Wednesday, January 12, 2011

People just wanna be right...

As I often do, I get yet another call from a woman whose symptoms all point to an expired Windows password. She can't access any network resources, so her computer is essentially crippled. Most of the people here figure locking their office is the pinnacle of security, so they never log out of their computer to see the 14 days of password expiration notices.

I know I'm not the only admin to have to deal with this. In fact, I'd be surprised if any other admin (or help desk) didn't. This one isn't as bad as the others, in fact it's kinda cute. Here is the conversation:

Her: My email doesn't work.
Me: What isn't working? Can you not send/receive?
Her: I can't get into my old emails. It says it's not valid.
(getting a user to tell me any part of an error code is usually a painful experience)
Me: Okay. Can you get into [network drive]
Her: No, it's the craziest thing!
Me
: Your password expired. Just lock your computer and then unlock it.
Her:
No.
Me: Yes, your password expired and you'll have to change it. Locking the computer takes no time at all. Just hit Ctrl+Alt+Del, select Lock Computer, and log back in. It's very simple.
(if she gives me any more guff, I'm going to press enter on my remote forced reset in the command prompt)
Her: Fine, hold on... (she restarts the computer). You little SNEAK! How did you know?!

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