standing on the shoulders of giants

Learning from DenverCoder9

FTFY ;)

Isn’t that also how everyone found out about porn

Except those applications with long ass error codes that don't let you copy and paste from the window so you're forced to type it manually.. -_-

Our 1st line team (I'm 2nd) have good Googling skills but no permissions to really fix anything beyond passwords and bitlocker keys.

It's cool, they'll still never do it.

On mine (W10) it doesn't work. This is only applicable if you have at least two monitors.

Then you go ahead and eat the rest of your crayons.

Punch it

Also just F4 on my computer

Fn + F8 on mine!

This exact command saved me once, when a screen cracked and we wanted to login to the computer using a second monitor (but the second screen was set as extended rather than duplicate)

Why would you need two monitors?

On my Lenovo work laptop there is an Fn-key for this, and it has a picture of a projector on it.

Nice! Thanks for the tip.

How many moms have dual monitors?

You have an interesting dilemma and I'm honestly struggling to think of a solution. You almost need picture in picture functionality to see what's happening on your out of sight monitor.

The only possible "solution" I could think of would be to somehow live stream the content of the second monitor (TV), and bring up the stream on your personal monitor to guide you when you need to make a change on the TV. Disclaimer: I haven't tested this and it would likely be very clunky.

Good luck.

The cheapest way I can think of is to use a HDMI signal duplicating box; one wire in from the computer, one out to the TV, and one out to the monitor you are using. Then just switch inputs on the monitor you are facing. basically you'll have two signal inputs to the monitor and you can set Windows as extended views.

Doesn't have to be HDMI, I'm sure it exists for VGA or DVI too.

1° you can make the secondary display your main display. Make a right click on the desktop and go to "screen resolution". Then select your secondary monitor (TV), you should have a checkbox to make it the main monitor. Of course if you unplug the TV your laptop will become the one and only monitor, but this setting will be saved if you plug back the TV.

2° Maybe use something like Chromecast to cast to the TV? Not limited to Youtube but you'll need the Chromecast dongle (~35$).

Get a third monitor that is in your line of sight that displays what the TV is currently displaying. So you would work on monitor 1 then mirror monitor 2 & 3

Yeah some laptops have a dedicated key for that too

It's on the underside just underneath your hard drive cover

I don't know about that, but I' d say no. I remember reading something about output priority being defined on the ROM of the card, and that HDMI was always prioritized over DVI or DisplayPort 'unless you had an OS running that could handle that). Maybe run your TV output though DVI with a DVI>HDMI adapter? You might have sound problems though.

There are many use cases for duplicating monitors. Projecting/displaying what you're also looking at is one of them.

No fancy key combination for .cashbackbonus? Laaaaame.

This is the part I always wondered

I read shit for net, while on the toilet. Im helping.

shift didn't work for .net, nor did ctrl + shift for .org

This isn't working for me, how do you do it?

In Firefox only, iirc

/u/bloodknife92

I thought this was you for a second, until i realised you'd be using a full paragraph to explain it :P

Or you can type it out with the split fucking millisecond it takes to type .com

you can hit 4 letters faster than you can hit 1?

I was thinking that, haven't typed that in years.

You still need to type .com though

Depends on the site. If www and the root of the domain don't point to the same server, you for sure need it.

Same here, most of the sites I use are the biggest ones. So for Amazon I type "A" press enter and the first result is amazon. YouTube = "y" plus enter etc etc.

Most websites don't even need the www. beforehand. The only one that I can remember giving me an error in the past 10 years was my high school's website.

Why are you still typing in www? I don't think I've done that once since I stopped using Netscape on Windows 98.

This may be the most useful tip I've seen. So much less cropping finally when you just want one little window, not ten monitors.

Also, with the Snipping Tool you can pre-crop anything on the screen into a jpg file. I use it all the time.

Ctrl printscreen for the active screen if you have multiple ones.

I did alt+prntscr but was not stored in screenshots folder. where is it saved in windows 10?

This little trick has friends at work thinking I'm some sort of computer genius.

Oh man, this one is huge. I always hit print screen and have to crop because of dual monitors.

so good

Or snipping tool

And CTRL V to paste it into an accommodating program, like Word.

