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MisterOblivious posted:No, they're not more secure. A combinator attack makes those passwords trivial to crack. A string of words out of the dictionary, while easy to remember, is not a secure password. Except that you have to know the password has that form. What if you stick a few random characters about in it too? A digit before or after some words. Adding some punctuation. Write a word backwards. Loads of variations that increases the number of combinations required to test, but all still assuming you know the form.
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May 20, 2014 19:12
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Print the slides onto billboard-sized sheets, then make a flipboard of it.
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Jun 6, 2014 16:40
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Knormal posted:This morning I had a user who already runs at 800x600 with large fonts complain again about her fonts being too small, then immediately transition into telling me how good her vision is and how she doesn't need glasses. Is there some kind of Dunning-Kruger effect with people like that, or just plain old denial? She just wants a new 27" monitor. Why didn't you bring one??
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Jun 6, 2014 20:33
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I had a problem with the oddest description, and a horrible cause. A user kept losing her favorites in IE. They definitely weren't there when I looked through IE, but browsing through the user's home folder in Explorer showed them just fine. But then there were two hints on what may be wrong: The IE running was not in the language of the rest of Windows (we don't use English Windows usually), and then its title bar was showing in a Windows 2000/2003 style gradient, while the machine was running Windows 7. Turned out that the user was somehow running IE in a Citrix session. But it still showed up in the main IE button on the Win7 taskbar, despite obviously not being the same local program. It was still possible to start local IE through the Start menu and get all the bookmarks correctly. I would never have been able to diagnose this without getting remote viewing on the user's machine. How the gently caress does anyone end up running IE through Citrix anyway?
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Jul 3, 2014 10:56
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Fenrisulfr posted:Yup. I frankensteined up a vbs and PowerShell script deployed via GPO to do this a month or so back. The hardest part was figuring out how to do Rich Text formatting. Well, updating the AD poo poo was annoying but it was just for about 100 people or so and pretty much the only thing I needed to do manually was the job title. For the logo I just had the PS script grab a file from a location on the file server, so if it ever changes I just need to update that file. My experience with Outlook signatures is that making an HTML version only is fine, and Outlook will auto-generate the RTF and plain text versions from it. Although it might only happen when you visit the signatures dialog.
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Jul 3, 2014 20:56
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 "I'm getting these two shared mailboxes that directly pertain to my job function in my Outlook. None of my colleagues have them. Take me off!" "Are you sure it isn't your colleagues that are all set up wrong?" "Just get me off them, right now!"Any bets she'll call again next week questioning why she had her access to two vital mailboxes removed?
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Jul 11, 2014 11:03
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A while ago this was linked in the SSD discussion thread: http://techreport.com/review/26523/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-casualties-on-the-way-to-a-petabyte Summary: A recent, high-quality SSD will take over 1,000,000 GB of writes before dying. Value models of reputable brands can take around 700,000 GB before giving up. Unless you use the SSD for video editing or heavy-write database you will probably never hit that ceiling. The one I just replaced (because of capacity) had a more than 13,000 power-on hours (a little over 1 ½ year) and just 7,600 GB total written. At my usage rate it would have taken more than 135 power-on years before hitting that 700 TB write cap.
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Jul 13, 2014 17:35
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m.hache posted:There should be an attachment on every computer that makes it as dangerous as a piece of heavy machinery. Just a big rotating blade that activates when it detects stupid questions. Install a hidden needle in the user's mouse, so you can inject a strong sedative at command. Or just something to zap them.
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Jul 30, 2014 19:19
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nimper posted:
Answer the user with another riddle, "Where does the contents of your trash can go when the cleaning lady visits?" I've had users with stuff on the Desktop when their machine was up for wipe (XP -> 7) lose poo poo since we don't back those things up. I've had users with the only copy of important work on a USB stick which happened to die. But luckily still haven't experienced the "trash can is a great place for long-term archival" user. In fact, almost everyone I talk to is sensible. Except when it comes to printers. No, we don't have an SLA of one or even two hours on those, yeah sucks, you'll have to walk for a bit.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:08
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Where do things in the Deleted Items folder go if they've been deleted?
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airdisc posted:SEND THE BASS. This needs to go in the thread title.
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Aug 25, 2014 14:10
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Che Delilas posted:Computers only ever do what you tell them to do. Yesterday, while looking stuff up for a user's request ("my new office assistant needs access to this folder" kind of thing), with her still on the phone, I actually overheard her saying that exact phrase to her new hire.
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Sep 14, 2014 00:59
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Regardless of where you get an older version offline-installer from, you should be able to verify the signature of the installer/installed files that they are in fact from Google.
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Sep 16, 2014 08:00
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Printers can be hell, but sometimes users aren't too bad. A call came in, "hey that printer ticket my colleague opened earlier? Just close it again, we fixed it." 
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Sep 23, 2014 13:21
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Renegret posted:I hate poorly documented tickets. Poorly documented resolutions, my bane. Resolution seen today: "sccm" Translation: "I installed something on their computer." What they seem to actually have done: Attempted to install WordPerfect Office on that computer. Why the gently caress would you ever install WordPerfect Office anywhere?!? (Actually, why do we even have a package for that...) Discovered it by the user calling in, complaining about constantly getting popups about an installation failing.
