I usually think "they are lying*
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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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.
How do you restart it wrong? And more importantly - what's the correct way to do it?
It's so annoying (and slightly embarrassing, and funny how often it happens), to restart it myself to no avail... then have it work after a second identical restart just because someone else is spectating.
A lot of people just close the laptop lid or turn off the monitor thinking that's rebooting. Or they shutdown thinking it's better than restarting, but Windows' default shutdown is more of a close all programs and hibernate, so it often doesn't fix things.
I've heard holding Shift when clicking Shutdown performs a real Shutdown, and anectodally it seems to work, but I can't be sure.
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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
We know you're lying.
I went into a computer repair shop, and the dude was so impressed when I told him my personal stuff was on the 2tb D drive, and not the tiny C drive.
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
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
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We don't wonder. I don't even ask. We just check the uptime to confirm. Or reboot it again just to be sure.
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I do not trust end users with anything.
Except we can tell that you didn't...
Uptime: 237 days
"I closed the lid..."
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They can tell you are lying. The system reports uptime.
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.
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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.
The dumbest thing I encountered was someone who claimed their CD drive was broken.
I came by, flipped the CD and then it started working.
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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.
Yeah it is stupid.
But easily solved by disabling fast startup.
It is easy to work around once you know it exists, personally for my one remaining windows box, I rather prefer to let fast startup do it's thing ( it is really fast ) and just re-boot it once in a while.
Start -> Shift+shutdown also tells Windows to not use fast boot or hybrid shut or whatever...
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Mac troubleshooting be like: any issue > reimage the machine
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.
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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.
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I send the request and list the troubleshooting steps I have tried. Mostly so that they know it's not frivolous but also to avoid duplicate work.
But so often those stupid steps work. Turn it off and back on. Uninstall and reinstall.
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