Technical Issues?

[susans]

Have you ever had a technical issue (monitor fried, computer virus, phone system down, internet out... etc.,) that interfere with your normal work day?  If so,what happened and how did you work around the problem?

[gee4]

A few years ago my computer in work developed a virus - it totally freaked me out.  I literally had little aliens appearing all over my screen, similar to a skull and crossbow type of icon.  Needless to say my hard drive had to be taken away, cleaned and rebuilt.

I've only ever had one issue I think on my laptop at home where I had to do a sys restore, but thankfully I have good antivirus software that protects my hard drive from being infected.

[Katie G]

My most frequent (and therefore annoying) "technical issue" are our so-called "high volume" printer/copier/fax/scan machines.  They took all of our desktop local printers and now we're stuck with these things that are down more than they are up.  Usually right before a meeting when the big boss wants a printed agenda in front of him (even though you emailed it to him the day before).  

[Atlanta Z3]

Two companies ago, somehow our email domain was not renewed.  We had internet but not email for about a day and half while our office manager and our it consultants played the blame game trying to get us reinstated.  We created a temporary g mail account for the company where documents could be sent, but it created a more than one kink in a few cat tails around the office.

[peaches2160]

A few weeks ago about an hour before a 150 person teleconference / webex was to begin, the phone lines went dead.  The lines were dead inside and dialing out of the building. I had prepared an e-mail to send out to all on the meeting notice to cancel and reschedule the meeting, and just as I was prepared to send, the lines were restored.  Murphy's Law.  

[geminigirl]

We're quite fortunate here in that we don't get too many tech issues as listed above, but when they do come GRRRR

For instance, this week we've lost power throughout the main building because of electrical works happening.  At least we've had notification of it, which is a good thing.  Of course, one can always forget it's about to happen as I (almost) did earlier this week.  Had I lost what I'd been working on, I wouldn't have been a very happy bunny.

But we've also had a couple of unscheduled power outages and they are incredibily annoying.

Without power - what can we do?  And please don't say filing as that is my worst task EVER!  Will always delay that if I can.  In fact, there's a medium-sized pile looking across the room at me...

Worst time ever was when I inadvertently opened an email with a virus - that had been sent on by someone in the IT department of the company I then worked for (interestingly, the company I worked for that I mentioned in a post elsewhere - hated it!).

Now, I'd never had this experience before and hadn't a clue what I should do.  I just jumped up and ripped the power cords out of the wall which I was later told was the right thing to do!

As for work-arounds when these things happen, grin & bear it and grumble until I can get back to work...