Techie fixed a ‘brown monitor’ by closing a door for a doctor

After three service calls, user reflected on their utter stupidity

On Call As the door closes on another working week, The Register brings you another edition of On Call, our reader-contributed column that recounts your amazing stories from the frontlines of tech support.

This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Neville” who told us about a job in which he supported systems that produced 3D images from CAT and MRI scanners – and may have challenged the tech support world speed record that this column currently believes stops the clock at 8.5 seconds.

Neville worked this gig in the 1990s, which is why the system displayed those images on a 19-inch cathode ray tube monitor – giant beige boxes that radiated heat fiercely.

Despite that inelegant hardware, radiographers, radiologists, and surgeons found the images very useful to diagnose patients, or plan operations.

One day, a client called to complain that their enormo-monitor would sometimes render images in shades of brown that made it hard for medicos to do their work.

“We sent out someone to swap the monitor,” Neville told On Call. A days later, the problem recurred, so Neville’s company despatched another new display.

The complaints continued, so Neville was sent to fix the problem once and for all.

Upon arrival, he sat down in front of the offending screen and found it in perfect condition.

“A doctor came in, closed the door, and said: ‘See. Now it’s brown’.”

Neville responded by opening the door, at which point the brown disappeared. He closed the door, and the brown hue returned – because the monitor’s surface reflected the door’s unpainted wooden finish.

“A very embarrassed doctor disappeared quite quickly,” Neville told On Call.

Has a user you expected would be intelligent requested tech support for profoundly dumb reasons? If so, be smart and click here to send On Call an email so we can show the world how cleverly you solve their problem on a future Friday, ®