Ramblings, ideas, problems, and solutions

Category: Tech support

  • When in doubt, reboot

    A common occurrence when contacting IT support, is that you are requested to reboot the computer, to see if that helps. From time to time, users are reluctant – or even unwilling – to do so, and ask why. The reason is very simple; experience has shown me, and many other IT professionals, that reboots…

  • Outlook 2013: BCC in meeting requests

    I had a user call in, who was unfamiliar with Office 2013, having only worked with previous versions of Office, and wanting to know how they could add a BCC recipient to the meeting request. In Outlook 2013, Microsoft changed the nomenclature used when adding attendees to meeting requests. Where before there had been the usual options (To,…

  • Enable HDMI Device Link on PS4

    Following our recent move from one home to another, we changed up our media diet, and replaced our media center PC with two devices; an Apple TV and a Playstation 4. The former is HDMI Device Link-enabled from the get-go, meaning that you (in theory) only need to use the Apple TV remote to turn…

  • Use all screens in RDP

    This is one of those things that – in hindsight – is fairly obvious, but which wasn’t until I was asked the question, and had to start thinking about it. My user had switched computers, and part of that switch was to go for a multi-monitor setup. Said user uses a terminal server solution, to…

  • Fix iPhone call failed issue

    Some time ago, I found my iPhone started to claim that a call had failed, when the call had in fact been terminated normally. This got a bit annoying, but luckily, there’s a simple fix. Here’s how I fixed it: Open Settings Go to Phone -> Show my Caller ID Toggle the setting That’s it.…

  • Change author name and initials in Word

    A while back, a user called in, asking me how she could change the name and initials that Word used when filling in Author and when showing who had made a comment. Not having had to do that for some time, I quickly researched it, finding it was simple enough to do. In order to…

  • TBT: Spelling it out – using the NATO phonetic alphabet to our advantage

    This post originally ran in August 2008. I am reposting it now, as part of my throwback thursday project, to give some of my older quality posts some love. I still use the NATO phonetic alphabet on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Since posting it, I have also become aware of the beautifully designed chart from…

  • #TBT: Uncovering Model-specific errors

    This post originally ran in April 2008. I am reposting it now, as part of my throwback thursday project, to give some of my older quality posts some love. The ability to see trends is an important one to a support analyst, I would go so far as to call it an essential skill.   Most models…

  • TeamViewer on Windows: Elevate session to have administrative permissions

    One of the Support Analyst’s most powerful tools is the ability to remotely view and control the end user’s computer. One of many tools that lets you do this, is TeamViewer. If User Account Control (UAC) using secure desktop is enabled, that secure desktop causes remote sessions without administrative privileges to go black when the UAC prompt…

  • SPSS: The SAVE command has succeeded. However…

    A while back, I had a user call in and tell me that he was editing a document in SPSS, and went to save his progress to the original file, when he got the following error: The SAVE command has succeeded. However, due to contention for the specified file, the data have been saved to…