I broke my own #1 troubleshooting rule

[mgb]

I love the art of troubleshooting.
I use it most every day between my job with electronic building systems and my side work and my hobby.
I'll even go as far as to say I'm pretty good at troubleshooting.
My number 1 rules is to always keep it simple. Break it down to the basics first.
Tonight I broke that rule and it has only strengthened my belief in going through the basics first.
I went to repair an Area 51 for a guy. He said the left side gun didn't work.
In my experience, most problems I have had with those guns have been mechanical, such as the trigger not returning due to the spring missing or similar, but this gun seemed to activate normal.
So right away, I opened up the gun to check it out. Everything looked fine.
I then went to push the start button on the control panel and it didn't respond.
I pulled the switch off the start button, turns out the wires were connected to the normally open and normally closed contacts with nothing on the common.
gun worked completely fine.
I kinda found it funny as that gun was giving me trouble getting it put back together.

it ended up being a quick repair and I was able to take time to look at the customers 60-in-1 and make some adjustments as well as just shoot the breeze and check out his recently purchased Rockola jukebox.
A good night and a lesson learned, again.

[RandyT]

He said the left side gun didn't work.

"Red herrings" in the problem identification phase waste a lot of time.  The number 1 rule is: Never rely on the customer's (or co-worker's) assessment of the issue when you are able to assess it personally.

[pbj]

Once, I spent a good four hours ripping apart an EM and the problem was the plug on the power cord.

Yep.

[DaveMMR]

I've taken apart a computer and re-installed drivers numerous times when it turned out my computer speakers weren't plugged-in*.   

(*This was in the stone age when the sound card was not on-board.) 

[mgb]

He said the left side gun didn't work.

"Red herrings" in the problem identification phase waste a lot of time.  The number 1 rule is: Never rely on the customer's (or co-worker's) assessment of the issue when you are able to assess it personally.

Very true and its funny because I know this rule well. I work in commercial fire alarms, surveilance and the like so I'm always faced with people giving me the wrong info.
I guess I was tired.
Either way, the customer was thrilled to have it all working.

[Ken Layton]

He said the left side gun didn't work.

"Red herrings" in the problem identification phase waste a lot of time.  The number 1 rule is: Never rely on the customer's (or co-worker's) assessment of the issue when you are able to assess it personally.

How true that is!

[Slippyblade]

Ranks up there in tech support as well...

Customer: I keep getting an error message...
Tech: What is the message?
Customer: I don't know.
Tech: Can you pull it up and read it to me?
Customer: No, I'm in the car on the way to work.

Ugh.

[zanna5910]

Ranks up there in tech support as well...

Customer: I keep getting an error message...
Tech: What is the message?
Customer: I don't know.
Tech: Can you pull it up and read it to me?
Customer: No, I'm in the car on the way to work.

Ugh.

+1 LOL, there are SO many flavors of this.

We always joke about when clients send email about their email being down.

[mgb]

Where I used to work, we had first generation blackberrys and we had an it guy that was in charge of all the phones.
My phone had an issue a few times where a number of letter keys wouldn't work.
I knew pulling the battery and putting it back in fixed it but just to be funny, I would always send him an email using the phone to explain the problem.
He was kinda a boring guy, so he never laughed.