Id10T Errors and P.E.B.K.A.C Patience

I work in a fairly large organization and sometimes the things I see amaze me. For instance yesterday I spent 20 minutes on the phone with a user. Granted I have spent longer trying to fix an issue, but this was a simple password reset. Why for the life of me after 5 minutes I didn't just chalk one up for P.E.B.K.A.C but I genuinely thought there was a problem. So it started off with the user calling into our help line. The user stated that they cannot login to their workstation; this happens fairly frequently as some users I would rather take a hammer to a puppy then give them a computer. so I reset the users password using a little PowerShell function I created recently:

Function Reset-Pass ($samname) {

Set-ADAccountPassword -Identity $samname -reset -NewPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText "Id10T" -Force)

Set-ADUser -Identity $samname -Enabled $TRUE -ChangePasswordAtLogon $true

Unlock-ADAccount -Identity $samname

“Password Reset for $samname”

}

I explained to the user that I had reset his password and they would need to use the new password which I provided him with. In the background on the phone I hear the user slowly, ever so slowly chicken pecking in his new password. {Tack}…{Tack}…{Tack}……………..{Tack}…{Tack}………..{Tack}… you get the point I’m sure.  After about 3 minutes of this noise their done. The user then responds with “ it didn't work, still won’t let me in. so once more I reset his password. Another 3 minutes pass by as I listen to the ever so soothing sound of him breathing into the handset of his phone. Same outcome, the user is not able to get into his computer. Finally I get frustrated enough I use system centers remove control viewer. Get that all up and running punch in the user’s computer name with the force of The Almighty Thor striking a frost giant with his hammer. The screen flickers and now I see what the user is seeing. Without desk flipping, ripping off my id badge and walking out.

I calmly explain to the user in my best “I’m not about to murder you and your fifteen cats” voice that all they must do is hit okay and change their password. I really wanted to ask them for fifteen minutes of my life back, but these are the pitfalls of IT. Today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.