How to get good tech support

This one is for everyone who has ever done tech support under any name. People who will appreciate this might officially be system administrators or salesperson for a high-tech product, or actually have the job of "technical support" (I've been in all three jobs), but we have all come to hate this question in its myriad forms:

It isn't working.

It might be phrased as "My gronkulator doesn't work." It might be slightly more sophisticated and read "My FooBar Software won't take my password." Do you non-supporters see what those have in common?

There's NO USEFUL INFORMATION FOR THE SUPPORT PERSON! What would be helpful might be "The gronkulator is making horrible vibrating noises and the circuit breaker keeps tripping." Also useful would be "When I enter my password, FooBar says I've activated too many times in a short period."

Without those useful details, all I or any other supporter can do is try to ask probing questions. This is bad for us, in that it's frustrating and wastes our time. It's also bad for you, because especially if we're supporting you by email, you get your help hours and maybe days later than you could have, if you just gave useful information in the first place.

Want some tips on how to make things easier for both of us? Don't be any of these people. And ask Smart Questions.

On Switching a VM from VMWare to VirtualBox

So I recently switched my main tower PC from Debian GNU/Linux to Ubuntu. As part of this move, I decided to move my Windows XP virtual machine (required for work software) from VMWare Player to a VirtualBox instance. I've experimented with a lot of virtualization software, including the above two, Microsoft's Virtual PC, and QEMU, and come to like VirtualBox best, and it's already packaged for Ubuntu 9.

VirtualBox can read VMWare-style virtual hard disks (vmdk files), so the move should have been transparent. Well ... not quite.

It turns out that while VMWare can handle virtual AGP hardware, VirtualBox can't. So when I started the XP session in VirtualBox, it froze. Starting it again in Safe Mode still froze, but told me that the problem was a file called gagp30kx.sys. Google told me that this was a known problem with the current VB, and all I had to do was rename the file to fix the problem.

Except I couldn't boot Windows, so I couldn't rename the file that way. There is a script to mount vmdk files in Linux, but it's only available as part of VMWare Server. I didn't want to spend the time and create a new account at VMWare's web site to install the Server just to run one script, once, then delete it again.

So I had a brainstorm: I downloaded DamnSmallLinux and mounted the ISO file as the virtual machine's CD drive. The VM booted Linux successfully. I mounted the virtual hard disk, located the file, and ... couldn't rename it. It turns out that DSL will only mount NTFS partitions read only.

Brainstorm 2: the Ubuntu install CD is also a LiveCD. I put the CD in my physical CD drive, told VirtualBox to attach that to the virtual session, and rebooted. Now the VM booted into Ubuntu Linux, which can modify a Windows drive. Renamed the file, rebooted, and there's Windows in VirtualBox. Mission accomplished!

Almost. Turns out I had no network access.

Well, duh, I thought to myself. All the virtualizers have helper apps that you install in the virtual PC to handle networking, mouse control, etc. VMWare calls them "VMWare Tools" and VirtualBox "Guest Additions". Obviously I had to uninstall the VMWare Tools and install the VirtualBox Guest Additions.

You can't. The VMWare Tools won't uninstall unless you run the VM within VMWare. Yes, you can't remove the VMWare tools without using VMWare itself. Frustrating.

Even worse, the VMWare virtual AMD network driver can't be uninstalled, which means the default network driver for VirtualBox won't install. You can set VirtualBox to use the Intel PRO/1000 series virtual network card, but the driver for that isn't installed by default in Windows XP. And of course, I had no way to get it into the Windows session, because shared drives depend on networking ...

I could have rebooted into Ubuntu using the same trick as above and downloaded the driver that way, but to save time I downloaded the driver in my "real" OS, then used genisoimage to make a tiny CD image of it and mount that on the VM. Once the driver was installed, networking worked flawlessly.

So not a transparent change, but not incredibly difficult. Given the bizarre "use our software to remove our software" policy of VMWare, I'm not likely to switch back from VirtualBox any time soon.

Stay out of British Columbia

The Canadian province of British Columbia has just given naturopaths the legal right to prescribe drugs. Let's be clear: naturopath" means someone who is not a doctor and does not practice medicine. Naturopaths recommend nonsense like boosting your immune system and acupuncture and "straight" chiropractic.

So, especially if you are ill or have kids, stay out of British Columbia. If you're sick or injured, or someone you love is, you do NOT want to be treated by a crackpot herbalist/manipulator/superstition-monger.

Maybe not EVERY Picture, but I hope this one

I created this image for work:I like to think it tells a short story.

I'll be at I-CON 28 all weekend. If you'd like to say "Hi" stop by the Marriott hotel.

Delta Airlines: also not perfect

So I criticized United a while back for a bit of dumb design in their online reservations system. It's only fair that I also mock Delta.


This is pretty straightforward. I'm trying to fly out of MacArthur Airport on Long Island, code ISP. Note that Delta's system is saying that there is no exact match for "ISP", but its best guess is in fact "ISP". Selecting this doesn't work, it just takes me back to this same page. I think the real problem is that there are no flights out of ISP to my destination, but this is quite simply broken behavior.

Disappointing.