Fun_People Archive
12 Jun
Smokin' Away... Handled by Experts

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 96 23:01:53 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: Smokin' Away... Handled by Experts

[Normally I find items that start off like this one pretty boring, but...  -psl]

Forwarded-by: "Chris LaFournaise (cjl)" <cjl@sequent.com>
[Further Forwards Removed.]
From: an ex-field sales/support survivor:

I used to work in a computer store and one day we had a gentleman call in
with a smoking power supply. The service rep was having a bit of trouble
convincing this guy that he had a hardware problem.

Service Rep:  Sir, something has burned within your power supply.

Customer:     I bet that there is some command that I can put into
	      the AUTOEXEC.BAT that will take care of this.

Service Rep:  There is nothing that software can do to help you with
              this problem.

Customer:     I know that there is something that I can put in...
              some command... maybe it should go into the CONFIG.SYS.

	[After a few minutes of going round and round]

Service Rep:  Okay, I am not supposed to tell anyone this but there is
              a hidden command in some versions of DOS that you can
              use.  I want you to edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT and add the
              last line as C:\DOS\NOSMOKE and reboot your computer.

	[Customer does this]

Customer:     It is still smoking.

Service Rep:  I guess you'll need to call Microsoft and ask them for
              a patch for the NOSMOKE.EXE.

	[The customer then hung up.  We thought that we had heard the
	 last of this guy but NO... he calls back four hours later]

Service Rep:  Hello Sir, how is your computer?

Customer:     I called Microsoft and they said that my power supply is
              incompatible with their NOSMOKE.EXE and that I need to get
              a new one. I was wondering when I can have that done and
              how much it will cost...

© 1996 Peter Langston