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True Life Tale: Paging the Help Desk

Quick fix for a computer that has been making buzzing sounds for weeks.

I was new with the desktop support team and received a request to take a look at a customer's computer that was making a funny noise. I went on site and asked the user, "What kind of noise?" All she could say was that it was making a buzzing noise and it was coming from the keyboard.

Surprised by this description, I sat down at the keyboard and began doing some basic troubleshooting when, all of a sudden, I heard the sound. It was definitely coming from somewhere near the keyboard, but it was a sound I've never heard before coming from a computer.

After further investigation of the area, I pulled the center drawer of her desk open and — voila! — there was a pager in the drawer, set on vibrate.

When I told the customer that it was a pager located in her center drawer, her comment was "There it is. I've been looking for that for weeks!"

[The preceding "True Life Tale" was submitted by Dana Cummins, of Tacoma, Washington, as part of a Help Desk Support contest we ran in January/February. For her effort, Dana received a copy of Mastering Windows XP Registry, by Peter Hipson, courtesy of Sybex. To submit a "True Life Tale," send you 500-words-or-less story on any IT topic to [email protected]. Published tales will win a book from our burgeoning tech library.]

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