The worst help desk problems to try out on coworkers
To celebrate my professional studies coming to an end, I figured I might as well share the worst problems I've given or been given in help desk class. We have a help desk class where students roleplay as either a technician or a customer and some of the problems that have been given within this class by customer-roleplaying students(myself very much included) were idiotic to say the least. We can also use VMs to make the helper actually troubleshoot the issue. Here are my favorites in no particular order.
Impractical cost-cutting
Begin by stating to your helper that the IT department has done some updates and that you can't find Chrome. Then slowly lead them to understand that they've replaced every Windows install with FreeBSD and watch their frustration turn to hatred because none of your teachers previously taught you FreeBSD even existed.
Nintendo Love Part I
"Oh hey, I'm calling because the IT department has replaced our computers with those sort of mini computers. Despite the interface changes, I found my browser, but when trying to access anything, it says I don't have Internet."
At the time I'm writing this, Wi-Fi drivers are still unsupported on Linux-WiiU. Suggested methods of connecting to a network include a USB-A to Ethernet over 8P8C(RJ45) dongle, a USB Wi-Fi dongle, or even USB tethering with Android.
Wrong numbers
What do you do when DHCP is on, you receive an IP, you receive a gateway that can successfully be pinged, you receive a DNS, a subnet mask, but still cannot go online? Well, you call the help desk and make them suffer. The problem here? Yes, you receive a gateway, and yes it pings. But have you considered that, perhaps, that "gateway" is not at all a gateway? It could be anything, a cell phone, another PC, a game console, all that matters is that it doesn't act as a gateway.
But it compiles properly
Here's how that call went: "Hey I bought a new laptop for my son to learn programming on, and he's made some games, but when I put them on my main PC, they don't run. I've tried installing all possible versions of MSVC redists. What should I do?"
For this one, I assumed that ARM64 Windows apps couldn't run on 64-bits x86 Windows. I knew that Windows on ARM has x86 emulation, but I couldn't find anything that suggests Windows on x86 has ARM emulation. I didn't even bother trying running Funnily enough, it didn't really matter, because the classmate I asked this to didn't know a surprising amount of laptops nowadays ship with ARM chips!
For the record, running ARM apps on x86 Windows doesn't work.
Nintendo Love Part II
There just so happens to be something named eNTii for Workcubes, which is essentially PowerPC Windows packaged for Nintendo consoles. Can you guess what I did?
Program at startup, but how in the-
Windows 10 Home doesn't ship with gpedit.msc. You can install it manually, do your thing, and then re-delete it. We've actually seen that in another class, months ago. But do they remember that? No, of course not.
Anything about...
... the VRM. Any problem about the voltage regulator module on the motherboard overheating is amazing. A good friend of mine tried that on me. I didn't like it much. But then again, I had just done the ARM laptop thing on him. So, fair.
Pain. I like it.
Did you know that you can, with DISKPART, give a drive letter to Windows' EFI partition to then go there and delete the EFI bootloader? Really fun stuff.
This is a story outside of help desk class, it was in computer repairs/optimization and happened all on real hardware instead of VMs. There once was a classmate. There once was a teacher who decided the class should play Customer VS Technician. There once was me who hid the bootloader in a passworded ZIP file in one of the Windows users' document folders, gave hints to guess the password in the BIOS' Quick Notes and forbid any Windows overwrite installation to said classmate. Sorry, mate! If you're wondering, the password was LuckyGanesh and I decided to write as a hint The grocery store in POSTAL 2 in the Quick Notes.
Oh, it's plugged in, alright
Last, but not least. I haven't tried this one, but am dying to try it as my last trick in Help Desk class.
"I found an old hard drive, plugged it in my PC, but it doesn't show it."
The fun part? No one expects the customer to have plugged it in the wrong PC. "My PC" implies "the PC I'm trying to read the drive from", but it doesn't necessarily mean "the PC I'm trying to read the drive from".