The real fun is when you can’t watch what their doing because its over the phone, so you just have to hope they are doing it right. I used to hit them with the “Let’s try this; hold down the power button for exactly 30 seconds, then turn it back on.” Worked every time, but I did once have a guy ask me why that worked, and I didn’t want to call him an idiot so I made up some BS about it being a way to “flush the power from the system” and he bought it.
I don’t think it’s dumb to tell people that power buttons often just put computers to sleep now. It’s a relatively new behaviour. Until about 5 or 10 years ago power meant power off, not low power.
Even shutdown doesn’t actually shut down anymore in Windows. Even on desktops. You have to change system settings or shut down via command line to get a real shutdown.
That’s why update and shutdown does a reboot instead now.
I’ve had people unplug the system “just to be sure it’s plugged in properly” when they “absolutely restarted” but nothing worked. ‘Miraculously’, that solved the problem.
One time a friend and I (both in IT at the time) tried absolutely everything to fix a bizarre computer problem, then he told me to literally pull the hard drive completely out if the case and sit unplugged overnight before putting it back in. For some reason that worked, even though unplugging everything and plugging it right back in did nothing. Asked him why and he said “No idea, I was desperate.”
Someone said you tell them to turn it off and unplug it, because you need a number from the plug side going into the computer. Then you coach them through the process to find the right plug, and they don’t feel stupid because this is a strange process.
Then when they say there’s no numbers on the plug, you pretend like this is new and useful information, tell them to hold the power button and make sure no lights come on, and then you tell them to plug it in and turn it back on
Now, not only have you confirmed they definitely turned off the computer without asking a bunch of potentially insulting questions, the showmanship makes them feel like this is arcane knowledge you’ve taught them
This is why it is not at all unreasonable to envision future IT people as basically being Comstar or the Mechanicus. People already think we do magic, just wait a hundred years and we can convince them of anything.
What do you mean? I already believe I do magic. Granted, I’m not IT, I’m a dev, but I literally type words and runes and the lives of thousands of people change.
The customer will call me and say “I need to do this, I have this problem, help” and I either say “it will be done” or I tell her to go through a series of arcane actions, maybe asking for strange sequences of actions or ask for special numbers I leave around that mean nothing to anyone aside from me and my coworker
I literally sometimes say “this feels fucky, can you restart X or Y for me?” And my team lead is just like yeah, ok, that makes no sense let’s try it. And vise versa
You have no idea how superstitious you get as a senior dev. And it works. It’s just better and faster to accept rituals that work than to dig into every problem
I’d opt to just explain how restart and shutdown/power on works if they needed all that but most users I’ve worked with don’t want to be involved in the fix, they just want it fixed.
This. “Lets try it again, just to be sure.” ::watches them put it to sleep with the soft power button::
The real fun is when you can’t watch what their doing because its over the phone, so you just have to hope they are doing it right. I used to hit them with the “Let’s try this; hold down the power button for exactly 30 seconds, then turn it back on.” Worked every time, but I did once have a guy ask me why that worked, and I didn’t want to call him an idiot so I made up some BS about it being a way to “flush the power from the system” and he bought it.
I don’t think it’s dumb to tell people that power buttons often just put computers to sleep now. It’s a relatively new behaviour. Until about 5 or 10 years ago power meant power off, not low power.
Even shutdown doesn’t actually shut down anymore in Windows. Even on desktops. You have to change system settings or shut down via command line to get a real shutdown.
That’s why update and shutdown does a reboot instead now.
I’ve had people unplug the system “just to be sure it’s plugged in properly” when they “absolutely restarted” but nothing worked. ‘Miraculously’, that solved the problem.
Funny enough, sometimes you used to have to hold the power button to drain the caps. That would (rarely) fix some laptop issues.
Not just laptops, even. I’ve fixed desktops that way. Unllug and hold power button.
And I’m fairly sure it might still work in some exceptionally niche scenarios
Not just laptops, or desktops, but I’ve had it work on Printers, though you had to unplug the cable from both ends for it to work for whatever reason.
One time a friend and I (both in IT at the time) tried absolutely everything to fix a bizarre computer problem, then he told me to literally pull the hard drive completely out if the case and sit unplugged overnight before putting it back in. For some reason that worked, even though unplugging everything and plugging it right back in did nothing. Asked him why and he said “No idea, I was desperate.”
I’d just run a continuos ping and see if it dropped offline at all, and for how long.
Someone said you tell them to turn it off and unplug it, because you need a number from the plug side going into the computer. Then you coach them through the process to find the right plug, and they don’t feel stupid because this is a strange process.
Then when they say there’s no numbers on the plug, you pretend like this is new and useful information, tell them to hold the power button and make sure no lights come on, and then you tell them to plug it in and turn it back on
Now, not only have you confirmed they definitely turned off the computer without asking a bunch of potentially insulting questions, the showmanship makes them feel like this is arcane knowledge you’ve taught them
This is why it is not at all unreasonable to envision future IT people as basically being Comstar or the Mechanicus. People already think we do magic, just wait a hundred years and we can convince them of anything.
What do you mean? I already believe I do magic. Granted, I’m not IT, I’m a dev, but I literally type words and runes and the lives of thousands of people change.
The customer will call me and say “I need to do this, I have this problem, help” and I either say “it will be done” or I tell her to go through a series of arcane actions, maybe asking for strange sequences of actions or ask for special numbers I leave around that mean nothing to anyone aside from me and my coworker
I literally sometimes say “this feels fucky, can you restart X or Y for me?” And my team lead is just like yeah, ok, that makes no sense let’s try it. And vise versa
You have no idea how superstitious you get as a senior dev. And it works. It’s just better and faster to accept rituals that work than to dig into every problem
Praise the Omnisiah.
I’d opt to just explain how restart and shutdown/power on works if they needed all that but most users I’ve worked with don’t want to be involved in the fix, they just want it fixed.