Does The Date Really Matter?
Oh yes, the call from yesterday that made me want to begin this all...
The user is working offsite at a construction project for a few months. Let me point out that this particular person took a laptop with them and never actually requested IT to set up any kind of remote access. Two days ago, I lost a few hours on the phone setting up VPN and dial-up access remotely. I did explain that they could come in and it would only take a few minutes for me or someone else to setup, but they did not want to drive into any of our locations. Instead, we wasted 2-3 hours of time while I struggled to get things working from afar. (The call began at 4:30pm, I might add.)
VPN worked fine the other day and the call is because VPN is now not working at their temporary residence with a cable modem. First we trouble shoot:
Does Internet work? Yes.
Does VPN say it is connected? Yes.
Is Outlook able to get email? Yes.
Can you get to servers? No.
Is offline files enabled? No.
Weird...
Can you ping one of the servers? Yes, it responds.
So why wouldn't you be able to get to the server if you can see it and it can see you and email works? It was a perplexing issue. Finally I decided that it would be best for me to remotely connect to the computer which is easy since they were connected to VPN.
I remote desktop to the laptop and login as the user. I receive an error that states I can't login because the date and time on the computer are incorrect. WTF? So I say to the person on the phone, "Is there any chance you looked at the clock calendar and accidentally changed the date?" The response is no, the date is fine. I ask them to check anyway and I get, "Oh, it is set to June. I must have changed it when I looked at something last night...ha ha, is that all it is?"
Of course it worked fine and that was all it was. 30 minutes down the tubes because they changed their calendar and didn't click cancel.
The user is working offsite at a construction project for a few months. Let me point out that this particular person took a laptop with them and never actually requested IT to set up any kind of remote access. Two days ago, I lost a few hours on the phone setting up VPN and dial-up access remotely. I did explain that they could come in and it would only take a few minutes for me or someone else to setup, but they did not want to drive into any of our locations. Instead, we wasted 2-3 hours of time while I struggled to get things working from afar. (The call began at 4:30pm, I might add.)
VPN worked fine the other day and the call is because VPN is now not working at their temporary residence with a cable modem. First we trouble shoot:
Does Internet work? Yes.
Does VPN say it is connected? Yes.
Is Outlook able to get email? Yes.
Can you get to servers? No.
Is offline files enabled? No.
Weird...
Can you ping one of the servers? Yes, it responds.
So why wouldn't you be able to get to the server if you can see it and it can see you and email works? It was a perplexing issue. Finally I decided that it would be best for me to remotely connect to the computer which is easy since they were connected to VPN.
I remote desktop to the laptop and login as the user. I receive an error that states I can't login because the date and time on the computer are incorrect. WTF? So I say to the person on the phone, "Is there any chance you looked at the clock calendar and accidentally changed the date?" The response is no, the date is fine. I ask them to check anyway and I get, "Oh, it is set to June. I must have changed it when I looked at something last night...ha ha, is that all it is?"
Of course it worked fine and that was all it was. 30 minutes down the tubes because they changed their calendar and didn't click cancel.
posted by Alex at 8:28 AM
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