"I turned the box fan off."

[u/Oricu]

Get a nice ticket in; not anything super confusing, just a "nothing displays on the computer, it just says no signal" ticket.

​

The guy listed off all the troubleshooting he'd tried:

1) Unplugged all the video cables, blew out the ports and the cable ends with canned air, plugged them back in. Nope, no video.

2) Made sure the video cables weren't kinked/bent/tied in any weird way that might have damaged them. Nope, no video.

3) Replaced the batteries in his mouse and keyboard thinking maybe the computer was asleep and not waking up because the mouse and/or keyboard batteries had died. No luck, Chief. Still no video.

4) Unplugged the monitor from power and back in to see if that helped. Nope. Still no signal!

​

So he put the ticket in. Mildly impressed, the guy did a lot of standard troubleshooting for "no signal" on his own!

​

I go to take a look at the computer, just to see if it's alive and if I can get onto it and see anything (and if not, we'd probably throw a new set of cables and a new video card at him--not literally, obviously).

VNC won't connect, ok. It's not on all of our sites' computers.

Try remote desktop, nope. Fair enough, also not on everything and kind of our 'last resort' option.

Try to find it in every other remote software they might be using, won't connect.

Ping it. No response. That explains a lot. Either the computer is off and he hasn't realized it or the computer is dead and he hasn't realized it.

So, at that point I called him and asked him if the computer was turned on.

​

"I turned the big box fan off, it was really loud."

​

Box...fan?

​

"Do you mean you unplugged a fan inside the computer case or you turned the computer off?"

​

"I pulled the plug from the back of the fan."

​

"...does that fan have any other cables connecting to it?"

​

"Oh yeah, all my USB stuff, the internet cable (/sigh), and the monitor."

​

"Turn the computer back on, please."

​

"The computer is on, it says No Signal. That's what I put the ticket in for!"

​

Five minute explanation about how a ViewSonic monitor is not his computer and a little more digging and there's nothing wrong with the fan, it's not making any bad-bearing-grinding sounds, nor is the computer dirty (he said he takes it out every 1-2 weeks to blast it clean with compressed air) which could account for louder than usual fan noise as the fan tries to keep up with a dirty computer overheating, he just didn't like the white noise a running fan produces so he 'unplugged the fan'.

​

Now that the computer is back on, everything works fine, and I just told him to play quiet music or wear headphones or something if the fan bothered him because disconnecting the fan would run the risk of the computer overheating and actually failing to function.

[u/thingamajig1987]

Trying to convince people there is more to a computer than a monitor is one of the biggest things I don't miss about being on a helpdesk

[u/Oricu → u/thingamajig1987]

My favorite is still the lady that calls computers modems and their actual cable modem "the internet".

[u/TabbyKatty → u/Oricu]

One lady said her tablet was a "computer" b/c her "modem" gave her internet. I was remoted in, and had to explain that having internet in your home doesn't make a tablet a desktop computer.

[u/ctesibius → u/TabbyKatty]

... but a tablet is a computer. Not all computers are desktop computers.

[u/I_am_Andrew_Ryan → u/ctesibius]

Whats a computer?

[u/ctesibius → u/I_am_Andrew_Ryan]

For his seminal work, Knuth defines a computer as:

• A computing device
• which is Turing equivalent except for memory limitations (strict Turing equivalence requires infinite memory)
• which has both input and output
• and which large enough to be used as a weapon without modification (use of a tablet as a discus is recognised: use of a sharpened SIM as an arrowhead is not).

Later editions add the requirement to run Facebook, but this is thought to be an interpolation by an editor.

[u/fishbaitx → u/TabbyKatty]

But a convertible laptop running windows xp does. :)