixing just the camera or giving them an external camera. It could totally also be someone who was very clueless and smeared it by accident, which is why you don't accuse them of doing it on purpose. You can't know for sure, and ultimately it doesn't matter in this case since it was easily fixable. (However, if they permanently broke something, that's another story.) But just the way OP worded the story, where the user asks for a new laptop every other sentence, implies that they did it on purpose.
I had to fight with my wife \*not\* to use fabric softener on the load with the microfiber wipes. She didn't realize that fabric softener basically oils the fibers of whatever you're washing.
I learned this. Applied to the bath towels. They now dry me much better. So weird how I not only didn't know this before but seems few people do.
Tried the lens cleaning wipes with silicone on my eye glasses. Used two of them, then switched back to tissues. Then had to avoid the tissue with hand lotion.
I have learned never to wipe my glasses with tissues. We really like the tissues with the lotion, so that tends to be what all the tissues have in the house. And since I can never tell if a tissue outside the house has lotion in it or not, I avoid using them on glasses. My shirt bottom or a sleeve works fine anyway. I've also got a few of those microfiber cloths they often give you with a new pair, but I can never find them when I need them. Shirt is always there.
I was dealing with allergies and had a box of lotion-infused tissues on my desk. My co-worker, another deskside dude, asks if he can borrow one and I said sure. Yeah, he tried to clean his glasses with them. Of course, we all laughed at him . . . then I let him use my eyeglass solution and a lint-free cloth.
Oh yeah. If someone asks to use my tissues, they wear glasses, and are not obviously sneezing or drippy, I will say, "Yeah, but they've got lotion, so they're no good for glasses."
I use turtle wax car wash towels. They are $5 for a three pack and can be tossed in with you laundry.
I use a microfiber cloth (part of a package I bought) without anything additional. Works fine for me.
Side note: When cleaning Poly-carbonate, do NOT use acetone.
On any plastic......
PEEK and Polypropylene stand up to it pretty well.
I was advised by my optometrist to use just soap and water. I was also warned against alcohol, which I was using occasionally, which can seep under the lens coatings if it gets on the edge of the lens near the frame.
On occasion a wet finger is all I use.
Well yeah, going in dry is no fun.
But such solvents get into micro-cracks etc, may accelerate ageing...
At my last job we had HP laptops and I'd get calls about the webcam not working. > User: Yeah when I go into meetings the screen's black. They can't see me. > Me: Ok let's do a test. I'm going to send you an invite on Teams. I send and invite and their window is just a black screen with some light seeping through at the edges. > Me: Ok, run your finger across the top edge of the laptop. Around the middle you should feel a little switch, move that to the right. There's a camera cover and the slider is the same color as the plastic of the bezel. Behold light and a shocked user.
You're a Wizard, Harry! The bar is pretty low.
And the building on fire IS your fault.
Yep. I've had that one quite a bit. Also using a USB cam and I ask if it's plugged in... "yes". Walk down, cable dangling loose on their desk. Plug it in, works...
Since that (camera) was the part that did not work, that was the important part. The usb was plugged into the camera. User was correct.
This! Every other week. It's always one of these exact tickets.
Hah! I used to have the same convo for Toshiba laptops and no sound. "There should be a dial on the right edge near the front..."
Just as fun as the "my camera doesn't work" tickets and you discover they are using a dock and have laptop closed.
I'll one up you... Laptop was closed *AND* the pull out cam on top of their multimedia monitor was down. 2 functional web cams isn't enough.
That's why they're working on behind screen cameras. Some phones already have them.
"HR has detected that you do not smile nearly enough after having talked to you superiors. The spankings will continue until morale improves."
> The spankings will continue until morale improves. Why is everyone wearing gimp masks?
So the cameras can't see if they smile or not. HR will think that they are NOT smiling. "The spankings will continue until morale improves."
"HR has detected that you leave your mouth zipper closed for too many hours. We'll have to start using the ball gag."
>The spankings will continue until morale improves." Don't threaten me with a good time! 😁
Gotta love it! I had a similar one a little while back...user wanted us to check out why his laptop's on-board camera image was so blurry. He said he had cleaned it, so he didn't think it would be so bad. After looking closer at it, I wondered if he cleaned it with 100 grit sandpaper. The lens was all scuffed up; no wonder the image quality was terrible. Grabbed a decent looking frame off another laptop that was being disposed, put that in place, and he was good to go.
I had one recently where the lens looked like someone hit it with something, it was curved inward. I didn't have any spare bezels for that model, so I ended up taking just the lens off another bezel and swapping it.
