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How to "educate" hard-headed user...

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by kawarimi 2 views

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Hi, I believe most of the IT guys here facing similiar problem...
This morning 30mins. before office hour starts, I was blasted by a angry user of my LAN -- her shared documents was unaccessible...
So I went to checked, her WinXP Pro said the folder is not accesible due to lack of permision bla bla bla... but since it is her own local folder, it just the sharing shortcut (icons in "network places") not working.
So i suspect the actual folder is no longer there or moved, and yes it was no longer on the hard drive... but still she insist that shortcut is the folder... and it could not be "lost" or unaccessible... sigh, man! how to make her understand and accept the reality!!

Kawarimi.

26 replies

by caspercv

I'm the sysadmin at a huge retirement village and working with the elderly.
Just try and explain to one of the old dear's that she did not delete the mail in her inbox but the addresses in her addressbook!

Casper.

by dmambo

Best of luck with that. I never thought about it before, but I can only imagine what you must face day-to-day. I have a hard enough time trying to help one 75 year-old newbie. Do you handle VCR's too???

by caspercv

All members of my "eMedia" centre is over 65 and the oldest one 92! At the moment there are 89 members.
It is quite a job to teach them and quite frustrating as they keep on forgetting everything. (Step-by-step help a lot here).
But they enjoy it and since most of their famlies are overseas (we are in South Africa) they can keep in contact with them. I mean who want to write gran a snailmail?

by robosgt

I can not count the number of time something like has happened to me. I have a small network with about 1200 users and about half of them feel they know better how to solve the problem than my staff does. All to often they will call us to look at something and when we give them the fix for it they tell us that is not it try again. I have had to go as far as to tell them if they don't want to do what we suggest to fix the problem then don't call us. It is amazing how people feel if they own a computer at home they know how to fix it. We don't go to the mechanic and tell them how to fix our cars why do they do it to the IT people.

by rpeeples

I don't know much about cars so I stay out from under the hood. Non-technical people would do well to follow the same advice. I have faced that problem so much that I have requested to be left alone when fixing a problem. YES, I am guilty of watching a mechanic fix my car/truck, but I have never once tried to give him advice about fixing the problem!

by the admiral

You don't. You explain to her that sometimws crap happens and you need to be able to determine the root cause.

You also explain to her that it takes 3 seconds to break a computer, much like a tire, and 30 minutes to fix it.

If that don't work, if your not a manager, go to your manager to go to her manager. Plain and simple. Abusing the Tech department is not going to get the problem fixed.

by -twitch-

I say delete the shortcut and say "There, NOW its gone" ... and make her a new folder to access until the other one is found or confirmed to be deleted.

-- document everything

by craig herberg

You are so on the money on this one, Tony. Perhaps to some, the question was too difficult: Complain about the client or support the business mission?

Craig Herberg

by tomsal

Smaller shops like ours, can't afford to get huge backup capacity to backup the servers and *everything* on each client machine. So in a small shop scenario like this, backup is on priority basis only.

If you have 150 gigs of backup space only, and you can't buy anymore (executive decision/budgeting, etc.) -- what do you do?

A) Back up your critical company maintaining servers and the databases that take up 100+ gigs on their own, which leaves you with +/- 50 gigs right? Oh darn...those executive and manager computers have files on them of "high importance" and then the QA system down the hall has our client report and inspection pictures on it from all over the country -- there's another 40 gigs combined.

or

B) Screw everything just so you can have space to backup everything on each of 100 client machines you have, with an average HDD size of 20 gigs, of which from that 10 gigs is what the user deems as "precious" files. (emails/documents/jokes/pictures, etc.).

Now in our office each user has a network drive that we give them a small slice of space, all net drives are in the backup schedule each night.

But there still is no way for us to backup EVERYTHING. Hence, the scenario originally presented is feasible to occur without the user's particular folder being included in the backup. (Even though the thread author did state they do in fact have backups after all).

So while "um..restore from the backup ..duh" sounds like common sense....believe it or not in some shops that don't have Bill Gates size budgets, we have to be very selective and "choosey" of what we back up.

by kawarimi

the concerned is how to open their rusty door of understanding of the case... this morning I get another few similiar complains again sigh... life goes on... cheers to all IT guys facing the same thing as me!!

by mjd420nova

I can't count the number of times that has happened. As a result, I've prepared a script
that all users can reference to get beyond these type of problems. And when it does come down to
the worst case, I can use the back-up. The biggest problem is how often to backup. For some
users, I've had to setup a routine that backs up
their machine everyday, and then explain why
it takes so long for their machine to shut down
at the end of the day. You can't win, so just
go with the flow and try to anticipate the
inevitable. Too bad I can't reboot the users.

by jbaker

We do not back up user's machines. If the data is important, it needs to be on a server. All of our users know this. It is okay to keep a small amount of personal mail on the machine, but that is all. Because of this policy, if a machine crashes and a user looses company data, we are able to go , oops...so sorry, hope it will not take you to long to recreate that... :)

by jeff

We have the same policy in place. If files are saved directly to to the machine and not in the server drive ie: g:\docs then there is nothing I can do about it if it is lost/corrupted. This is what we call company policy.

