So I called MS tech support this morning...
 

Now look at the call duration... Yep, I'm still on. I actually started working on the problem around 8pm last night. Ugh.

http://www.speedextreme.com/temp/feb/microsoft.jpg

Is that 6 and a half hours???? Man you are very patient.

Hope it's a cordless phone. Or you're wearing a leg bag. :o

I am VERY happy to have dropped a stupid sum of money on a Plantronics CS70 wireless headset just a couple days ago. It was completely comfortable throughout the call, and the battery only started to warn me around 5.5 hours. Gave it a 15 minute charge, and right back on it.

I'm still on the phone, BTW.

The headpiece battery went low before you got off the phone call. Holy crap. I mean, yay that Microsoft has stuck with your problem, but this is the longest tech support call I've heard of.

What the heck has them stumped like this?!

Last night I attempted to expand the disk size of an Active Directory virtual machine in a VMware Enterprise cluster. It changed the drive letter to Windows, so that borked it. I recovered that, no huge problem, but then the AD would not start. I ran the directory recovery console, no problem, right??? Failed to work as documented. Ok, no big deal, we have a BDC with a Global Catalog. Just attach a new DC, I can roll out a VM in minutes. Not so fast...the Exchange server fails to find the GC on the BDC, won't run the SA or Store. I spent most of the night going through MS articles and fixes, no go. No progress really. By 4:30am I figured it was time for an hour or two of sleep. At 7:30 I tried again, then called MS shortly after 8am. Been on the phone since then.

Around 3pm they borked the entire domain. One tech renamed the remaining AD and killed the Netlogon service, so then the entire domain crashed. Ugh. It was only e-mail down until then. Around 4pm she announced that she could not help further, thank you for calling MS, goodbye. Around 4:01 I took a breath and she said she would transfer me to a manager.

So here I am. Slow progress now.

Here's a general question, how much are they charging for this kind of support?

What the fuc--

Okay, that's a better answer. :)

A . . . are you still on the phone?

Yup. I could use some sleep now.

It's pay-per-incident server support, so $270 total. After hours it is $500. The sad part is that after-hours has always been fantastic, super-smart people. Business hours...not so much.

Oh, and the thick Indian accents and bad VoIP connection...argh.

Were these clusters AD replicants that replicated the problem over the network? that is a really weird issue. That makes me want to talk over disastery recovery tomorrow at our department meeting.

Then again, I hate to brag, but I am on a 100% OD network. Well, we got a few novell boxes still kicking around, mainly because its so cheap license wise. Plus I think Novell's print servers are far better than Apple's. At least for now.

The clusters are at the VMware level, not Windows. They did not replicate. The primary issue stayed on the first machine, but the GC backup never worked. Then the MS tech just plain old screwed up and killed the domain.

Thats awesome! Too bad you can't ask for a refund on your support call for their technology failing.

New tech: "She did WHAT?!? Oh, that is so wrong." Funnier if you say it in a deep Indian accent.

All I am getting is an image of Apoo from the Simpsons, saything, "Thank you come again."

Sadly that's just about the exact accent I used to read the quote to myself...eek, you'd think an asian history major could do better than that :rolleyes:.

Also-- Why is this so important that you have to stay on tech support for 8 hours straight? Why not just close the conversation, hit the sack, and pick back up where you left off?

When your customer's network is down, you don't sleep. Well that's my policy anyway, kept me in business for a couple decades.

I got off the phone around 10:30 last night, and handed the call to someone who works for me. At that point Exchange and the domain were fully functional, he was going to add a new DC, then go clean up some junk left in the domain. He hung up the phone at 4:23 am. Today everything is looking great. I'm still tired. Too old for this.

Oh yeah, Mac-related content:

MS: I would like you to connect to our screen sharing application from your workstation so I have access to all the servers.

Me: Is it Mac compatible? I don't use Windows.

MS: (Sounding shocked) You're on a Mac? To manage the Windows network? Why?

Me: Look at the Windows network right now, nothing works. Someone has to have a reliable computer to fix Windows when it blows up.

I've had one burp already on my Mac network. We run a white list of managed applications, and I had to add CS 3 to the whitelist of allowed apps to be ran. So, I select every user group that would need to run the app in the ODM, then add the CS3 apps, and apply. The ODM should replicate all settings down to the ODRs pretty quick.

I did that at like 5pm at night on my way home. next morning my phone is ringing non stop, my cell phone is ringing non stop I have people from other buildings coming to my office to chat with me - my network on my subnet works flawlessly.

There was some sync problem to the ODRs and three of them botched the white list completely and disallowed all apps but CS3. Mind you I did this as one batch job, and 2 buildings worked great, so no idea why the other 4 didn't work right. Apple says that must be a funky sync problem, and well I would agree since 2 of the 4 buildings with ODRs worked with out a hitch. it was easy to fix though, fixed the white list and with in an hour everything was sync'd and back to normal.

I'm sure you will, but you should seriously consider asking for at least a partial refund for their advice that caused the bigger issue than you started with. That's just not right.

I know I get on people who take shots at Microsoft around here, but this is really the best post in the thread.

What's the status now? Anything working yet?

hence my comment about not trying to "brag". LOL

I'd love to have seen the reaction on the tech's face when he said it.

I think he spit out his tandoori chicken.

Around 10:30pm we had Exchange and the domain all fully operational. I then handed the call off to one of my guys and he stayed on it until around 4am, doing cleanup work on the domain, bringing up a new domain controller, etc. In the morning the network was 95% operational and there were just some details to fix (such as restoring static DNS entries that were wiped out for whatever reason).

Oh, and the tech in Bangalore actually told me the best Indian restaurants to go to in Phoenix. At least I got something out of the call.