"Screen clipping" on command ribbon in Office programs has also made my life easier when sending emails. No need to crop! Just click and drag ☺

Greenshot lets you take any type of screenshot you can imagine, with different customizable hot keys for each.

I can't upvote this enough. My CS professor always requires us to screenshot shit and since I have dual monitors I always just went in and cropped it and all that mess. This is will save me so. much. time. Thank you <3

Holy shit thank you

I just use the snipping tool in windows anymore. I rarely want a full window screenshot of anything.

damn I'm still a noob using the prt screen button and pasting the pic somwhere else LOL you saved me

Anyone using the screen clipper tool? Or one notes screenshot tool? U have to have one note set up but I find this to be the most useful screen clipper tool. Win+S

Windows+PrintScreen Autosaves a fullscreen screenshot in the folder Screenshots in your pictures folder.

Don't have a Windows machine at hand right away so not sure if it combined with alt or not. Will try to remember to test and edit this comment.

Also, win+prtscr saves the screenshot as a png, rather than just copying it to the clip board, cutting out the middleman of having to paste it into e.g. paint and save. Default saves it to pictures\screenshots

Holy shit you've literally shaved hours off some of my workflows. Why wasn't I told this at University?!

And shift + alt + print takes a screen shot of the active dialogue box / application. Great for just screen shooting error messages

Snipping tool is a great thing too

Ty!!!

Windows+shift+s let's you open a tool like sniping tool. (you have to open onenote once for this to work)

Oh shit, something I knew that isn't CTRL C/V!

Thanks Programming I. (Why did I learn this in a programming course? Fuck if I remember, but it's more useful than Python so far.)

I realize this kind of goes against the point of sharing tips that apply to everyone, but I just want to say that if you take screenshots frequently and do a lot of annotation, SnagIt is 1000% worth it's price.

Also, if you're just trying to share a screenshot, you don't need some app. Just use whatever printscreen shortcut your system uses, go to imgur, and use whatever paste shortcut your system uses. Uploads your screenshot ready to share.

Also for multi screen users, ctrl + alt + print screen will capture the entire screen where the cursor is active

That doesn’t seem to work for me? I press it but then it doesn’t show up in my photos folder or camera roll or screenshots. The only thing it does work in is overwatch

I love you

... Thank you kind sir.

I love you.

Thank. You. So. Much.

Tired of Fn + F8 and closing down my other monitor or using the snipping tool.

while we're at screenshots, check out sharex

So helpful, thanks

Edit: Just used this tip

Yeah snipping tool is great. Windows+Shift+S skips straight to snipping tool area selection and then puts the selected areas on your clip board.

Edit: above instructions are for Windows 10. Use Ctrl+Shift+S for Windows 7.

I use AutoHotKey to remap the PrintScreen button to the Sniping tool. Super easy.

The snipping tool was actually introduced in either Vista or 7. I think 7.

Snipping tool is on 7 and I use it all the damn time.

Delayed? So is this how I will finally be able to display the options in drop-downs without doing printscrn

Snipping Tool is the best thing Microsoft have done in years.

Program called "Lightshot" replaces this with the ability to auto upload it and give you a link as well. I freaking love it, a lot of IT security guys hate it because of idiots who upload sensitive stuff, that's the end user just being stupid though.

Weirdly, I use the snipping tool every day at work. I've always thought it was a neat little feature but now it's indispensible to me.

The delay is huge for me because I'm usually trying to get a snapshot of a user-interface element in action, which I can't get without the delay.

Snipping tool is standard on earlier versions, too.

Also included in Windows 7.

This is different than the built in snipping tool, but very similiar.

Screw the snipping tool. ShareX is one of my favourite pieces of software. It not only makes pixel perfect snipping easier than anything else, but you can also do videos, gifs, automatic upload, and custom hot keys.

I love the Snipping Tool and I make very regular use of it to streamline daily processes but I had no idea about this:

also can do a delayed screen shot

Care to enlighten me as I'm not seeing it after a quick peek through the Snipping Tool and it's options windows.

It's also available in Win 7 and Vista (as well as Win 8, I presume).

Oh shit! I didn't know they added a Delay feature to the Snipping Tool. That's awesome! I've used it a ton but never noticed that option.