I have been kind and started redirecting the My Documents folder. But only because we got a new backup drive and I had some space.

by itgirli

Tell her that a new virus came out that eats all the information from folders and that must be what happened. And tell her that if she wasn't surfing for porn all the time, viruses wouldn't get on her computer.

by mlayton

...you just have to tell her that problems of this nature are attributed to a technical term - "PEBKAC". I believe the long version of that is "Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair"

by jgarcia102066

You could also say it's an ID Ten Tee issue (ID10T) that happens every once in a while and is the reason that backing up your computer and/or putting your important files on the network that gets backed up is so important.

Actually, you may want to have this user around when you right click on the shortcut and say, alright, this shortcut is pointing to XXXXX folder. Okay, let's look for the folder...Hey, it's not here! Did you move or delete this folder? You didn't! Well, somehow this folder has been deleted or moved and your shortcut will no longer work. Hmmm. I can't tell you what happened to your folder other than it's now gone.

Would you like me to show you how to back-up your system so that if this happens again, you can recover your files?

blah, blah, blah...

My suspicion like yours is that the user deleted to folder thinking that they had a duplicate in the shortcut and they don't want to admit it. Make them aware they actually caused the problem rather than accuse them of causing the problem and next time, they may be a little nicer when approaching you with a problem. Maybe, they won't but it's worth a try.

by jerry~beans&bytes

... and then, you always check the Recycle Bin, because this kind of user often has never emptied it.
i sometimes think that my backup routine should include netwk servers and user recyling bins, only. the only thing stoping me is that it would penalize my good users, instead of the bad ones.

by albant1

IT STANDS FOR IGNORANT BEAST OPERATING SYSTEM. SOMETIMES I FEEL MORE LIKE A PSIQUIATRICS DOCTOR INSTEAD OF A TECH SUPPORT GUY. SOME USERS DO NOT UNDERSTAND THAT A MACHINE IN A WORK PLACE IS JUST A TOOL FOR DOING A BETTER JOB INSTEAD OF A HOME THEATRE, NNTENDO, PORN SEEKING GADGET, MUSIC DOWNLOAD SERVER, ETC....ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

by jeff.jones

I think irrational users are a sign of what we do. I think they need to make a book called How to understand technical talk for dummies, which we can get several copies of and hand out to those users.

by mynx

We cannot give them any more books... this would give them MORE reason to believe that they can advise the advisor...remember the mechanic thing?

by kawarimi

And if the machine "pissed" them off, they might use those books to "intergorate" the PC for the lost data...

by elliottlwalker

In my environment, we give all users (approx 650) a "slice" of the network storage space on servers for their personal files and their groups/departments with a slice of space for their departmental shared docs. Of course, with backups to email and databases, etc... the backup window is very tight, because of all the data to backup.

It's very hard to get executives/managers to approve budget for expanding the infrastructure. Even in a post 9/11 world, when you thought all those companies who lost not only people, but information, we would have all learned the value of spending a little extra on backup and infrastructure.

Anyway, I'm straying from my point. Of course, even in a scenario where the data is backed up, there's always the user who saves documents (ususally they're most important ones) to the desktop (which is local to the PC - not backed up in my environment). They put everything else on the network EXCEPT these most important files - then the computer's HD crashes! Even if you give 'em a brand new PC, they're going to go to your boss and try to get you fired, 'cause you can't restore their desktop and their Tiki Barber wallpaper that they never saved properly!

My example here displays a fine point in all of this. It's about training the user (I know - a more difficult task than one can talk about here). The users have to be effectively trained to work effectively and learn how to protect their own data. We can only do so much with backup and Disaster Recovery plans. If they don't work properly with the data (assuming we've communicated that to them properly), then it's all a waste of money and time...

by gsg

We don't back up the individual PCs. They aren't supposed to store anything locally since we provide ample space on our file server for that. We even point "My Documents" there and make that the default place, so they have to do an extra click or 2 to store it locally. They still do that, but understand that if the machine tanks, they are SOL.

This way, their documents are part of our backup, and are (relatively) easy to restore if deleted.

I admit... I save stuff locally as well. It's a case of do as I say, not as I do.

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