duh.

I'd document each time you go out there and if he continues to waste your time for his own giggles bring the matter up with a manager.

If you wanted to be a bit mean spirited you could always disable his floppy drive in BIOS and then lock his BIOS with a password.
That probably would cause a lot more grief than its worth though. :-)

and documentation. Keep note of every time you visit this individual, what he says to get you there, and what he says when you have no success at repairing his drive. After a matter of time you have enough documentation to go to your manager and his to report this.

Great ercomendations, I agree specially with the documentation one.But if all else fails, rally up the rest of the support staff, mybe some other of his coworkers and wait for him outside and give him a surprise party...

Have had similar problem and did the following:

1. Don't fix it. Let him wait and wait and wait and wait. If anyone complains (like his boss) Tell them you don't have time to waste with employees who deliberately attempt to sabotage the equipment.

2. Use Policy Editor and block access' to Control Panel, etc.

3. Document every time it happens to back up you reasons for either 1. or 2.

In my case, option 1. did the trick. His boss complained to me, and I told him what was going on. IT are there for the benefit of all, and the corporation. "HE" was warned and it never happened again.

the next time it happens, advise him that you have documented all the instances of this problem & as there is nothing actually wrong with the PC & floppy drive then you can only assume the problem is user error. Suggest very politely that perhaps a training course might be in order! If this fails advise him that if it should occur again, in the company's best interest you will have no choice but to remove his ability to access the floppy drive.

I too have this problem quite a lot...if you talk to a couple of the 500 users I support you'd be amazed at how THEY actually invented the internet! How they can hack into all kinds of places etc...etc I think you get the idea, the world is full of bull s***ers. Some people think they can only look good by putting others down.
Personally I have learnt to laugh at them & I'm a woman!

First: Document, you must document any and all incidents. Include date, time, what was said/done, and any potential witnesses. Don't forget to inform both your supervisor and the offending users supervisor what you are doing and why.
Second: Use the NT Resource Kit service FLOPLOCK to lock access to the drive to all except to Adminis and Power Users.
Third: Hack the registry at:
Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Key: \SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\POLICIES\EXPLORER NAME:NO DRIVES
Type:REG_DWORD
The key is a 32-bit binary number and the first 26 bits refer to drive letters Z to A. 1 means the drive is hidden, 0 means the drive is visible.
EXAMPLE:
00000000000100000000000001
zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba
the immediate lineabove is the corresponding drive letter and is shown here for the example, you won't see that line in the registry, you will only see the numbers.
The example above shows the O and A drive hidden. Note that they will still be able to access the drive at a command prompt and through File Manager. So I suggest you do all three above.
And no matter what happens remain professional.
If all else fails remove the drive and tell him that if he needs 3.5 floppy access that he will have to give the disk to someone from IT and then IT will e-mail him his informaiton.

I have seen a fair number of the replys, Documantation and Management involvement is definately warranted as other have written already.

A new twist, is what we have at my company, Chargeback.. Since this person is into games that waste corporate assets, namely you, I expect he's pretty low on the food chain, and is not a manager, nor privey to budgets, etc.

If you cannot actually charge his unit, just tell the bloke your going to be submitting bills to his manager. You might enlist the help of a sympathetic manager in his mangement chain to confront this person with bills for the service calls...i.e., why so many, how does he use/operate his machine, etc..

If this fellow habbitually makes changes that
mess up the floppy drive, my suggestin is to
password protect his bios so he can't do it
any more. If he doesn't like it then tell him
not to call you with this petty little
problem any more.

P.S.
Write down the pass word but don't tell him
what it is.

this calls for one of those neat tricks to keep him from doing it again.
First of all you have to make sure that he is really messing with the hardware and waisting your time and once you clarify that then i suggest speaking to the network admin and have the network admin walk over to him and make up a story about how they have been seeing some computer hardware tampering activities coming from his computer on the network logs. that will stop him wherever he stands because he will get the feling that someone might be looking over whereas no-one gives a damn ha ha ha

You don't have a little problem, you have a big one. He likes you!! He is like a boy in the seventh grade. Is it you job to fix his problem on the computer? Try this have him fix your problem and your problem is harrassment. Ask him what he would do in your position? Then, ask your boss in front of him about the company policy of harrassment. But, dont call names at that time, tell your boss if it keeps up then you need to talk to him in details. What he is doing is against the law.

Situation :
1) That joker got hell lots of time on his hand.
2) That joker only knows how to use cheap tricks to tamper the floopy disk drive and actually thinks he is very good at it.
3) He probably plays more on the Floppy disk drive than usingit.
4) He likes to see that kind of 'defeated' face on you.

Solution : Play according to his plan and get 'defeated'.

Plug out and keep his Floppy Disk Drive and state that how come it is screwing up most of the time if nobody is tampering it. Use Window Explorer and share out a Floppy Disk drive to him that resides on a CPU next to him.

In this case...he lose his toy and you emerge the winner with an extra Floppy Disk drive as a prize.

5mm.

....fixing it.

1. Start with paper documentation of the number of times you fix the drive and the types of problems you encounter. Compare this to other computers in the company to prove that the person is creating the problems. Report this to management, especially accounting.

2. Use a mini-recorder to catch a sample of him making fun of you. Then write up a complaint that goes to HR.

3. 'Innocently' remove the drive from his PC so you can do a 'complete analysis' of the hardware. Don't return it for a few months because you are doing detailed testing. Then deprioritize the testing.

4. Check around to see if others have related 'one-upmanship' problems with this person. If you find them, get together and document his tricks. Each trick means that he is giving himself more 'rope' for the 'hanging'. Then, politely, have the group present the evidence to management.