I had to make my husband (IT) figure out how the hell I could do this on a mac I was soooo annoyed that I couldn't find it when I switched over. As a teacher its the best bloody tool ever!

I'm using ShareX for mainly sharing stuff like this, it's still superior due to automatic uploading etc but I really like Windows having a basic version for it!

snipping tool is my jam

Snipping tool FTW!

As a quasi IT support person, it is so much easier than doing full screen grabs and editing. Like the camera in a phone, I find that the convenience causes me to use more screen shots and provide better support.

The tool also includes a highlighter and pens, so you can do low brow editing. It’s the little things that mean a lot.

Snipping tool is in win7 too for those like me who refuse to upgrade

I realize some people can't do this due to restrictions on their computer, but I would recommend people download Greenshot. Or if you are OK with spending some money, Snagit.

Snipping tool is fine if you have no other options, but sucks if you're used to "real" screenshot tools.

Did you know you can INSERT -> screenshot in a new outlook mail. It's even faster when mailing them

Snipping tool sucks.

ShareX is better.

Snipping tool has been in windows since like XP

I use snipping tool a lot, but in cases where I need to capture something in like a dropdown list for documentation purposes, I can't

BEST invention ever!!! The snipping tool has saved me time and time again.

Just curious, but can anyone give me an example of when you would ever use a delay-timer on a screenshot?

[deleted]

But I wish you could have it go straight to the desktop like the Mac version. Its so much handier.

For older Windows versions, you can press windows key, type "snip" and select Snipping Tool. Much better than the Ink Workplace from winkey+w IMO.

Yes

Windows + s works for older versions as long as you have One Note installed and have gone through the first time startup menus.

Don't believe so. Think this works back to xp.

I use Windows + S but I have Windows 7 and the OneNote assistant on. Copies straight to the clipboard

I was on Win7 too.

It is available from 7 upward

If you install OneNote, Windows+S does the same thing on other versions

7 and above

Nah I have it in my 7 machine at work

Windows 10 here, did not work. :(

I use Win+N, S to use the OneNote snipper

i just did by accident

More like one tab in a sea of many.

One more: alt-printscreen to just print the current window. I used that all the time at my previous job.

There's a program called puush that screenshots sizes based on the keys you push (including an option that you decide by dragging with the mouse) and uploads to a personal cloud instantly. Also it's free and you can get an app on your phone for it as well.

Came here to say this. I've gotten almost all the guys in my IS department using this instead of the built in "snippy".

Ctrl-printscreen (configurable) -> select a region with the mouse -> wait 2 seconds -> uploaded to imgur and link copied to my clipboard, ready to paste.

Literally couldn't be easier.

There's about 15 image host choices & you also have the option to just copy the image itself to your clipboard, which you can paste into discord or an image editor (although sharex does have its own image editor which is good for adding text, lines, doodles, arrows). Also does screen recordings (to gifs or to video files)

It's seriously amazing

Command + Opt + Shift + 3 for full screen.

Thank you!!!! Where does it go?

Alt + PrtScn captures the active window to your clipboard (for you to paste into Paint).

Win + PrtScn captures your entire desktop into Pictures\Screenshots.

That's actually a pretty clever way to scam people. I always wonder what they do with your card details once they get them though. Seems like it'd be pretty hard to use it for something that wouldn't be traceable back to you.

I used to work for a hotel and we had two civil suites filed against us by guests, and plenty others complain to us for "allowing their information to be stolen" when they did exactly what you described. They gave the information out, not us. We have signs in the rooms and lobby explaining we will never call and ask for details about your payment/address/room number. That's always handled at the desk. We specifically describe what these scammers are attempting to do. Never give anyone that calls you your information. If that happens, hang up and call the lobby and ask if it was them. They will almost always say it was not.

Side note: you should always hang up and call the number you know to be correct for anyone calling for information. This goes for hotels, banks, or anyone else who has your information!

Plot twist: It was the front desk clerk.

I work for a hotel chain (currently working.) This is common enough of a scam in the industry we're taught how to detect it when people call in. My hotel (i assume others to) have to be connected to a outside line manually, meaning a outside number can't call your room directly. It used to be if someone called asking for room x, front desk reps would transfer you to room x. Now because of this, we have to ask who is in room x before we transfer, and we may even get your info and run it by the guest before we transfer. It's a shame we have to worry about "fishing" scams like this but sadly we do. I am sorry that had happened to you

Were you connected to the hotels open wifi?

