On Call To celebrate the recent 500th appearance of On-Call, the column that features your tales of tech support torture, The Register has trawled through the archives to find the 20 columns that generated the most comments.

We've added a little commentary to explain how each fits into the On Call cinematic universe.

437 comments, October 2020: Did I or did I not ask you to double-check that the socket was on? Now I've driven 15 miles, what have we found?

A classic of the genre "I drove for hours to fix a PC only to find it wasn't plugged in to a source of electricity." Every time On Call receives such a contribution, we wonder how on earth the complainant holds down a job.

368 comments, June 2023: Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

If On Call has taught us anything, it is that HR departments are the most implacable enemies of them all, as a reader learned when his very common name confused a Bank's payroll system.

320 comments, July 2019: I don't have to save my work, it's in The Cloud. But Microsoft really must fix this files issue

Being asked to restore from non-existent backups is a common occurrence in On Call. In this story, the magic of the cloud and a Microsoft mess made the job even harder.

317 comments, February 2018: Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?

A surprisingly large number of people are very confused by electricity.

315 comments, June 2023: Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

On Call often features tales of travelling to far-off locations. In this case, your fellow reader had to endure two trips to the City of Light to fix a problem that could be sorted with a quick keypress.

304 comments, January 2018: User stepped on mouse, complained pedal wasn't making PC go faster

Tech support for the elderly is a frequent topic of On Call contributions, but also one that's very close to home for some readers. We try to treat such tales with sensitivity.

293 comments, March 2019: Sure, we've got a problem but we don't really want to spend any money on the tech guy you're sending to fix it

A classic because it features both travel and a parsimonious boss. Cheapskates make for good On Call stories because they expect everything for nothing, and you lot won't put up with that nonsense.

282 comments: That awful moment when what you thought was a number 1 turned out to be a number 2

One of many On Calls that concern Microsoft Excel, the spreadsheet that runs the world but is often wielded in ways that create work for Reg readers. Stories about Excel messes always do well, and we try not to get too clickbaity when a good one comes along.

280 comments: Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug? As Richard Speed wrote in this one: “It's always DNS unless, of course, it's some ham-fisted wiring."

280 comments, October 2019: Remember the 1980s? Oversized shoulder pads, Metal Mickey and... sticky keyboards?

A few On Calls concern users who damaged their computers - often with liquids - and demanded a fix without revealing the very obvious root cause. In this story, the evidence flooded into view!

278 comments, October 2022: To make this computer work, users had to press a button. Why didn't it work? Guess

If you guessed that the user didn't press the button, congratulations, you have divined the content of a surprising number of On Call columns.

263 comments, May 2022: When management went nuclear on an innocent software engineer

On Call is sometimes rather scary, because in tales like this one we learn of incredible stupidity in very important or dangerous places - in this case at a nuclear reactor.

260 comments, July 2023: Bizarre backup taught techie to dumb things down for the boss

Failed backups make for great stories. This column has one, plus techies having to explain… themselves… carefully… to bosses who think they possess 1337 tech skillz but are actually clueless.

258 comments, December 2016: Sysadmin told to spend 20+ hours changing user names, for no reason

Quite a few On Calls concern IT pros being told to do something the way the boss wants it done, even when that way is stupid. Venting about that seems only natural, and we are happy to oblige.

257 comments, February 2024: Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks

Revenge is a common theme of On Call, often in the form of maltreated techies refusing to offer additional assistance to those who abused them. Rightly so, too!

252 comments, May 2022: Thinnet cables are no match for director's morning workout

A lot can go wrong in the physical layer, especially when non-techies take it for granted and end up damaging cables and wires. This On Call is one of many detailing the fallout from such tomfoolery.

250 comments, May 2022: Seriously, you do not want to make that cable your earth

Each On Call ends with a call for fresh contributions, usually referring to the topic covered in that week's instalment. That arrangement means we sometimes go on little runs of similar stories, which is why May 2022 featured two cabling capers that caught readers' attention.

250 comments: Sysadmin trained his offshore replacements, sat back, watched ex-employer's world burn

Being fired is a sadly common topic of the column. Stories on the topic often end with redundancies backfiring badly.

245 comments, January 2020: So you locked your backups away for years, huh? Allow me to introduce my colleagues, Brute, Force, and Ignorance

On Call is lucky to have some regulars who send multiple stories. Be like Alessandro, one such regular featured in this story of backup borkage, and send more stories!

242 comments, May 2022: We can bend the laws of physics for your super-yacht, but we can't break them

I've always hoped On Call can be cathartic for some readers and love the fact that this column includes the following:

On Call never forgets to filter itself through Snarky Writer Face, which is why each column ends with an exhortation to click here to send us an email with your tech support story that will generate hundreds more comments and earn its place on our 1,000th column celebration some time in 2034. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/09/17/on_call/