If you can't behave, I will take it away from everyone

[Ironclad Alibi]

(The ability to hit people for doing stupid things with their computer and getting paid for it? Yes please.)

Editted to provide an even better desire.

[AlleyCat]

nicolecj, atleast the lady did not get into the network drives and started wiping everything out ....

My story from hell comes from Kinko's, where I was accussed of looking up Lesbian porn. The firefox history was there, but no time stamps. All the computers are used by any staff members nearby, there is no log ins.

Turns out, 4 months later, the son of the District Manager was the one who looked up the porn.

So... I am not the tech support, but recently they locked down our computers and i just found out why.

Background: we save ALOT of documents and other crap everyday. We have servers where we are supposed to save this too so other people can access it as well. Kind of a giant file sharing/ backup system. We are not supposed to save on our computers unless it is a work in progress that is not supposed to be posted yet so we don't clutter up the machines. We get new machines every few years.

Okay, so I guess a lady did not get that memo, and it turns out she had been saving the documents on line, so we all saw them as we were supposed to, but unbeknownst to us she had also saved a backup copy of EVERY SINGLE ITEM on her computer since we got the last round of new computers.

Eventually her computer gave her some warnings about running out of memory and needed to reduce the amount of crap on her PC. She decided that it was her duty, not to call the techies, but to delete some unused stuff. I don't know where this idea came from. She went into program files, and ran across the windows folder. She went in and deleted the entire start up application because she figured that since she did not know what it was she did not need it. I have no idea what else she erased, but I know that the computer ended up having to be reformatted and returned without a single document saved on it.

As a result, our friendly techies have released upon us poor minions a lockdown so severe that you can't even change the time display in the corner of the computer.

I can only hope to eventually convince them that I am not a complete moron and get the lock down lifted... just a little

[lordlundar]

I think the moral of this story is: if you don't know what it is, ask first... if they don't know what it is, don't touch it. Do they make automated hand swatters that we could install on keyboards and have programmed to swat the user everytime they open the program files?

If not and they need someone to fill that role, I'll be happy to.

(The ability to hit people for doing stupid things with their computer and getting paid for it? Yes please.)

[dalesys]

35 years ago I was agitating for a HRFO instruction to be in the machine language of every processor...


(HRFO => Halt, Re-Format Operator)

[nicolecj]

I think the moral of this story is: if you don't know what it is, ask first... if they don't know what it is, don't touch it. Do they make automated hand swatters that we could install on keyboards and have programmed to swat the user everytime they open the program files?

[Andara Bledin]

1) Make sure you're running a 64-bit OS. If your OS is only 32-bit, and not a Server OS, you don't have 16GB usable RAM, you have ~3.5GB.

This is what I was trying to remember when I first read that.

The being out of memory with 13g left makes it sound very much like it's only 32-bit, and thus, not even capable of seeing 3/4 of the actual available memory.

^-.-^

[roothorick]

I admit I will sometimes go in and delete shit from my programs folder to make space, but I would not touch anything in the Windows folder. That's just asking for trouble, IMHO.

And you wonder why your computer gives you problems... your registry must be funked pretty good. Andara is right on this one -- Add/Remove Programs is the way to go.

I don't have enough memory to complete something when I have 13 GB left. Oh, I could go on for hours about my POS laptop, but I'll spare you guys.

1) Make sure you're running a 64-bit OS. If your OS is only 32-bit, and not a Server OS, you don't have 16GB usable RAM, you have ~3.5GB. You need 64-bit addressing to have more than 4GB of addressable space, and your computer needs a good chunk of that space to address things other than RAM, like your graphics chipset. If you're on XP, well, it's time for an upgrade anyway. Vista/7, you should be able to obtain a 64-bit disc for your particular edition and upgrade for free.
2) Even if your OS is 64-bit, many applications are still only 32-bit. This is why I tell people not to bother past 4GB -- it gives you 1GB for the OS and 3GB for the program, where 8GB gives you 1GB for the OS, 3GB for the program, and 4GB unused. (Unless you're multitasking with real ram hogs, but that's another story.)

[roothorick]

we had issues like that on my ship.

people - especially the chiefs/officers cos they were the WORST abusers - wouldn't just save files to the local drive. they would SPECIFICALLY save them to the desktop.

they would save personal copies of official documents so they had them easily on hand... instead of oh, i dunno. saving a shortcut instead?


the thing is... they refused to understand that THIS was why it took forever to log in. the desktop files were part of the profile and you had to load the entire profile to let someone log in. and when the profile gets corrupted ... um yeah, all those files get deleted which created yet another hell.