Happened to my sister when we were in KY. The called the front desk and asked for the "Joneses." Front desk put them through to her. She did the same thing. This was 3 years ago.

I just read up on this on Snopes recently. https://www.snopes.com/fraud/phishing/hotel.asp

Whenever they say confirm I always expect to get a read of the information first.

At that point I would confirm it.

How did he know you were in the hotel? Did the room have a phone?

God, that makes me want to throw up. Mainly because I would totally fall for that.

I started a small business, in order to be able to do some odd-jobs here and there, and have everything be above board tax wise. The morning after I registered myself, I got a call from someone I thought was the official registry you sign up with, regarding how my page wasn't up yet, and if i wanted exposure on their page, that would cost some money. I was too tired and out of it to understand who I was talking with, and it sounded okay, so I agreed. Then when I was a bit more awake I was like.. hang on, this is a recurring payment every 3 months for quite a bit of money, and it's not who I thought it was. Luckily we have a 14 day grace period where we can annul these types of deals, so I'll just do that...

...except it only applies to persons, and not companies, as I found out a bit too late.

Still managed to get out of it eventually, but I did get fleeced a bit.

I think it might be the only scam I ever fell for.

Oh jeez, I like to think I'm smart but I might have actually fallen for that, especially at 5AM. That's a damn good scam.

I honestly don't know that I wouldn't have. I probably would have gone "??? why 5AM??" but I don't think it would've hit me either...

Either a shoddy hotel or an employee is involved.

Did the caller address you by name?

Decent hotels should not allow direct indial or any sort of way to call a main number then get a directory or try an extension without talking to an operator.

The only way to call a room should be to call the hotel and then provide the operator the name of a guest for them to connect the room.

Was this a chain hotel?

Wait, how the hell did the scammer know what hotel you were staying in at that exact moment? Somehow got the number you gave the hotel? Sounds like it actually could've been the hotel behind it like another commenter joked...

I had a co-worker who had four very small footprint VM images on his virtualbox. When he'd get these, he'd boot the Win7 one up. (newest at the time) . let them do their thing, when they'd say reboot, he'd close the vm (restore to snapshot) and open up an /OLDER/ copy of windows and let them back in. (Going from 7->XP->Vista->98->ME->95) and move his way through them basically fucking with them the whole time.

I had a boss get that same bullshit call while we were at work in a meeting. Started talking (Some other language) at them. Basically ended with "You have brought dishonor onto your family" in a less polite way.

It's great right? I did this while my officemates crowded around we had a really good time.

couldn't find my own desktop

Sir I can't find my own computer can you help me locate it? Hahaha

I love doing this! It wastes their time so they can't fuck-over somone who can't use computers.

I do this all the time. And pretend I'm following all the instructions. When it gets near the end and they ask me what it says on the screen, I tell them it says "this is a scam". That usually gets them to hang up. The way I see it, the longer they're talking to me, the less time they have to talk to people who may fall for the scam.

There's a twitch channel where the owner does this for a living and it gets hilarious at times considering he uses voice-changers.

Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga

Some highlights: https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga/clips

I've done the exact same thing. Finally I just got tired of the charade and said "I put this PC together myself and none of those brands you've mentioned have anything to do with my computer."

I've done something similar in the past, I could barely contain my laugh when he told me to look for "my computer", i told him I found it and that I'm looking at it. He told me to click, and I was "how can I click on my computer, if it's an object?" He didn't cope on that I was talking about the physical thing and told me to use my mouse, I said that I was but there is nothing happening. He then told me to press the "windows button" on my keyboard. When I said I don't have one he kept on asking me to look for it. Then after a while he gave up and passed me to his "colleague" who assumed I had a Mac...I toyed with them for 30 more mins and then told them that I'm an IT student, they hung up so quick.

