Problem PC Had Graybeards Stumped Until Trainee Rummaged Through Trash

On Call By Friday, many readers will feel they need a sugar hit to get through the day, which is why The Register tries to offer a jolt of amusement in the form of a new installment of On Call, the reader-contributed column in which we share your tech support tales.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Raymond" who in the late 2000s found himself working in the pharmacy department of a regional supermarket chain in the US.

This supermarket was big enough to have a team of experienced on-prem techies, plus a newly hired trainee who shadowed them all in the hope he would pick up some experience.

One of the features of this workplace was a spare PC in the break room. As the other PCs were in the pharmacy, the break room machine became the one that pharmacy staff used for training courses or admin chores.

Over time, the computer inexplicably became far slower than the other machines in the supermarket.

The pharmacists were not happy about that.

"In a high-volume place like a supermarket, users get very tetchy about anything taking more than half a second," Raymond explained.

Pharmacists were especially demanding. "One of them treated me to a long diatribe about how a software update required three more keystrokes than before for one task," Raymond recalled.

The IT team therefore made fixing this PC a priority but got nowhere.

They summoned colleagues from nearby stores for a second opinion, but the assembled IT graybeards could not discern the problem even after hours of effort.

The trainee watched all this unfold, grew increasingly bored, and started randomly opening drawers on the desk whereupon the stricken PC sat.

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Inside, he found soda cans and candy bar wrappers.

Without laying so much as a finger on the keyboard, the trainee diagnosed the problem.

"This PC is slow because it's used for gaming," he pronounced.

Guided by the trainee, the graybeards went looking for hidden directories and soon found an online role-playing game someone had installed so they could play it during their lunch breaks.

"Uninstalling the game and blocking some ports solved the issue," Raymond reported.

Raymond remembers the trainee fondly, because that trainee quickly rose through the ranks and became his boss.

"He was a big guy, built like a dump truck, with fingers like sausages, and used to rebuild great big hydraulic cylinders shortly before getting into IT."

What's the weirdest piece of evidence you've used to diagnose a technical problem? Share evidence of your deductive prowess by clicking here to send On Call an email. ®