Software that needs Internet

Yesterday I was helping a customer to move some workstations because of the coronavirus.

We were also testing out some new software that the customer requires to work. After a few minutes, everything was done and I really enjoyed that I could finally go home after a long day.

Today at about half-past seven. “The software isn’t working and we need it working till eight”. I won’t go into detail why they needed it to work until eight, but it really had to work at that time.

Luckily the place I work at isn’t too far away from the customer so I jumped into my car. By 7:45 I arrived. 15 minutes remaining. I almost heard the clock ticking and the minutes fading.

“We are already in contact with the developers, but they say the problem is on our end”, the customer told me. At that time he was already panicking.

I rushed through potential fixed and thought what was different than yesterday?

As a side note, the software was complaining about the internet connection that was mandatory.

I logged on as an administrator, and while looking at the taskbar of windows something strange happened. I saw the “no internet” icon and clicked on it.

Almost immediately it changed from “no internet” to Home / Workplace Network. I thought to myself, “what did just happen?”. I logged back on with the user account. Poof. It works.

I checked on another PC, same procedure after logging in as admin, it works.

Turned out that the software is blocking most of the network (for security reasons), but needs access at first to be running.

So it is blocking itself from working when it is opened as the first program in the morning.

Sometimes I really hate being the IT-guy :)