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Prepare for a first....

I've had not one, but TWO such calls to Microsoft, of all places. Neither call resulted in new purchase orders. Both calls were at a point where I was at my wits end. Search resulted in a number of results that bore NO resemblance to the actual issue at hand.

The first had to do with a replacement server being dropped in on a network that had an old Win 2K box with a Win 2k3 box. The first few parts of the configuration went fairly well. I set up AD on the new box, I set up DNS, I set up a number of other basic features, copied the data from the old server to the new one, installed a few goodies, went around to the workstations and remapped everything to point to the new server. Everything worked - until I shut down the old server. Then some machines which were sharing data could no longer be accessed, and a few other minor glitches turned up.

The call to Microsoft was a bit of a marathon. It took about 6 - 8 hours to resolve all of the minor issues that cropped up. By the time we got done, all of the issues were resolved and things were going well.

The 2nd call involved a Terminal server box with a mystery. When logging in at the console, users without Admin rights were able to get in without a problem. But when trying to log in from another location, the Terminal Server coughed up an error that said that you had to have the proper rights. I had followed the instructions to the letter in setting the users up - they were made part of the Remote Access/Terminal Server User group. I had two options to fix the problem - I could give them all admin rights (a fool, I am not) or I could call MS and see what they had to say.

The tech knew her stuff and in about 90 minutes, she had the remote users logging in without Admin rights.

Both of these techs were located in India. They spoke flawless, if accented English. They really knew their stuff.

Meanwhile, at another client, I had nothing but mega-issues with Intuit's support for Quicken. A client just got a computer and was sold a box with Vista 64 loaded on it. Every other app on her system was able to print directly to her HP Officejet 6200 series printer - except for Quicken 2008. The previous version, 2005, kept insisting on a PDF printer driver - which it wouldn't/couldn't install. The 2008 version managed to install that, yet couldn't print. After 2 hours of installing, reinstalling, uninstalling, installing as a new user, creating a new company data file with fake data, and a host of other steps, the problem could not be resolved. It would seem there's a bug in Quicken 2008 that won't let it print with Vista 64 to an HP printer. At least, the client could dump her printing to a PDF and use Acrobat reader to print the resulting checks and invoices. The guy at Intuit was clueless. He kept trying to get me to do stuff we'd already done 20 minutes before until I pointed out that we'd already been there, done that...

At least, the service call was free.

Guess you DO get what you pay for.

Posted by: Wolfie2K3   Posted on: 09/23/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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