Why, do I have the right subreddit for you...

r/talesfromtechsupport

Edit: Punctuation

Did something similar when I was younger. They rang my mum answered and said oh ill give you to my son he knows what's up, this then lead me to stalling them for about 40 minutes because I was "fixing something in the roof and couldn't get down the ladder" then I eventually had them stumbling over which computer it was we had 4 at the time. After about an hour he popped me over to his supervisor who promptly told me I was stupid and had no life and then they hung up

In my office we have an ongoing competition, you put it on speaker phone and then see how long you can keep them on the phone.

Being that these guys are dumb and just following a process that they've been taught and don't actually know what they're talking about, is there a way for someone like yourself to take control of their computer?

You: "I tried doing what you asked but my computer is reporting that 'remote access computer needs to set XYZ protocol to 0'"

then they change the setting giving you access. Or is it a linear kind of deal where you would have to attempt to access their computer in the same manner as they are yours?

There's a YouTube video floating around of a guy who manages to get the guy calling in to basically brick their computer by setting a BIOS password they didn't write down.

I'm friends with a swat officer and he taught me a fun trick. When someone calls him and he has no clue who it is he answers with "county fraud unit" and I've never seen someone disconnect from the line so quickly.

I asked help with my keyboard, and the scammer tried to help me. He told me to unplug it and restart the computer, so I did. He forgot to tell me to plug it back in when it turned on, though, so then my keyboard didn't work and I couldn't get his virus

It really is awesome, I love it! Always a blast.

pretending I didn't know the difference between macos and windows

Oh I'm amazed how many callers I get who legitimately don't know the difference, every now and then we get to the point where we have to ask if there's an Apple logo, or a Dell, or HP on the side of the computer.

I managed to keep one on for about 45 minutes a while back. I was working on my Chromebook/Linux at the time, but I quickly Googled a published story about someone else managing to keep them on the phone for a while and played along. 30 minutes in and I left for lunch with the guy still on the phone, playing along with it - he didn't even notice I got in my car and started driving.

My coworker told me about a similar story. His mom got a call and she decided to screw with the guy, then she handed the phone to him and he started screwing with him too. After a while the guy figured it out and said with a thick Indian accent "Sir... You are a mother fucker."

When I worked IT for a hotel chain, I would often have people calling in because they could not power their computer on because it was unplugged or plugged into a lightswitch that shut it off and on.

There was no bottom to how far stupidity could go.

If I were willing to be evil, it would be very easy to take advantage of people.

I did the same thing, and after a while I finally said "actually it's not going to work because I have a Mac" and the woman said "why you waste my time stupid man" and ended the call.

The last time I got this call I had ten minutes to burn outside waiting for some friends to see a movie. Needless to say I spent a little more than that time running this guy through a loop. I will never forget the earfull I got from that guy when he finally gave up.

This is my favourite too. I feel like it's my moral duty to waste as much of these scammers' time as possible.

Last time I had a scammer on the phone I did the same, kept him busy for a while until he started to realize I was fucking with him.

Then I asked what his parents think about the fact that out of all his family, he's the one piece of shit who can't be bothered to get a real job. I asked if his family was so shamed by him that they disowned him.

He also hung up.

I've been IT tech for the past 25 years. I would have turned it around and remoted into their PC and had a fun time.

Just did this yesterday! "Do you use Mac or Windows?"

"Yes."

"Which one, is it Mac or Windows?"

"That one, Mackor Windows."

Wasted at least a half an hour of the guy's time until he got me to the event viewer so he could tell me he found errors. Then I had to give up and I called him a filthy animal who preys on the elderly. There may have been a seven-letter adjective between "Filthy" and "Animal".

I too have fucked with them. Coincidentally got a call while I was setting up a VM box for virus testing. After making a freeze state and infesting with a keylogger and some file share capable ransomware, I followed his steps.

Sadly, we didn't get past him asking for some credit card and personal information before remoting in.

I was messing with a guy and he got super stern with me. He said “do you know who I am? I am not your friend. I am an IT professional.”

This is when I told him that I couldn’t get to my command prompt because another porn pop up blocked the start button.

Then he started yelling at me a bit later and yelled “you, sir, are a problem!”

I felt good. Because that was 15 minutes he wasn’t scamming someone else.

Last IT Scammer that called me tried to show me eventlogs and get control of my PC but nothing seemed to work. After half an hour he asked what operating system I was using, since I was still playing dumb I told him that I was using Microsoft Ubuntu, he got furious...

