This lady upstairs called me and said that her computer was “making this crazy noise.” I can actually hear the noise over the phone and it sounds like a loud CPU fan (but it would have to be super loud to be heard over the phone). I connect to the machine via dameware and the noise stops completely.
She says she has an email that keeps opening on her every time she closes it, but I am able to close it.. nothing happens. I tell her to call me back if it happens again. Not even two seconds later she calls me back and tells me she DIDN’T DO ANYTHING and it just started up again.
I can hear the noise over the phone and the email is open again.
I connect once again and the noise stops and I log her out and I can see the little black and white instruction animation telling you how to press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to log in to Windows, but it’s flickering.
Lightbulb.
I ask her “is there anything on your keyboard?”
She says “Wha? No… Ohhhh.. yeah. I’m sorry.”
She had a stack of papers on resting on the Enter key on the keypad. It was making the low clicking noise from the key being held down ad nauseum (I am used to the higher-pitched beep which I would have recognized more easily over the phone), it was re-opening the selected email in Outlook every time she closed it and, because my Dameware is configured to lock her keyboard when I connect, it wasn’t affecting anything once I connected.
Being able to laugh at stuff like that sometimes makes things like that happening worth it.
So true.
Weird that I pictured a little old lady in an apartment building my initial time reading? I refuse to believe that people should have a working knowledge of computers.