User thought cursor meant their computer was cactus • The Register

On Name The largest days of the festive season could also be behind us, however demand for tech assist by no means stops. That is why every Friday, even this one, The Register shares tales of fixers compelled to assist flummoxed fools in On Name – the reader-contributed column that celebrates your successes.

This week, we’re revisiting the subject of extraordinarily swift fixes that we raised in November, when a reader claimed to have solved a person’s downside in 8.5 seconds.

One other reader, who we are going to Regomize as “Barry,” informed us he was as soon as known as by the person of a greenscreen terminal who, upon getting back from a lunch break stretched to uncommon size by the necessity to queue for a financial institution teller, complained their machine displayed nothing however a “flashing display screen.”

Barry acquired his palms on a alternative and lugged it to the person’s desk.

When he arrived, he noticed a blinking cursor within the prime left nook of the terminal’s display screen.

“I pressed the house bar, and the cursor disappeared, changed by the login immediate, fixing the issue.”

Barry did not declare the tech assist world document although – he thinks his repair in all probability required much less that ten seconds, however not a lot much less.

“The person did not know a display screen saver kicked in after half-hour, as a result of she was at all times again from lunch earlier than it kicked in,” Barry informed On Name.

Financial institution tellers have sadly been largely changed by IT, so there is perhaps some ironic justice there.

Now let’s meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Ron” who informed us in regards to the time a buyer reported half their display screen was clean and never working.

Ron rapidly realized the client had managed to regulate the Home windows Job Bar so it occupied half of the PC’s show.

“I resized the taskbar, locked it at common dimension, and was out the door un below 5 minutes.”

Ron charges the job because the quickest cash he ever made!

Let’s return to the greenscreen age for our last story of quick fixes. It comes from a reader we’ll Regomize as “Connor” whose buyer complained that his terminal would crash daily at round 2:00PM – a large inconvenience as this buyer was a securities dealer. Then as now in that business, any downtime meant {dollars} down the drain.

After loads of assessments and {hardware} replacements, no root trigger may very well be discovered, so considered one of Connor’s colleagues was dispatched to stake out the machine.

On the second day of watching, the issue grew to become obvious.

The greenscreen age was additionally the age of studying newspapers printed on precise newsprint – oh, the nostalgia! – and this person spent their lunch hours buying and studying each The Wall Road Journal and The Monetary Instances.

Upon getting back from lunch, stated person would fold each papers – which in these days may every be a few centimeters thick – and toss them onto the again of their terminal.

Which is the place the machine’s air vents have been situated.

Because the afternoon wore on, scorching air produced by the cathode ray tube couldn’t escape, warmth would construct up, and the bins would crash.

“My engineer acquired a face-full of scorching air when he pulled the papers off,” Connor informed On Name. “As soon as the papers have been relocated, the issue stopped!”

And as soon as once more, regardless of appreciable funding in troubleshooting time, the repair itself took mere seconds.

There cannot be a lot of you at work at this time, and hopefully these of you compelled to alternate your labor for forex right now of yr aren’t very busy. So click here to send On Call an email along with your story of quick tech assist fixes, or the messes you have been requested to repair on this festive season, so we are able to inform your story once we return to work. ®