Yes, but then you have to wonder if the person understands what a reboot is and didn't just quit the application or just log out of the PC and back in without a clear of RAM
They turned their monitor off and back on again.
“My last computer was all in the monitor, where’s this one?”
Found the iMac user.
FWIW, lots of brands have AIO PCs now.
i once asked a kid if he turned the laptop off and on again, he said yea. so i started to try to fix the issue, nothing worked. so i decided to reboot anyway and it worked. ive never trusted anyone who responded yes to this question again
"Have you tried turning it off and back on?"
"yes, obviously that was THE FIRST thing I tried"
system uptime 582 days 23:59:12
Sadly, the number of times I've had to reboot windows two or three times to fix an issue lately has been increasing. I'm so glad I'm not in IT trying to support windows 11.
checks task manager Uptime of 200 days. 🙃
Except we can tell that you didn't...
Uptime: 237 days
We know you're lying.
There's a 50% or greater chance they just turned off the monitor.
I went through a computer lab and had to turn all the computers on, and infuriatingly like a third of the monitors were turned off. So I put a few computers to sleep instead 😭
Yeah, we (IT) figure out who has their shit together and who doesn't. Every place I've worked there are usually a few non-tech people that if they're calling me, something is actually wrong.
I had to call my ISP when the connection was glitchy, and after a while they paused and asked "how many bits are in a byte?" and I said eight and then they were like "ok, let's troubleshoot this, first do this..." etc. Turns out, someone had hammered a nail straight through the cat5 cable to fasten it to the wall.
Turns out, someone had hammered a nail straight through the cat5 cable to fasten it to the wall.
I wish that were the dumbest thing I had ever seen someone do.
I used to live in an apartment complex where my internet would routinely go out because their installation guy didn't want to do his job, so when someone new signed up he'd just unplug my shit and give it to someone else.
Eventually my phonecalls started with, "Nope, I'm not restarting it. We're skipping all the troubleshooting steps, and you're sending someone out right now to plug me back in."
At my last job I was part IT. I never took their word for it when they said they restarted it. I always opened task manager to check. Believe it or not they weren't lying there, they did know to restart, at least before the aquisition.
At my old job I helped the IT guy out when he came across some really ridiculous Excel problems. After that he'd give my calls special attention and always hooked me up when we got new hardware.
He told me more than once that it was because he knew I knew what I was doing.
The amount of times people told me this when I worked IT support, and crossed over to see them on-site, and restarted their machine myself, and found it suddenly magically started working...
I'm not saying they lied, but the 'IT Support Aura' may be a genuine thing. Like the computer is afraid of getting scrapped so it quickly starts working.
My former career was in IT, I'm a developer now. I work with a bunch of tech savvy people, but I still have the 'IT Support Aura'. I've lost count of how many times a coworker has a computer problem, asks for help, and then watches me fix it and they claim they tried the exact same thing and it didn't work. I never really have an answer besides 'computers fear me'
Before my life shifted more into integrations I was a fan of running:
systeminfo | find "System Boot"
I wasn't out to call anyone out, but sometimes users honestly believed they had rebooted and I would find of the the day's lucky 10k. It also helped to figure out which users would just blankly say they've done everything.
Back when I was in that sort of role, I did it to call them out. I'd highlight it on their screen and ask if it was ok to restart the computer now.
The ol' IT person magic touch - the second you touch the machine, it works flawlessly!
Only problem is if it's one of those problems that's workflow-based. I can't tell you how many times I've said "well it seems to work fine for me" only to watch the user do the same task in the most janky, roundabout way, and that is the source of their problem.
I’ve experienced IT support aura, both from my friends and myself when I joined IT for a while.
I’ve also experienced the evil IT aura. Sometimes when everything is working just fine and an IT worker touches or observes it, it will break inexplicably.
An IT friend asked to use my computer to play a round of Starcraft at a LAN party and I agreed. Watched him slowly sit down, extend his arms above the keyboard like a pianist, slowly rest his hands on the keyboard, and immediately got my first BSOD. Wasn’t even running anything, just sitting on the desktop.
I called my ISP because my internet went down. They asked if I'd unplugged the router and plugged it back in. I slightly smuggly said, "Yes." Then, they asked if I'd left it unplugged for at least 30 seconds...
Well, fuck.
They should have asked "did you unplug it for thirty seconds and plug it back in" as the first question if how long matters.
I do not trust end users with anything.
Even if you tell me yes, I'm still going to double check. You have no idea how many users just say that because they think it's a copout (which, admittedly it kinda is) when it fixes so many problems.
Also, once you lie to me you lose more respect than you would have gained by actually restarting. Trust is hard fought for and easily lost.
I usually start conversations with your crew as "Sorry, I'm probably old enough to be your mother and awful with tech. I've googled and rebooted and that's as much I can do I'm so sorry". And I say it in a grovelling tone...
Sadly, Windows can never leave well enough alone. The current biggest confusion is that they changed restart vs shutdown. There are currently TONS of people who think they're restarting their computer regularly and saving themselves a lot of pain, but Windows decided to change the definition of shutdown.
Did you restart your computer?
Yes.
Did you use start-> restart?
No, I used start -> shutdown, then powered back on!
Sorry, that doesn't help; it saves the current running state, so when you use it later, it doesn't need to reload everything. For what's currently wrong, we really want to make sure we don't just have some memory corruption. Please perform start -> restart.
Start -> Shift+shutdown also tells Windows to not use fast boot or hybrid shut or whatever...
I had a Mac user in my office last month, I asked her to reboot her MBP, she used the power button to crash it. I'm like, is that the way you always do that? Sure, she says. I showed her the reboot option and she was like "oh neat bye." That poor fucking Mac.
None of them get any respect from me because I guarantee they didn't submit a fucking ticket.
IT guy Herr, I don't believe you did on principle and I will make you do it again while I watch
No, I don't care the uptime is minutes in Task Manager
I immediately open task manager and check the CPU up time, "7:01:69:13" no you didn't, liar.
I would if people didn't lie so often about restarting their machines.
They can tell you are lying. The system reports uptime.
Back in my service desk days, I used to just request to perform a restart on their behalf. If they said they already had, I'd make up some nonsense about how I had just manually edited a regkey for them remotely, and it not taking effect til another restart or something like that.
In my experience, the majority of the time someone claimed to have restarted; they either did so incorrectly, or for some reason believed it held no relevance and just wanted to get to 'the actual solution'.
That little white lie allowed them to save face, and me save time and brain cells. It was a win-win.
People often lie about restarting, and IT is pretty aware of that. In my experience, I've gotten a lot of love in situations where IT is onboarding hardware for me and having issues, and I say "hold on, let me try restarting real quick".
Lies. All lies. Don't fall for the trickery. No one reboots.
-Have you tried restarting it?
-Yes, of course.
-Can you do it again?
Every time. And in 70% of times the second reboot fixed it.
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