The mystery of the “broken” monitor

Posted by RemotecontrolZR@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 44 comments

This happened at my office last week, and it’s one of those quick fixes that still makes you shake your head. A coworker opened a ticket saying their monitor had “suddenly gone black” and “completely stopped working.” They were panicked because they had a deadline and couldn’t do anything without it.

I headed over expecting a dead screen, a loose cable, or maybe a blown power brick. Everything looked fine. The power light was on, cables seated, no smoke. Then I noticed something odd: the on-screen display was still faintly visible. Out of curiosity, I tapped the “+” button on the front of the monitor. Instantly the brightness jumped from 0 back to normal and their “broken” monitor came back to life.

They swore up and down they’d “never touched anything,” but somehow every brightness setting had been turned all the way down. Five-minute fix, but they were amazed I “fixed it so fast.” Moments like this remind me why I love and hate tech support at the same time. Anyone else have those instant “tech hero” moments?

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benjymous@reddit

Is the - button at the bottom of the monitor (i.e. at desk level)?

If so, my guess would be the person has cleared their desk to work on something non-computery (or eat lunch), and shoved their keyboard against that - button while they made room.

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Dhaeron@reddit

Hah, that reminds of a situation when i worked in support like 20 years ago. We got a new monitor model as standard for replacements and new workstations, and the designers of the thing had decided for some unfathomable reason to put the power button in the centre on top of the monitor and put a small d-pad on the bottom right front to access the menu.

Now, this was when basic monitors were still CRT and 99% of CRT monitors had their power button in the bottom right front. Predictably, this resulted in endless calls to support because the monitors predictably didn't turn on when pressing the menu button instead of the power button. Fixing (most of) this required putting stickers on the top pointing out the power button location.

What the sticker somehow couldn't fix was the occasional case where someone'd go to a "monitor no work" call and find that the user had managed to push the d-pad all the way into the monitor casing, actually breaking the device.

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psychopompadour@reddit

We used HP's G2 thunderbolt docking stations for a while, and just Google those fuckers... they have an attractive design that looks like a nice sleek black cube, about 4" square. When you're looking at it, you might be thinking, "don't most docks have a power button on them someplace so you can turn everything connected to it on/off at once? But... I don't see any buttons on this thing, does it not have that function?" No, friend, it totally does. Some genius in design clearly thought that a normal power button would be ugly, so they decided to just make the entire top of the cube be the power button. You can just press on the top of your proudly-displayed HP cube dock, and the HP logo on top will light up if it is on, or go dark if it's off! No need for ugly obvious buttons with a power symbol on them that ruin the flow!

Honestly, I can see how some nerdy design engineer thought this was SO COOL, but unfortunately IRL users don't care about showing off their cool docking station technology, and many people see a small, featureless flat space on their desk as an excellent temporary resting place for a cup of coffee, a folder of papers, etc. Hey why did all my monitors and keyboard just turn off?? Is my dock broken?! Maybe it is turned off... hmm, I examined the whole cube, but there is no power button or switch anywhere, so I guess that's not it... I better call IT!

Sigh.

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thechervil@reddit

Actually that's pretty genius, if you think about it.
You don't want people stacking things on top of it anyway, so that helps to break that habit.

Should have been sold as a "feature" to the IT guys.

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RemotecontrolZR@reddit (OP)

Apologies for not indicating the brand and model. It is a Dell UltraSharp U2419H (the "+" and "-" are at the back panel.) Personally, that already happened to me multiple times with my old ASUS monitor.

joatmoa69@reddit

Hero moments? Every. Single. Day. Sometimes it's just as easy as showing up and it magically starts working again! 😆

AStrandedSailor@reddit

Often I called myself Chief Computer Scarer.

Assswordsmantetsuo@reddit

Splashtop fixes unrelated issues.

I always say it's because if the hardware doesn't comply, I'll take it apart and figure out WHY it's not working and once that machine is back online, they tell all the other networked machines the horrors of me disassembling them! 😆

This has shades of Crowley in it. I like it.

jonesnori@reddit

That works for auto mechanics, too.

Spent like an hour trying to figure out why the wifi adapter on a laptop has disappeared. Like totally gone from the device manager, etc as if there is no wifi NIC (I was remoted in via an ethernet connection). I was starting to wonder if the card had gone bad. ... I tried reinstalling the driver, manually updating both it and the bios, etc etc, all the things, nothing worked. Driving me insane. Then I had the bright idea to ask the user to press the fn and f5 (or whatever it is) keys, as that's the "turn wifi off/on" for that laptop keyboard. Wifi adapter immediately pops up.