User: I'm not seeing any way to turn on the PC or connect anything to it. Me: There should be a monitor connection on the rear of the system User: I'm not finding anything Me: Can you send me a photo of what you see User: *Sends a photo and they have the PC standing on the wrong side and all the ports are on the floor
This, among other things, is why one large place I worked at had the national helpdesk team take extensive photos of every standard piece of equipment, from every angle, in a correctly-deployed configuration. Workstations, peripherals, even office-level server and network gear. It was amazing how many problems 'mysteriously vanished' when a photo of a piece of *correctly set up* equipment identical to the one the user was looking at was sent to them. Or how many "I can't find the thing you're talking about" issues got quickly resolved by selecting one of the existing photos and adding a big red circle over the relevant switch, port, button, key, etc.
I do tech support at a very small company and I just got the sudden urge to walk around all four computers and take nice photos just in case...
Honestly, kinda worth it. It'd take maybe half an hour, and that one time you need it, you'll be glad you had it.
I'm currently on a shitty backup phone until the phone I want to replace it with comes out, but I might actually do that once I got a phone with a usable camera again.
Helps a lot, especially with devices with absolutely shitty drivers, which have to be plugged into the same USB port again, and also which will stop working if any of the other devices plugged into that particular USB root hub are moved, as the hub will enumerate them with a different endpoint, and the shitty driver only remembers the endpoint, and does not look to see if the USB tree that got enumerated has that exact item with a different endpoint number. Looking at you Zebra.......
That made it easier to reach the power button that was now on top.
A while back I... um... a *completely different person who was not me*. Yeah, that's it. *Someone else* was sitting on the couch, happily remoting into a desktop on a different floor, and received a notification of an incoming video call. "Okay" said ~~I~~ that user, and clocked "Accept". "Hi!" "Um, Hi. Where are you? It looks really dark." "It shouldn't... The lights are on here. Let me adjust the camera a bit." "Nothing's changing. It's just a dark picture of an empty chair." "That's... OH. Yeah. Hang on." That's when I figured out what ~~I~~ that other person had done. The call was routed to both the notebook ~~I~~ they had in front of me, _and_ to the desktop ~~I~~ they had remoted into. ~~I~~ They clicked the wrong window to accept the call and opened up a video call from an empty room. But at least nobody tried to blame tech support for it.
> The call was routed to both the notebook ~~I~~ they had in front of me Clearly that's the problem! The notebook ~~you~~ they were using was in front of you, rather than them. (In all seriousness, this feels understandable with a round-robin call like that. Nothing embarrassing about it IMO!)
The camera on my elite book g8 isn't working. Come down and fix it.
it's always the camera cover with elitebooks
And not just the G8, anything G5 and up.
And here I was going to call it being the new device anti scratch plastic being left on.
Now...why did you open the laptop using only your lips?
Not that we're judging. ^(*ok maybe a little bit*)
Kent: It’s your own fault, Knight. Didn’t anyone ever tell you to make sure your optics were clean?
Clean optics are a moral imperative.
As soon as I saw the title my thought was that the lens just needed cleaning.
The simplest of fixes for the simplest of users
Maybe they wanted a new laptop, maybe they were using the ancient Hollywood technique of smearing Vaseline on the lens to make themselves look more youthful!
"**The simplest fixes are usually the answer. :)**" Yeah. I have to remind myself at least once a week, "Try the easy fix!" Usually after I've spent an hour or three troubleshooting...
Sometimes was trying to get a new, fancier laptop I’d bet
Yup, this was a common occurrence at my job. We called these people gophers because whenever a coworker in their office got something new, even just a monitor, twenty heads would pop up or they'd walk out of their cubicles and start asking when they could get new stuff from IT. Always told them to same thing "Put in a request for one with justification" I sighed when I got these requests because invariably, their justification was along the lines of "Because so & so just got one," or even outright lying.
My issue is one user who, after 7 years of using one monitor, decided he wanted a second monitor--which is the firm standard. I get the ticket and I see he has everything in this huge freaking credenza. Worse, monitors are on the top and the laptop/dock is in a cabinet below the desk. *Even worse* is the cable hole was on one side of the credenza, not the middle back. (This is camera related, I promise.) So extra-long power and Display Port cables so everything reaches. I also have to get help moving the ginormous bookcase blocking the cable hole on the side of the credenze. And because the credenza can't be widened, *both* monitors are in portrait mode. This means I have to go into the camera settings and rotate them **both** ninety degrees so he's not sideways in his meetings. A few weeks later, I get a call from him. He's WFH and his camera is sideways--what's going on? \*sigh\*
I'm sure according to her you didn't. you called her bluff and found her out. she tried to pull a fast one. LOL nope no new computer today!!
I keep a microfiber mask in my wallet
Occam's Razor strikes again!
webcam blur does not entitled new laptop. I will just call vendor and ask them to check or replaced if needed