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A few months ago I started getting in a new model laptop. They look nice (and very different than the previous model - which looked exactly like the model before that) but not many people would benefit from the new one over the older one (the older ones are still rather nice).
One of our admins had a very old laptop (out of warranty by over a year) and he was having some issues accessing files. I scan the drive - bad sectors are starting to pop up. To severely reduce the risk of a catastrophic failure as well as the loss of important data, I swapped him to one of the new laptops.
The next day I have one of the sales "managers" showing me his laptop that it has the blue screen (he loves to show me the laptop - even when he claimed it was turning off by itself). Mind you, I've heard him tel people "I'm just going to keep logging tickets until I get one of the new ones". Guess what, it isn't going to happen. His laptop is less than a year old and still has a long time with the warranty.
He claims he was getting the blue screen "all the time, every day". Of course, 95% of the time those blue screens are caused by software (and 4.99% of the time it is caused by inaccessible data caused by bad sectors on the drive).
Most people don't know this but when you get that blue screen your computer creates a dump file. It people like me have tools that can read and analyze these dump tools and tell you EXACTLY what caused the crash.
His computer only had two dump files on it, one from last month and one from the day he showed me the screen. Obviously he's not getting this blue screen several times a day.
I run the first one though the analyzer. Yep - failed driver. The driver that failed controls USB card readers. This is a common reason - someone removes a USB drive (or other media controlled though USB - including PCMICA cards) while the PC is trying to access important data (like the drivers on the card itself). If you really know what you're doing and know what's going on in your computer - you can easily duplicate this on demand.
I run the second one - even better. It was caused when our security software had a failure with Internet Explorer 8. Um, wait, IE8?? At the time of that crash, IE8 was NOT approved yet. He was using unapproved software. I know I'll need this for future reference.
Sure enough, I get an email from my boss. Why did the first person get a new laptop and this person is just getting Windows reloaded. Apparently, this person (who thinks they deserve the newest everything the second it comes out) emailed their boss who emailed my boss. He claimed that he's getting the blue screen "all the time" (yes, I was FWD on the email from my boss - I was being asked why it was going on), I've reloaded WIndows on his laptop "several times" since he's had it and he can never get any work done.
Fine, you want to play that game? No problem.
I explained why the first person got a new laptop (out of warranty, HDD was going bad), then I explained that this person's laptop still has 2 years on the warranty. I also explained the nature of the two crashes (and that they were the only crashes recorded in the system), I did not leave out the fact that the first one was caused by unapproved software and the second one was caused when they removed some sort of USB controlled media (including a wireless modem) - which he had halfway in the slot when he handed me the laptop). I also explained the only other time I loaded Windows on this PC was before I swapped out his previous one a few months ago, the ticketing system shows that.
BTW - with his older laptop from a few months ago I know nothing was wrong with it. I only exchanged it when my boss told me to. The next day I did a ipe and fresh OS install and swapped someone else's laptop with it and that person hasn't had a single problem with it yet.
I am seriously considering having a talk with this person's boss next week (whom I have an extremely good relationship with). I'm really getting sick of this person's attitude (and it's been like this ever since I came into this position).
One of our admins had a very old laptop (out of warranty by over a year) and he was having some issues accessing files. I scan the drive - bad sectors are starting to pop up. To severely reduce the risk of a catastrophic failure as well as the loss of important data, I swapped him to one of the new laptops.
The next day I have one of the sales "managers" showing me his laptop that it has the blue screen (he loves to show me the laptop - even when he claimed it was turning off by itself). Mind you, I've heard him tel people "I'm just going to keep logging tickets until I get one of the new ones". Guess what, it isn't going to happen. His laptop is less than a year old and still has a long time with the warranty.
He claims he was getting the blue screen "all the time, every day". Of course, 95% of the time those blue screens are caused by software (and 4.99% of the time it is caused by inaccessible data caused by bad sectors on the drive).
Most people don't know this but when you get that blue screen your computer creates a dump file. It people like me have tools that can read and analyze these dump tools and tell you EXACTLY what caused the crash.
His computer only had two dump files on it, one from last month and one from the day he showed me the screen. Obviously he's not getting this blue screen several times a day.I run the first one though the analyzer. Yep - failed driver. The driver that failed controls USB card readers. This is a common reason - someone removes a USB drive (or other media controlled though USB - including PCMICA cards) while the PC is trying to access important data (like the drivers on the card itself). If you really know what you're doing and know what's going on in your computer - you can easily duplicate this on demand.
I run the second one - even better. It was caused when our security software had a failure with Internet Explorer 8. Um, wait, IE8?? At the time of that crash, IE8 was NOT approved yet. He was using unapproved software. I know I'll need this for future reference.
Sure enough, I get an email from my boss. Why did the first person get a new laptop and this person is just getting Windows reloaded. Apparently, this person (who thinks they deserve the newest everything the second it comes out) emailed their boss who emailed my boss. He claimed that he's getting the blue screen "all the time" (yes, I was FWD on the email from my boss - I was being asked why it was going on), I've reloaded WIndows on his laptop "several times" since he's had it and he can never get any work done.
Fine, you want to play that game? No problem.
I explained why the first person got a new laptop (out of warranty, HDD was going bad), then I explained that this person's laptop still has 2 years on the warranty. I also explained the nature of the two crashes (and that they were the only crashes recorded in the system), I did not leave out the fact that the first one was caused by unapproved software and the second one was caused when they removed some sort of USB controlled media (including a wireless modem) - which he had halfway in the slot when he handed me the laptop). I also explained the only other time I loaded Windows on this PC was before I swapped out his previous one a few months ago, the ticketing system shows that.
BTW - with his older laptop from a few months ago I know nothing was wrong with it. I only exchanged it when my boss told me to. The next day I did a ipe and fresh OS install and swapped someone else's laptop with it and that person hasn't had a single problem with it yet.
I am seriously considering having a talk with this person's boss next week (whom I have an extremely good relationship with). I'm really getting sick of this person's attitude (and it's been like this ever since I came into this position).
I didn't become aware of the physical memory issues until after the install, so I didn't have any spare sticks on me at the time (even if I had, this is PC100, not a type I really keep in reserve anymore).
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