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Oct 20, 2014 21:25
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Inspector_666 posted:The only thing I would change about Crashplan is being able to setup extra folders to be backed up locally but not to ~the cloud~. You can do that. Enable the Backup Sets function, then you can configure several sets that each include different locations, and control for each set which destinations it can back up to, as well as frequency and retention policies.
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Nov 3, 2014 17:39
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Frag Viper posted:We use Gmail at work. Maybe try connecting to the account with an IMAP client (or the mail app on an Android tablet) and see if you can clean up the drafts from there.
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Nov 4, 2014 21:46
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Varkk posted:That is assuming they even use the correct port to begin with. Unless the new USB plugs won't be backwards compatible. I read a while ago about a new USB connector that could be plugged in both ways. It probably isn't compatible with the old ones, and I still haven't seen any.
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Nov 7, 2014 08:36
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The AD commands for PS won't accept NT account names in the Domain\accountname form, you have to either get the account SID and look that up, or chop off the domain from the NT account name and perhaps add that manually as another search criteria. Additionally, I'm not sure if Get-ADOrganizationalUnit is the right command to use. I think you'll have better success with Get-ADUser to look up each user, and then pull out the OU from the DN with a regex or something stupid like that. (I can't find any commands or properties that let me navigate up the directory tree, from an object to the containing object.)
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Nov 17, 2014 09:41
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spog posted:Because a lot of keyboards no longer label the right 'ALT' key as 'ALT-GR' European keyboards do.
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Nov 18, 2014 15:24
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Arquinsiel posted:I'm not sure anyone really knows what Alt Gr is supposed to do. It seems to change based on whatever window is active at any given moment for me. AltGr does three things: Push and release acts as the left Alt key. Combined with a key that has a third graphical character on it in the current layout types that character. Combined with any other key acts as Ctrl+Alt+key. Of course some games handle it specially, treating it as "right alt", the same way they distinguish between left and right shift/ctrl keys.
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Nov 18, 2014 19:32
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Migishu posted:To be fair, Sametime (last time I used it) was amazing. Especially the ability to copy/paste screenshots into the chat window. I used to have my SA smileys set up on my Sametime client. Chat program stability was great. Only problem with it is that it comes as a package with Notes, which is a loving horrendous piece of donkey poo poo (I'm STILL complaining about F5 being a "SHUTDOWN APPLICATION" button instead of a "REFRESH" button, what the gently caress IBM?) Next time, hit them with their own standards: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr/BOOKS/F29BDG00/3.7.3.1.1?SHELF=ceesl002&DT=19921204095534&CASE= Exit should be on F3, no questions asked.
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Nov 24, 2014 13:33
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How do you accidentally call 911? What were they actually intending to call? (Over here, the prefix for calling out is usually 0. The emergency number is also 112.)
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Nov 24, 2014 19:44
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Siochain posted:Weird question folks. I need to actively monitor a user for a span of about an hour to see where they are loving up their workflow, which is causing their boss to blame us for problems. I'll be remoting into his system and watching him work to see where he's doing things wrong. What I'm looking for is a piece of software I can use to record that session (aka my screen), so we can cut/snip pieces out to show is boss what he's doing wrong. Any ideas/stupidly obvious solutions I'm not seeing? If it costs money, as long as its not too much, we're willing to put some dollars into this to put a month-long-string-of-bullshit to bed. One of the TechSmith products? Camtasia would probably be it. I think they're pretty much the standard for "professional-grade" screen recording. You might even be able to get away with using the trial version, not sure if their license allows that. (Do a quick test of the trial version on your own, to learn the interface, check it doesn't interfere etc., then do a production trial on the user in question, if it works well maybe it can convince your boss to buy a license.) Alternatively, I think some remoting software is able to do recording, I believe NetOp Remote Control which we use at my place is able to capture the remote session to a video.
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Dec 3, 2014 20:11
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Try a couple different USB card readers for PC? Wiggle the card around a bit, leave it in for a while. Maybe try if a Linux system will detect it.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:08
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GnarlyCharlie4u posted:This job... Time to crack the puns. "This is the helpdesk line, not the desk help line."
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Jan 20, 2015 20:03
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myron cope posted:Since we're talking passwords, is there any obligation to tell a person their password sucks? This is a lady in benefits in HR and her password is super weak and also it's fairly obvious what her next password(s) will be. Normally I don't really care but she has basically all employee info. Do you have a security policy? Can she be held accountable if her weak password is determined as cause for a breach? If so, remind her of those facts.
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Feb 9, 2015 05:31
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m.hache posted:So a few weeks ago I implemented a .zip block on emails (as well as other common file types). Last week I get a phonecall because our email system isn't letting emails through. People can't read bounce messages, and honestly I don't blame them. The actual reason text tends to be buried 20 lines down surrounded by irrelevant technical details. Nobody who doesn't already speak SMTP will ever get that far without turning off and giving up. It also doesn't help when the reason text can't be internationalized. Plenty of our users don't speak technical English.
