Obscure Bugs or Problems (Problem Solving)

[+John Teacake MVC]

What is the most obscure bug or problem you have come across when working in IT?

 

 

[Draconian Guppy]

IT only? :shifty:

[Garry]

The two I reported to (and had fixed by) Microsoft:

 

The First

I had a user who couldn't open an Access database. Despite not having a roaming profile, she couldn't open it on any machine. I can't remember the exact error. The bug was in Access itself (either 2003 or 2007, I don't recall.) Since it was affecting just one user I started to concentrate on the user account itself. I still remember the username: elizabeth.mdavies (we also an an elizabeth.davies.) It turned out that the affected version of access couldn't open files with ".mda" anywhere in the path except at the end of the file extension.

 

The Second

Slightly more difficult to explain - after implementing Sharepoint 2007, various web-parts would disappear from pages. The only way to get them back was to recreate the sites affecting. Over time, more and more web parts disappeared, displaying obscure errors in their place. After a few weeks of looking at obscure logs, looking for patterns and process monitoring I discovered the issue. We had created custom security levels - which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do: it's a feature. In order that they were used properly, we removed the built-in security levels (again, the UI lets you do this without any warnings or errors.) I diagnosed and resolved the issue by creating a whole new installation of Sharepoint, locating and copying the original security levels from the new database into live database.

 

Both pretty obscure I think.

[+John Teacake MVC]

  On 27/06/2014 at 15:59, Draconian Guppy said:

IT only? :shifty:

 

Haha OK lets open it up. 

  On 27/06/2014 at 16:28, Garry said:

The two I reported to (and had fixed by) Microsoft:

 

The First

I had a user who couldn't open an Access database. Despite not having a roaming profile, she couldn't open it on any machine. I can't remember the exact error. The bug was in Access itself (either 2003 or 2007, I don't recall.) Since it was affecting just one user I started to concentrate on the user account itself. I still remember the username: elizabeth.mdavies (we also an an elizabeth.davies.) It turned out that the affected version of access couldn't open files with ".mda" anywhere in the path except at the end of the file extension.

 

The Second

Slightly more difficult to explain - after implementing Sharepoint 2007, various web-parts would disappear from pages. The only way to get them back was to recreate the sites affecting. Over time, more and more web parts disappeared, displaying obscure errors in their place. After a few weeks of looking at obscure logs, looking for patterns and process monitoring I discovered the issue. We had created custom security levels - which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do: it's a feature. In order that they were used properly, we removed the built-in security levels (again, the UI lets you do this without any warnings or errors.) I diagnosed and resolved the issue by creating a whole new installation of Sharepoint, locating and copying the original security levels from the new database into live database.

 

Both pretty obscure I think.

 

First one Yes. Second one I would have said looking at it it might have been a disk issue where the files were stored on bad sectors but very good keep it up!! 

[cooky560 Veteran]

It's also possible that the default groups are used by some system account, like the NTSYSTEM and NTAUTHORITY user names in Windows.