In my defense, who the fuck designs a key (not a physical switch or anything, mind you, a KEY) that doesn't just turn off the wifi, IT COMPLETELY DISABLES THE ADAPTER LIKE IT DOESN'T EXIST?? (Hint: it rhymes with Hell.)

deeseearr@reddit

Well, the alternative is that you have a functional WiFi adapter, with up-to-date drivers, which is absolutely working in every testable way, but mysteriously cannot see a single network anywhere.

I've run into both situations and I can't say which one is worse

RoboDxy@reddit

Webcam of a laptop wasn’t working. I came over, checked it, and slid the webcam cover open. Got thanked sheepishly.

Warfieldarcher@reddit

Some of the laptops we've issued have camera shutters & the techs had a sweepstake as to when the first 'camera not working' ticket came in. I was miles out - it took 2 days! Fix was, go to laptop start camera software & slide shutter open!

In fairness to the users, sometimes the shutter slide is really really small and hard to see. On our newest dell laptops it looks like a tiny notch in the top of the trim over the camera hole (and the cover is on the inside of the lens, so it's not obvious there is one)... you have to know it's there to find it. Don't know what their designers were thinking.

wiggum_x@reddit

So. Many. Times. The service desk cannot solve the mystery of the non-working camera. They shift it to us, top-level support, and the first thing we ask is about the lens cover. The user slides it over and everything works again. Service desk just can never learn to check this.

Roffle, this happens to us too... I don't really mind, I am happy to have a few easy tickets among the miserable ones. I feel the same way when they send me "I just can't get this printer installed!" Have you tried using the correct driver and not just whatever windows has on hand? I hear that helps.

rhoduhhh@reddit

I had one time on service desk where I knew it was the cover, but the user wouldn't cooperate. I had 40 calls in the waiting queue (some system had shit the bed), so I went Ok fuck this I don't have time to argue with a user, made a ticket for the hardware team, said it was most likely the webcam cover (and put in the private notes section for IT that the user was being uncooperative and would not follow instructions), and sent it to them. Hardware team messaged me later saying it was the cover and "why didn't I troubleshoot it with the user", and that was when I realized people cannot fuckin' read. He also reached out to my boss, who told him to read the ticket notes next time, where I had detailed the issues with the user. :|

That's a classic! 😂

Cerus_Freedom@reddit

I got a ticket once, "Monitor looks weird." They couldn't really explain it, except the colors were off. I wander over to check it out, and immediately notice the monitor looks different from the one next to it. Colors were wrong, but not completely wrong. I couldn't make sense of it at first. As I was thinking, I was talking to the person and said, "It's almost like a color channel is missing. Wait a minute..."

I check the back, and sure enough, it's using VGA. It was literally missing the red channel. Swapped the cable and it went right back to normal. The cable had no obvious damage. It was just somehow getting bad contact on the pin carrying the red channel.

This is actually pretty common with old VGA cables! The clue is always that it's just R,G, or B that's out. It's odd to think about a cable "breaking" or just failing/wearing out when it hasn't been moved or anything but it happens! I guess maybe from the initial electrical flow when the device is turned on? Also happens with ethernet cables and other stuff where you're just like "but it's just a wire, how can a wire just go bad??"

The fun thing is when you tell someone to trash the bad cable, and someone comes along and is like "hey why is a perfectly good ethernet cable in the trash, I will save it and put it back in the spare cable box where it obviously belongs!" Then a year later, you're like "hey, i thought I we threw away that old yellow cat3 ethernet cable that makes printers stop working..."

ac8jo@reddit

I saw something like this at a university back in the late 90s - my professor (in architecture) had all his slides green. I casually walked up and onto the stage and pushed one of the VGA plugs tighter, causing the colors to return to normal.

PumpkinCrouton@reddit

Fixed a few with ID 10 T error in the log. Of course it works better telling someone else about it since reading it makes it more obvious. Thus some of my logs had the problems as "loose nut behind keyboard"

New-Assumption-3106@reddit

Back in the day, when we had CRT monitors, I walked onto a client site and as I passed theough Accounts I could see an issue with one of the clerk's screens. She spotted me and said "Why's everything pink". Without breaking stride I tapped the degauss button & "fixed" it. She was amazed!

redhairarcher@reddit

Removing some magnets from nearby the crt monitor also helps with weird colors.

dog2k@reddit

yup, had a co-worker replace 2 crt monitors before noticing the big PA speakers sitting on the table JUST behind them. I also recall the days of our desk speakers pre-announcing incoming cell calls. good times.

fried_clams@reddit

Yeah! I remember that. Boy, that was a buried memory.

anubisviech@reddit

I had unshielded speakers next to mine for years. The tint never fully vanished even after removing them. Degauss button did nothing. I'm pretty sure there were metal parts inside that were magnetized over time.

number__ten@reddit

I had this happen with a work laptop once. I thought my backlight had died and was freaking out a bit. Somehow must have hit a keyboard combo that turned brightness instantly to the lowest setting.

