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[–] 177 points 2 months ago (6 children)

That takes me back to 2004

No Smoke, by unknown,

Tech: "Hello. How can I help you today?"

Customer: "There's smoke coming from the power supply on my computer."

Tech: "Sounds like you need a new power supply."

Customer: "No, I don't! I just need to change the startup files."

Tech: "Sir, what you describe is a faulty power supply. You need to replace it."

Customer: "No way! Someone told me that I just had to change the system startup files to fix the problem! All I need is for you to tell me the right command."

(Ten minutes later...)

Tech: "Well, we don’t normally tell our customers this, but there's an undocumented command that will fix the problem. Add the line "LOAD NOSMOKE.COM" at the end of the CONFIG.SYS file and everything should work fine."

(Five minutes later...)

Customer: "It didn’t work. The power supply is still smoking."

Tech: "Well, what version of Windows are you using?"

Customer: "Windows 98."

Tech: "Well, that's your problem. That version of Windows doesn't include NOSMOKE. You'll need to contact Microsoft and ask them for a patch."

(When nearly an hour had passed, the phone rang again...)

Customer: "I need a new power supply."

Tech: "How did you come to that conclusion?"

Customer: "Well, I called Microsoft and told the technician what you said, and he started asking me questions about the make of the power supply."

Tech: "What did he tell you?"

Customer: "He said my power supply is not compatible with NOSMOKE."

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  • [–] 46 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    That is way older that 2004. I first read that in the early 90s.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    TIL Win98 was out in the early '90s....

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago

    Meanwhile in 2003 I contacted our it department to report that one of the PCs in our area literally lit on fire. I had watched it with my own eyes, and the smoke was in the air. PSU go poof. The techs came, took a look at it, said yeah we see no problem, left and closed the ticket.

    So idiots are literally everywhere that's the moral of the story I guess.

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