Fast System Recovery From a Lightning Strike
Last week a customer called whose store pos system had taken some sort of power surge most likely from a lightning strike. Two workstations that were networked using serial ports were out and the server worked fine. It took about 30-45 minutes for me to be convinced that the on-board serial ports were blown on the two workstations. It took about twice that long for me to convince the customer. In fact he wasn't completely convinced until he brought in an old laptop from home the next morning and it worked in place of the two dead work stations. I told him that if he bought two USB<->Serial adapters then he could have the two dead workstations going in a flash. He went to his local Radio Shack store and was able to buy two of them for $38 each. He was unhappy about the price since he could buy them on the internet for less than half that price. However, he relented and bought them. He plugged the devices into his computers. The computers recognized the devices automatically and he was going within 10 minutes. Any time that we can isolate the problems from a lightning strike over the phone, I am happy. If we can also fix the problem by 10:00am the next morning while they are up, I am really happy. The customer was mostly happy but still mildly annoyed with the two $38 price tags.Labels: Diagnosing problems over the phone, lightning strikes, Store POS System
posted by MIB @ 12:41 PM
