Lookin’ for Support in All the Right Places

In truth, you can probably do as good a job searching a manufacturer’s technical support database as the first-level support operator who answers when you call for technical support. The key is knowing what to search for and where to search for it.

For example, suppose you’re planning a rollout of Windows NT in your office. Because you’re a careful and responsible person, you’re doing a pilot test and going into limited production. Halfway through the first part of your rollout, a user complains that she’s having problems when using DOS EDIT and other DOS utilities. Apparently, she is being asked to insert a disk into drive A whenever she runs a DOS program, regardless of whether a floppy disk is actually involved. This is really odd. You think to yourself, “Which of these things is not like the other?” and run to another user’s machine. You try the same thing using another user’s machine and login, and you get the same results.

You discover that every single machine you’ve rolled out is having the same problem. Obviously, you stop the rollout. But now you have an odd problem—why is a fresh new machine acting this way? As a matter of fact, each machine you’ve built acts this way. Is it a hardware error? A software error? If so, which software? Is this a network-related problem at all?

A lot might possibly go wrong here, so now is a good time to spend a few minutes searching. Fortunately, you have what to search for right in your face, in the guise of a very rude error message:

NTVDM: No disk. Please insert a disk into drive A:

The most obvious place to search, Microsoft’s site, reveals nothing of tremendous interest, except that you need to check the NT file path for references to drive A, which aren’t there.

In order to figure out where to search for your answers, it’s time to categorize what you’ve added to the new machine:

•  Windows NT setup

•  Intel virus protection

•  WordPerfect Suite 8

•  GroupWise email and scheduling software

But wait! Hold it right there. You’re already missing at least two pieces of the puzzle. You were thinking about application software, but in truth, there are more pieces than you just wrote down. Let’s take it from the top and write down what you’ve doneto create this new machine. The possible sources of the problem omitted from the previous list appear in bold:

•  Unpacked Dell PC from box.

•  Setup was automatically run. NT and Microsoft’s Service Pack 3 were installed.

•  Installed Novell IntranetWare Client32 (necessary for connection to Novell server).

•  Configured 3Com Ethernet network card.

•  Installed Intel Virus Protection, Corel WordPerfect Suite 8, Novell GroupWise.

Enumerating the steps you took to create the workstation lets you come up with a vendor list to search. Your final list contains the following:

•  Dell

•  Microsoft

•  Novell

•  3Com

•  Intel

•  Corel

Rather than build a new PC from the ground up, which might take anywhere from an hour to two hours (if all goes well!), you go to the following Web sites and key in the error message you received:

•  http://support.dell.com

•  http://support.microsoft.com

•  http://support.novell.com

•  http://support.3com.com

•  http://support.corel.com

You might begin by entering NTVDM by itself, because this is a unique term (again, you don’t want to get hits on common words such as disk), and then proceed to search for the entire error message if you get too many hits. (Remember that unless you specify a “weight” to a word—which is not an option on some vendor sites—each word counts the same; therefore, entering insert disk NTVDM matches a document with insert and disk more than it matches a document that has one mention of NTVDM.)

Dell has nothing about NTVDM. Microsoft has zillions of information documents, and NTVDM, by itself, pulls up close to 100 documents. You decide to come back to here if nothing else pans out. On the third try, eureka! As shown in Figure 7.1, a search on NTVDM pulls up only nine documents, a very manageable number. A quick glance reveals a technical document that precisely describes your problem. You click that link to learn more. In this case, you learn that the Novell Client32 in conjunction with a bug in Windows NT Service Pack 3 has caused your problem. The documentation also details a fix (copy NTDOS.SYS from the original Windows NT CD-ROM to your current C:\WINNT\SYSTEM directory).

Figure 7.1  Searching several sites rather than spending a lot of time on one can yield pay dirt quickly!

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When troubleshooting a potential multivendor problem, don’t spend too much time on each site at first—one vendor may have a quick solution, whereas the other vendor may have you sifting through hundreds of documents.

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Five minutes after firing up your Web browser, you’ve solved the problem. Whoa! Talk about standing on the shoulders of giants. You might have spent hours playing divide-and-conquer on this problem if it weren’t for the incredible power of the tech support search.