When you finally call IT or support departments, all your calls are logged.
The reason we start with stuff you may already have done, is so that those steps can be documented. Would look bad if you start editing a registry and all it needed was a restart huh?
I had a guy once a few years back who took a PC I built for him home on a Friday. I had run it at the store with no issues before he picked it up.
He called on Monday saying it wouldn't boot, and it was my fault for building the thing, and he wanted me to fix it. after talking to him for 7 minutes, I had him bring it in.
Well, as he is standing over me cursing me, the store, etc. I look at his root, and lo and behold his system files have been edited, nothing in config.sys, nor autoexec. (win 3.11 DOS system, I said it was a while back
)
Looking at the dir, I asked him if he had inadvertantly played with his files. NO! Not I! ("It's your problem! you guys can't build for !!!!!!")
So I pointed out that the computer knows when you alter a file too, and saves that info, and looking at his two system files in question that they were last modified yesterday. On Sunday, you know, when we are not open! So how does he explain that? Manager wanted to know as well, and this guy after I recreated the files and booted it, was asked to leave.
I use this example to illistrate that while you may not be of this type, for the most part if someone says "I did that" they might not be telling you the truth (maybe they did not understand what it was I asked them and do not want to admit ignorance, perhaps some just figure if they say "Yes, I did that" that by some miricle of magic I'll be able to fix it, don't really know).
So you can see why IT's might go thru steps a cust may or may not have gone through (depending on issue presented) so that it can be documented, and go from there.
[ 09 January 2002: Message edited by: RW-1 ]</p>