Tell scammer you need a second. Call your local Chinese restaurant. Merge the calls. Sit back and enjoy the confusion.

People who enjoyed reading this may enjoy this guys stream twitch.tv/kitboga he basically livestreams your comment and its hilarious

I don't think words can comprehend how dissapointed the scammer was

i really wish there was some strategy that could be created to get these people to incriminate themselves via pretending to be naive and tricking them into falling for some form of bait, i.e. hand over to them your "credit card number" but have it function as a red flag that somehow sends some of their identifying information to authorities, etc.

i would take so much joy in getting scumbags like that caught.

I lead one of them on for minutes before as well, right up until after he had me install teamviewer and said he couldn't connect to my PC... I then revealed I knew what I was doing and had a fuck you from him, followed by a 5 minute shouting match between him and me and many f bombs being shared, and ended with me telling him how I fucked his parents and his siblings and his wife etc, all very hilarious especially with his less than average English language skills. I also know many insults from some Indian friends which helped.

My fiancé has done pretty much the same thing. He pretended to not know what the start menu was and put them on hold several times.

I once did the same thing...not quite to the extent you did as I'm not quite that computer savvy. But I kept this guy on the phone for as long as I could. He finally caught on, said "F*ck you" and hung up.

You should have told him you were a stock broker so he'd continue trying to land Moby Dick.

There is a streamer on twitch who's only goal is to fuck with these MS support scammers. He comes up with some pretty comical stuff sometimes.

Oh god yes, I do this every time, various accents are a must.

I'm dying for one of these calls. I've gotten the IRS Scam call and it was alot of fun.

I did the same :D. She got frustrated to the point where she told me to pick up my computer and throw it out the window to fix my problem. I was so pleased.

I just tell them to fuck off.

They called my shop on a Saturday when I was working. I ran through the whole thing and he said they would need to show me where to delete some files. I asked if taking a hammer to the HDD would work and he still didn't catch on. I finally told him I wasn't at the computer at that moment. He said just call back on the number and I was like what number (they usually spoof the caller id) He said use the number that shows up and I said I don't have caller id. He just said "then don't call back asshole." My coworker was listening the whole time and was losing it. And the best part is our phones record all calls so we have a nice memento.

Do you work in Michigan because one of my engineers has the exact same story and I heard it this morning, although I’m sure this isn’t entirely uncommon.

Did something similar with a call from India. I even played the XP boot up sound while I explained that I had to turn my computer on. Lots of fun!

I did something similar. I pretended to be an idiot. He'd talk about the mouse and I'd tell him I don't have mice in my house. He'd talking about opening a window and I'd complain about all the snow it was letting into my house, and can he help me get the snow out etc. He got mad super mad and called me an idiot before hanging up. 10/10 would do it again.

You should search for James Veitch on YouTube. He loves getting emails like this and egging them on for as long as possible

Mate of mine uses OSX exclusively. "Microsoft" calls him. Proceeds to lead them on a merry ride for about an hour before they finally hung up.

god these are the best

I just pretended to be confused when they asked me to switch my computer on. I couldn't find a switch. Since apparently they didn't know the word "button" we were at an impasse until they got frustrated and hung up.

I did this once! The guys told me to go fuck myself before hanging up. This was at work too, so I foot paid for I️t.

i spent 20 mins trying to pretend not to know where the start button was on windows. after a while, i told him i was running dos and was not connected to the internet and thus, was confused as to why my computer was putting out viruses. he connected me to his boss, who I gave a tongue lashing to. told him his mother would be ashamed of him.

also, the first guy told me he worked for windows. i said to him "If you actually worked for MS, you'd know that Windows is a piece of software and not a company. you work for MS, right...? after a bit of a pause, he said "riiight...." It was hilarious. I outed him and he still kept trying to get me to download his shit.

Those Reply All episodes are amazing. Amazing!!!

“How could this guy work in IT if he’s that fucking stupid?”

NSA is always the answer to that kind of question from scammers.

I had one of those. The best part was in the end when they accused me of lying to them!

I was... but I wasn't about to install the random software they were pointing me at. (turned out to be a remote desktop style app; no surprise there.)