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Feb 9, 2015 20:00
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And then you run into the issue of users spending And then the weirdest issue we run in to constantly at my place: Users managing to place one or more space characters before or after their username, causing password errors that no reset will solve. Why. Why does Windows even allow usernames with whitespace before or after? Why doesn't it just trim that off? nielsm fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Feb 9, 2015 |
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Feb 9, 2015 20:08
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How will a password manager help me enter 24 characters of mixed case, digits and punctuation on the Windows logon screen?
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Feb 10, 2015 20:14
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Inspector_666 posted:I have had the same experience. I watched a woman do it 3 times after I told her "Type in your username and password, then do nothing" so I could show her where to click. Nope, went straight to the Switch User button. Did you tell her explicitly to "not click the Switch User button, it does not do what you think it does"?
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Feb 11, 2015 21:45
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:I had that disabled for a while, but with no way to kick logged-in users off, most of the shared computer became unusable very quickly. What I'd really want is a function that forces a log off if the screen locks, so that a computer couldn't be left unused with someone logged in. Telling people to pull the power cord/hold down the power button for 10 seconds is standard practice where I am.
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Feb 11, 2015 22:15
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But I've had someone who clicked the "How do I log on to a different domain?" link below the password box, and wondering why she wasn't getting in. But she did read aloud the message it then showed.
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Feb 11, 2015 22:18
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A ticket came in... users are unable to click a particular link on a webpage. However it seems to work if you nudge the mouse around the link for a bit. I get a link to the page with the troublesome link, and can confirm there is something odd with it. So time to dig out the web developer tools. It turns out the link is packed into 4096 levels of nested <FONT> tags, all identical, which makes the browser choke. How do you manage to do that? It's Sharepoint, but it still shouldn't be that bad?!
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Feb 12, 2015 11:27
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RadicalR posted:Actually, that's probably not the user's fault. Adobe is known for doing that. I had that, but .lnk associated to Word instead. So probably not Adobe.
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Mar 9, 2015 20:42
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chocolateTHUNDER posted:Some quick There was some broken stuff under HKCU somewhere that needed to be deleted, so the original HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes registration took over again.
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Mar 9, 2015 20:54
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told me that MS preferred method to fix this, is to replace the registry entry. Is this what you wound up doing?
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A call came in, an ancient application is not functioning correctly. Attemps to flatten the machine and reinstall from the package did not resolve the problem. It complains about an OCX file missing. Turns out the OCX file does exist, but it can't be registered, it seems a dependency is missing. Pulling out the heavy tools. I run Dumpbin from the MS development tools to get the imports table, and I find:  MSVBVM50.DLL Yeah, this application depends on the Visual Basic 5.0 runtime. So I get to download and install a file from 1997 from Microsoft, on a Windows 7 system. Honstly, I'm impressed the application still functions correctly. Right until MS stops supplying 32 bit operating systems. Oh, and it's a medical system.
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Mar 13, 2015 13:17
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Where I work everyone is local admin. The AV is Symantec. There are more than 16k users. IE is pegged at 8 because of legacy software. The only malware issues we really see at helpdesk are dumb adware infections, usually from people using Bing to search for "google chrome" or "dropbox" and clicking the top sponsored result, which is invariably an adware-bundling download site.
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Mar 26, 2015 16:01
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BaseballPCHiker posted:You must have non mouth breathing employees as users. Of course my environment also wont allow us to push out new updates because of fears of compatibility errors with our ERP software. We also cant get the money to invest in upgraded firewalls or IDS/IPS systems as well. I've only been in the place for a little less than a year, and I'm really just a phone monkey (yet), but it's probably a combination of factors. We have a general policy on replacement of hardware, nobody uses old machines unless there is some extremely good reason. That probably contributes to general trust from the users, that the IT department is on top of things. Additionally, while we don't use roaming profiles (that may in fact be a positive), the default setup of machines means that most users are able to log onto any computer and begin doing work almost immediately, there is good consistency in performance. All software users need to work is present by default, and good performance is also a factor in gaining user trust. Since many users are able to perform their work on any machine, they often never end up using a single one for so long they "take ownership" of it. The issues I do see usually happen on secretaries' workstations and machines used in telecommuting. There are more factors that probably gain trust from the users, in part timely and sufficient reports about planned and unplanned downtime. I've mostly focused on user trust towards the IT department. I think winning that trust makes guidelines for secure and sensible use more likely to be followed, and users more likely to report unusual behavior from computers early. Lastly, all our helpdesk, support, infrastructure and architecture management is in-house and every department/location has people with long histories and organizational knowledge. It's probably not cheap to run, but I believe the upper management recognizes the whole-org cost savings from larger IT spending, it looks that way from down here.
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Mar 26, 2015 18:29
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Tab8715 posted:Curious, when you initially started how bad was the overhead? How did you get passed white-listing all the standard Microsoft backend programs? Just guessing here, but install a fresh image with all required default programs, collect a list of all executables and their signatures from that, manually comb the list for stuff you don't actually want, and voila?
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Mar 26, 2015 20:21
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Laserface posted:His internship is a part of his university tuition. He is studying Computer Science. So can you fail him?
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Apr 28, 2015 07:05
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