Bubbly-Confidence724@reddit

I have been working support in some capacity for 10+ years and this is a reoccurring thing. My personal theory is that there is a gremlin who specializes in dimming monitors.

I'm not kidding. It's happened to me and I know I didn't do it.

SpecialCoconut1@reddit

Reminds me of the time I attended a regional unit complaining of no audio on the dispatch radio - root cause, volume knob turned all the way down

Roguefem-76@reddit

There is one type of printer my company supports that can print on several different types of cardstock as well as paper.

These poor undertrained operators will call, sometimes near to tears in frustration because they have the order onscreen, the printer is in Ready and loaded with the right paper, there's no error message, but it Just. Won't. Print!

They call me, I tell them to set the paper drawer dial to the correct paper type, and ta-da, it starts printing. You're welcome, and yes I am a genius, glad you noticed. 😆

good-little-endian@reddit

Classic attempt to blame "computer problems" for missing a deadline imo.

snootnoots@reddit

I may be a cynical beeyotch, but that sounds awfully like “Gosh boss, I was on track to meet the deadline but something went wrong with my computer and I couldn’t finish in time! Terribly sorry, not my fault, guess I need an extension.”

fallguy25@reddit

What i was thinking too lol

This reminds so much of the marketing manager during the GFC (when money was tight). Complains to me that her monitor was dark and the colours were funny and she has already found one online for me to buy. Of course, it was bigger but she already had the biggest, highest definition monitor in the office as she had to do graphics work. She clearly expects me just to her bidding. NOPE! I have to check the monitor first. Menu -> Reset to Default Settings.

Lord, it's a miracle! My humble touch has restored the monitor to full working glory!

She, of course, says it must have " just happened by itself or by accident". Except that I knew that on that monitor, it would have needed to change at least one of the brightness or contrast settings AND at least one of the individual RGB settings, and the individual RGB colours were on the third tier of the monitor's menu.

A week later she tried to convince the boss that her 2.5 year old monitor just wasn't up to scratch and that she deserved a new one because it was acting funny. The boss came to me for more information.

She did not get a new monitor. Instead I got angry glares from her. Meh

I had a similar user...she had a laptop and two monitors connected to a dock. She used her laptop as a third monitor but "It's too small"...she wanted a third 24" monitor. I repeatedly told her no. She wasn't happy with me, but I know how this goes. "If SHE can have three monitors, why can't /I/ have three monitors?!?" Same thing happened when someone got TWO monitors years ago. Sorry...not happening!

God yes. They never seems to understand that someone else is getting a new computer because it is 2 years older or has actually died.

Monitors were a different problem in this business (aside from the aforementioned marketing manager). First, in the 4:3/desktop days, I had to basically force people into upgrading to dual 17 inch monitors from a single. Then later, once every body had moved to laptops with a single 17 inch plugged into the laptop, they didn't want to upgrade to a dock with dual 24 inch monitors. I ended up upgrading my own setup only and then once people had seen how well that worked , they started coming to beg for the upgrade. Aside from the accounting team, who seems to think upgrading the monitors would affect the software that connected them to the Australian Tax Office.

ARRRGGGGHHHH!!!

Merkuri22@reddit

One of my jobs back in college was to check all the machines in the computer lab. Basically just sit down at each one, log in, make sure the mouse is working, can get internet, etc.

These were desktops and CRTs set BELOW the desk. The desk had a glass top so you could see the monitor below it, tipped at an angle.

I can't tell you how many times I came upon a system where the monitor was black and I was able to fix it by just pushing in the power cable. I suspect these CRTs got kicked on a regular basis, and the constant jostling worked the cable loose enough that it lost contact.

And I can't tell you how many of these still had a student logged into it. As soon as the monitor blacked out, they assumed the whole system was kaput and moved. Left their work open, their network share available to anyone who walked by and decided to push in a cable.

DiligentCockroach700@reddit

I had the same thing but at a remote office that involved me driving 50 miles to turn up the brightness control on a monitor.

AppIdentityGuy@reddit

The classic one is "All my mail has vanished" & filter has been set to "Unread mail only"

frodo8619@reddit

Back in the days of the first generations of iPod I was working the electrical sales desk at the supermarket. Many times people would turn up to return their defective 'quiet' iPods. It was always the volume limiter set too low.

xFayeFaye@reddit

I'm now terrified I RMA'd mine for similar reasons. Was the "brightness level" pop up showing when you hit the + button? Because my monitor "broke" as well, backlight still on, is still recognized by PC but doesn't show anything (also no "no signal" pop up for example) :D