I did the same thing to a scammer that tried it on me also acting senile and forgetting stuff he told me continuously forcing him to constantly repeat steps. My favorite part was, while he was trying to get me to download the program, I pretended to be concerned that the viruses were going to clog up the internet hose and was going to stop their program from entering the computer so I unplugged it so I could shake the viruses out of it. Eventually got them to rage quit when, after about an hour had passed, they requested I hit the button on my computer to confirm the installation of the program and I hit the power button on the front of the computer instead.

I do the same! After about 10 to 15 of not finding anything I ask does it matter I am using Linux? Hang up every time.

Last time I did this, the woman eventually accused me of wasting her time.

18 minutes is my max.

Please say you recorded yours! As I recorded mine 😆 Same sort of thing but an Indian company keeping them for 30 mins! Hope that cost them

This is alot more fun as an engineer, trust me. You are in for a treat.

Once told a help desk tech on the phone that I had my default gateway set to ::1 for the last 6 months and it has made my internet faster, but now it doesn't work. They then proceeded to try and explain that it should work just fine. I was on mute laughing my ass off, borderline crying.

Call me a dick, but that prank was funny as shit.

Then there was the time that i told them my Routers ACL had blacklisted my providers ASN number due to a incorrect route leak that DDoS'd the WAN in my area (statement makes absolutely no sense) and they just told me to hangup because they couldn't solve my problem lol.

Put them in a shitty Windows 95 sandbox environment for fun

My favorite story about these spam calls was someone on a Linux distro who played along with the "Microsoft" people, and wasted an hour of their time

I did this too, and recorded it, was great fun.

I also work in IT. We actually got them connected to a junk VM on a co-workers home network. We would watch them work, but undo each step they made from another RDP session. The dude got so confused and frustrated that he told us we needed to call a local IT company because our shits so jacked up he can't help. It was a good 45min messing with this guy.

I set up a vm just for them.

Mr. Maxwell, why do you have a virtual machine with horse people fucking as your wallpaper?

Check out Kitboga on twitch. He has a virtual machine which he uses to call ms support scammers. It's very entertaining to watch him play dumb for an hour.

I fuck with telemarketers like this all the time. There are even tutorials online about how to do it. If they're going to try to rip me off, they deserve whatever they get.

Funny story time. My father worked for a software company in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. He did a little tech support with commercial accounts. He had a guy call in, and ask for assistance. After trying a few things, he had him uninstall the software to re-install. He asked the gentleman to pop out his CD-ROM and place the disk in there. The following conversation ensued:

Customer - “The what?”

Father - “ Your CD-ROM, sir.”

Customer - “What is that?”

Father - “The tray that comes out for you to insert a CD on to.”

Customer - “Oh, you mean my coffee holder!”

Oh Jesus....

Am I the only one that finds this really tiresome? People seem to think it's the most hilarious thing in the world that they just wasted some guys time for an hour, but here's the thing, you wasted your own time for an hour too. Just hang up

Oh shit I forgot about zip bombs. Roommate hasn’t paid rent I’m going in

4.5 Penta Bloops?

How would you do that?

ELI5 style please?

Back when cryptowall was fairly new a coworker had a zip file that when extracted infected with cryptowall. He renamed it something along the lines of banking passwords and let them in. He said they file transferred it but he never knew if they extracted it.

How did that stop the scammer and how do you create a Windows like that? Asking for a friend.

So MS can remote into anything using their OS...?

Note to self: improve script to work on older keyboards

They fucking prey on older folks who just don't get it. Scum.

Isn’t the real tech support full of people with bad English though? I’d be more concerned if some guy came on speaking perfect English

Only if you have the time for it or there isn't something to watch on the TV.

Of course she blames your games. My mom used to be the worst for that. But she thought Weatherbug was perfectly fine.

PERFECT waste of scum's time. I applaud you

Usually the home line comes free with a cable bundle these days and if your landline phone still works, why not. I threw mine away awhile ago when it broke.

An hour or two?

Well, they actually ask victims to go to a website and download a program that lets them take control of their computer to "fix" it.

Why? That's like blindly letting a person into yoyr home who just knocks on your door saying, "I'm with the security company who built your locks. Can I case the joint?"

I don't think about that I just get mad when my OS breaks and promise myself that this time I'll make backup images and all that fancy stuff.

