One of the common symptoms, however, was the Remote Desktop Connection. Since my computer at work exists largely on the network, I figured that might have something to do with it. I finally emailed the Help Desk in Greensboro.

In my email, I included a verbatim description of the error message, a description of what I was trying to do when I got the error, a summary of my Google search results, and a 4-point list of the things I had tried to do (from clearing the clipboard in Excel to running the clipboard application from Start Menu > Run > clipbrd.exe).

About 30 minutes later (after I had gotten Excel to work again), I got a call from the Help Desk. This is the conversation:

“Hi, I’m from the Help Desk.”

“Hi, I’m glad to hear from you.”

“I’m having a hard time figuring out what the problem might be. Can I remote connect to your desktop?”

“Well, the problem seems to have fixed itself, so I’m not sure that would do any good.”

“Oh. Ok. Great…You know, dude, your email was awesome. Usually we get emails like ‘My Excel isn’t working.’ Yours was great.”

Moral: 90% of computer problems are between the keyboard and the chair. If you can quickly convince the Help Desk that your problem is in the 10%, and actually do about half their work for them, they’ll love you forever.