If they actually had their domain set up properly, that'd be a non-issue, as the desktop is part of their profile which is on the server anyway, with all the redundancy and backups that's supposed to entail. Of course, that doesn't solve the "takes forever to log in" problem, but if you're enough of a bigshot to have your own personal terminal, you should lock your terminal instead, and optionally put it in hibernate.

You have to keep in mind -- this whole network file serving thing is alien technology to the everyman. For network file servers to get used at all by non-IT people, it has to be COMPLETELY transparent -- that means desktop on network, My Documents on network, and at that point you should dump the whole profile on the network and deny them write access to the entire local hard drive. (Execs won't bitch if they don't know they don't have it.)

[Andara Bledin]

I admit I will sometimes go in and delete shit from my programs folder to make space, but I would not touch anything in the Windows folder. That's just asking for trouble, IMHO.

If you're removing programs, use the Add/Remove Programs feature in Windows. More effective, less likely to break something, and will remove more of the program than just what shows up in the Program Files folder (which isn't nearly all of most programs).

^-.-^

[ShadowBall]

I admit I will sometimes go in and delete shit from my programs folder to make space, but I would not touch anything in the Windows folder. That's just asking for trouble, IMHO.

I also am a big picture and music collector, and I've got a bunch of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash stuff on here...sooo I do have to make space occasionally if I want room for that 500 MB PSD file.

Then again, my computer hates me. Takes forever for any Adobe program to start up, Illustrator shuts off for no reason, and I get told I don't have enough memory to complete something when I have 13 GB left. Oh, I could go on for hours about my POS laptop, but I'll spare you guys.

[PepperElf]

we had issues like that on my ship.

people - especially the chiefs/officers cos they were the WORST abusers - wouldn't just save files to the local drive. they would SPECIFICALLY save them to the desktop.

they would save personal copies of official documents so they had them easily on hand... instead of oh, i dunno. saving a shortcut instead?


the thing is... they refused to understand that THIS was why it took forever to log in. the desktop files were part of the profile and you had to load the entire profile to let someone log in. and when the profile gets corrupted ... um yeah, all those files get deleted which created yet another hell.

=/

[bsaana]

I wish the powers where I work would lock our users from doing many things. Unfortunately they have not done so. We get calls every so often because part of the programs they need to actually do the work they are supposed to do don't work. We've often found that they have installed toolbars, and various games to the systems. We first have to report it to a couple people, and only after they are done are we allowed to remove it.

I blame software that was badly written that requires the admin privilidges to work.

[roothorick]

Eventually her computer gave her some warnings about running out of memory and needed to reduce the amount of crap on her PC. She decided that it was her duty, not to call the techies, but to delete some unused stuff. I don't know where this idea came from. She went into program files, and ran across the windows folder. She went in and deleted the entire start up application because she figured that since she did not know what it was she did not need it. I have no idea what else she erased, but I know that the computer ended up having to be reformatted and returned without a single document saved on it.

The fact that the computer LET HER do that tells me your IT department is partially -- no, mostly -- to blame. That's network security 101 -- any user that's not part of IT should NOT, under any circumstances, have write access to system folders. PERIOD. Your IT guys dropped the ball there.

[nicolecj]

I got to that point and wondered just how much crap this woman was saving on her computer (or how small her hard drive was). I'm a major picture packrat, and I do a LOT of photoshop work, and even with my music library I still have tons of room on my hard drive.

I'd like to know if the IT guys bothered to see just what this woman was hoarding on her hard drive before they reformatted it.

To be entirely honest, I have no idea... I don't know the guys in IT very well for a good reason. My mother is a manager for IT in a different department of this same government and works in the same city. I do actually know who they are and who likes or dislikes her, and i don't have any desire to get stuck in the middle. I have a common last name, but we look a lot alike so I am trying to keep my head down.

Mummy is known as a bit of a powerhouse when it comes to IT departments that are not doing well. She is the one they bring in to turn it around. She is not always well loved.

[sld72382]

A long time ago at my workplace some enterprising soul figured out the process names for the firewall (the one that blocks access to certain sites) and call monitoring software and proceeded to kill them with task manager.

So what did IT do? Block access to task manager. If a single program crashed we had to restart the whole computer.

When I returned to lunch they restored access to it and did something they should have done in the first place - lock down the process names so if you tried to kill it, it would give an "access denied" error.

BTW the enterprising soul who killed the processes did it on a call he was being audited on. One doesn't have to really think about what happened next to him.