Voenix Rising

So if you want to just skip this one, feel free.

We’re in the midst of replacing about 150 or so laptops and desktops as part of our five-year refresh project.

Yesterday I was to deliver and swap out a total of four devices at one of our remote offices. Three were straight desktop-for-desktop, and the fourth was a laptop-for-desktop exchange.

The desktop-to-desktop swaps went off without a hitch, but when I got to the last one, all I can say is it’s a good thing I don’t drink.

First of all, the user—who I’d emailed twice over the past weeks to remind him this was happening (and who never bothered responding)—was of course nowhere to be found when I arrived onsite.

His supervisor had to call him and tell him to get back to the office so this could be done.

For some reason his desktop was on—and fucking unlocked—so I took advantage of that and went ahead and ran the script that backed up all his data to the network. I went ahead and disconnected the desktop, connected the new docking station for the laptop to all the peripherals and waited for him to show up.

He seemed confused as to why this was happening and I pointed out that his desktop was end-of-life and needed to be replaced. I was told it was to be replaced with a laptop.

“What about this laptop?” he said, opening his overhead bin and pulling out a rugged type laptop that we normally issue to field workers (the one I was installing was a standard, office-variety).

He then said this was his laptop, but “I haven’t been able to log into it for months,” followed up by, “Will that new laptop work in the truck?”

I told him we had car chargers on order and we’d get one to him as soon as they arrived.

“No, I mean…will it fit in the cradle in the truck?”

I then realized that this whole thing had just gone south.

“No. It won’t,” I said.

The rugged laptop he had was still quite viable and not scheduled for replacement, so I figured it had just dropped off the domain. Checking, I saw that indeed, it was no longer present in Active Directory, so I created the object and then logged into that laptop so I could rejoin it to the domain.

Moving it first to a workgroup proved no problem.

But, after rebooting, and attempting to rejoin the domain the property sheet that you need to actually do that would come up, flash, and then immediately close.

Fuck. Me.

I’d fought with this type of issue in the past, and finally gave up and just reimaged the device at that time. I told him I would have to take it back to the main office and do the same for this one.

In the meantime I would get him set up on the new laptop, and then swap that for the rugged laptop when it was back to normal and working properly.

The next thing he asked was, “What about Billy?”

“Billy?” I asked. “Who’s Billy?”

“He’s the other guy who logs into this workstation.”

What. The. Royal. Fuck?

Billy was the one who had been logged in when I backed up the data. So I didn’t yet have this guy’s data.

So I had to reconnect the old desktop, have this guy log in, back up his data….blah, blah, blah…disconnect it, reconnect the dock and laptop. And then restore his data—knowing full well that we’ll have to go through this all over again after I got the rugged reimaged.

Why didn’t I just reconnect the desktop? Because this was going to force him to bring the new laptop into the main office to exchange it for the old one. Yes, I’m a bitch that way.

So after he was all set up, we got hold of BIlly and created his profile on the new laptop as well.

Before this started, I figured it would take a couple hours, tops. As it was, it was noon by the time I’d finished, so I gathered everything after verify that all was well with the other workstations, and took a long lunch.

After lunch, I headed back to the office and began reimaging the old rugged laptop. Thankfully I now had both the guy’s—and Billy’s—passwords so when I was finished it was a simple matter to restore all their data again. The only thing I couldn’t do is set up their O365, as that required two-factor verification. I told him that one of my colleagues could assist with that when he picked up the laptop as I would be working from home the next day.