Then I start playing video games immediately and never bother.

Also use www.ninite.com to get started quickly.

ninite is super handy for installing all the apps you need after a fresh install.

Next time, go to this site, it's a dream.

Or what I've done as of a few years ago is to use portable versions of apps for nearly everything, browsers, etc. It's all in one folder, and can easily be moved to a flash USB drive to move over to another computer. All your history, bookmarks etc will be there as if you never switched computers.

portableapps.com is what you want for that!

Use ninite (Google is your friend) for quick access to several commonly used applications, all in one installer

The multi-partition is not a problem, Clonezilla clones the information without actually looking the meaning of zeros and ones.

But I use identical hard drives so I'm not sure what happened. Yes, Clonezilla should transfer everything into the bigger hard drive, then you will have to find all unused space, but the software you use should be able to tell if the unused space is really disposable or if there's some partition which is unable to identify. Indeed GParted should know about it.

There are several ways to approach this, most require a bit of "expert-level" configuration when creating and/or restoring the image, for example...

1. You could choose to backup each partition separately, then restore each separately, adjusting the size of the target to better fit the new drive.

2. If your image is of the entire drive, you could modify the partition table of the new drive before restoring...this can sometimes be a bit of a pain in the ass it to get it right.

Another tip is that you can almost always expand the last partition on the drive to fill the empty space...the problems arise when you need to expand a partition in the middle of the disk, as there is no free space adjacent to it. This is why if you can, it's generally good to plan ahead and make your "data" partition the last one on a disk. With Linux, I generally use LVM which makes adding additional storage a lot easier, but I don't think Mac supports it.

Try time machine - it will not only restore to any disk, you can also choose what to restore (leave out software) and it will automatically remove some of the bugs which accumulate over time if you keep upgrading, installing, uninstalling, cloning, changing machines, upgrading, and so on.

Easeus todo works well. I've cloned a drive over but extended to partition while going through the cloning steps. Use it all the time at work and there is a free trail version you can use. just make a dvd bootable disk and go from there,

on a Mac, just partition and format the new drive in a USB enclosure and use Carbon Copy Cloner (even plain rsync will do) to clone the running OS.

Super easy.

It's treating the symptom anyway, rather than the problem. My work PC only contains a rather basic suite of software, takes me a few hours and it's back to productivity. All of my dev machines are virtual, so I can transfer them to a new install, or I can reimage one of them as needed, rather than everything at once. Added benefit that dependencies do not interfer with one another between products.

This enables me to separate things, and I can take a snapshot before installing something dubious or trying something new.

Then re-run your ninite.com installer

I'd recommend chocolatey instead. It's way easier to update all your apps that way, and you don't need to deal with a GUI. You can do it from power shell.

This! Ninite is awesome.

Depends on the situation...

Assuming you made the image from a fresh install, and it isn't so old that it's significantly out of date, it can be a much faster way to get up and running again...whether you're recovering from a hardware or software issue that hosed your previous drive.

If, however, the image is older, then it may not be worth it...

• You'll be living in update hell for a long time

• Chances are you've installed applications not present on the image that will need to be re-installed and configured anyway

• You'll be missing any files saved to the original drive since the image was created

Also, if the image was created from a drive that already had software related issues, you'll just be re-applying them to the new drive.

So yeah, sometimes a fresh install is the best choice...but there are definitely times when having a good image of my drive saved me a ton of time.

Things update so quickly, I'd probably be spending just as much time upgrading as I'd be installing from scratch, plus I'd have to keep an old clone drive lying around.

I've taken the tactic of having as many configuration files as possible symlinked from Dropbox, so they sync automatically between my laptop and desktop, and can be re-instated easily if I have to wipe out my machine, as well has a set of "Destupidification" reg files and scripts to get my basic settings back on track.

I prefer an online backup so I don't have to keep making backups all the time.

You mean you have all your files in the slower PC? You can clone everything and upload it on a newer PC, yes, but if the system is faulty, and not just old hardware, you will duplicate also errors and malfunctions.

Put the music, pictures, etc on an external harddrive so they're safe and then follow something like this.

On an external hard drive. I guess you can also split your hard drive but then you wouldn't be protected against the hard drive's failure.