why do people lie to their IT pro? don't fuckin tell me you rebooted your computer when i can see you're fuckin lying and it's been up for 44 days, you dipshit.
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Because no one wants the issue to be their fault. They want the root cause to be that it just broke on its own. Implying that not restarting causes issues makes them feel too guilty.
I absolutely hate it when I have to reboot. All the cr@p open, VPN's, all the various systems I'm logged into, at any given time for what I'm working on. It's like having another limb. To reboot it is to momentarily sever that limb for however long it takes to "grow it back"
Yeah it does seem a bit weird. I use Mullvad as my VPN and I have the option to route it through multiple locations if I need to, but I just use the 1 location because I’m not a spy or criminal and I prefer my internet speed to be somewhat useable.
Years ago,
I was a tech onboard a research ship. 1 of the science crew was making my life hell. So I turned the intensity (CRT's back then) to min, on his equipment during overnight down time.
By the time I came back to the lab, he had the gusts of his control box strewn all over the floor.
THIS. It’s the first thing I do if something isn’t acting right. Because it works so well! Had an issue where photoshop kept crashing on trying to open. Now I know if it happens just restart and it’s back to normal.
I don't do every time, but often. Same with the phone. It's much easier to forget the phone, since it's my alarm clock, GPS, etc. but it benefits from a fresh start too.
I once threw a flip phone across a room in anger at its shitty performance, breaking the top from the bottom. Somehow that “solution” came to me before the thought to turn it of and on again. I’d say I learned my lesson, but I still forget to reboot my phone. Thankfully phones have evolved.
How about the users that will shutdown and turn it back on instead of restart and then are annoyed that it doesn't actually count... because Windows doesn't treat a shutdown as a restart, instead it's a lot more like a weird hibernation if you have Fast Startup enabled (which is the norm).
Happens in all kind of industries unfortunately. Hearing this lie since 10 years now and the only way to deal with is squeezing my stress ball really hard😅
My work laptop did a bios upgrade Monday lunch time…… less than Two days ago…
the Task manager claims it’s been “Up” 6 days 2 hours 25 minutes.
Does a BIOS upgrade not need a reboot? I claimed it did.
Why do IT professionals trust what Microsoft claim?
Have you looked at what your own PC claims?
Mine didn't realize that the fastboot option doesn't reset the uptime clock when the PC is shutdown and then booted up.
I'd guess the vast majority of folks who did a full shutdown would assume that it counts as a reboot (and "lie"). It does for me now... but only because I disabled fastboot myself.
I feel you! It's like, come on, we can see the logs, we know what's going on… but I think people lie because they're either embarrassed about not knowing something or they're trying to avoid looking stupid 🙈
I was going to suggest this. I'm not a guru, more of an experienced user. I get it. However, I've worked with people who really need their hands held and to have things slowly spelled out in small words. I worry about parents who don't let their kids use tech. I see limits, but experience is vital.
From the first time I used a computer, if there was a problem I’d run through a checklist. Monitor not on. Check if computer is on. Yes, check connections. No call IT. Computer not turning on. Check if plugged in. No, plug it in. Yes, check if strip is on. No, plug it in. 1/
Double check that everything is plugged in & properly connected. Turn on computer. Computer still won’t turn on. Call IT. Did you … YES. Everything is plugged in. Computer was turned OFF last night. It won’t turn on. Help. Btw, company policy was to completely shut down computer at end of day.
Your thoroughness reminds me of the times a cable has been half in and half out, but looks connected. "Unplug and replug just in case it's not quite right" has saved me many times!
Claiming they "lie" to probably doesn't make either of your day any better....
Stay humble, and they might not call you a "liar" when they tell your boss you are not [‘S’,’u’,’n’,’s’,’h’,’i’,’n’,’e’] while providing tech support!😉
I have a friend who is always telling me the ways microsoft if spying on her while she:
rarely shuts the computer off
Leaves 10 to 12 internet pages open at a time
will not clear cache or cookies because it's faster to
login
or re-open a page
IT is like Santa, they always know. My IT guy fixed my laptop glitch & returned it with a cheerful "I also cleaned out your keyboard, maybe eat lunch someplace besides your desk 😉"
They probably just shut down their computer and started it again without disabling fast boot in windows... If I didn't know better I'd call that a reboot aswell
I only reboot a desktop or server system when it gets a new kernel, or on (very) rare occasions when I manage to trigger a hard lock (last time was in 2022). Laptops, on the other hand, occasionally run out of power and stop by themselves :-)
right? like listen, i can't explain to you in laymen's terms about a windows registry, but i can tell you for some magic reason if your outlook won't open it's largely because something wants to reboot and you should just do it
Right, I am not an IT person, but there's a reason this was always my first bit of advice to my parents when something was being inexplicably WEIRD on their computer.
Sometimes it's not their fault. Selecting shutdown just hibernates the computer instead of actually shutting it down. I tell them to restart now instead.
Yo this just happened to me. Microsoft has changed something so when I shut down it’s not shutting down. My IT asked me and I told him I shut it down every night. But when he checked the system it said I hadn’t shut it down for a month. He thought I was lying and I wasn’t!
The feature you’re describing is called “fast startup” and it can be a headache as shutting down a computer with this feature enabled does not truly shut down the computer. Selecting the “restart” option specifically restarts the computer fully.
Truly a feat of arrogance to effectively think your computer runs on magic while also choosing to completely ignore the wizard telling you exactly how to get what you want.
How ms handles "shutdowns" can be some of the issue now. Been on sessions that have been up forever, but I know the user shuts the computer down. Had fast startup check marked. Used to be reboot and shutdown turn on was the same
For many years, that's how I made bank. I'd tell someone over the phone to do A, B and C and they said they did and it didn't help. So if I went there, it cost a solid 5 figures and travel expenses. It was always A, B or C that solved it.
When you’re doing tech support, you can save a lot of time not asking what they did and just tell them you need to just go through everything in the “correct order” from the beginning, or go through “the checklist”, even if you’re just winging it off the top of your head.
One trick I used a lot was telling people you need to turn it off and unplug it for 2 minutes for a “bios reset” or some other plausible sounding bullshit.
If your motherboard has an LED on it to indicate power, when you power off the pc and unplug it, it'll often hold power on that LED for a ridiculously long time because of the capacitors stored charge, but hitting the power button discharges it immediately and you get to watch that LED shut off.
Computers are just electrified sand that thinks for itself, so when they're holding the wrong amount of voltage for some weird reason, completely draining the power from the board can fix a lot of things.
Shakes the ghosts out.
Routers without power buttons sometimes need a full five minutes.
If you power it down and unplug it for long enough that's actually not bullshit.
There are capacitors on mother boards, and leaving it unplugged long enough (or pressing the power button while it's disconnected) will discharge the capacitors, ensuring that it fully reboots everything.
Because to most people a standard shut down and power on counts as a reboot, blame windows for making fast startup a thing. I gave the IT team at my work shit for forgoing this when they asked how often I power down, when they should have asked when my last reboot was. They are different things now.
👆👆👆when I worked help desk, this was the biggest reason. People shut down thinking it’s the same as a reboot. My team thought I was an idiot when I explained this (less eloquently) to them.
Right. People really don't understand. And holy crap im glad you could understand what I said, re-reading that autocorrect did me dirty on that first part.
Thank you!!! I was so embarrassed when my IT said my computer was on for a month. Then I found an article about fast startup and sent it to them. I was shutting down every night. Now I reboot in the morning. F in MSFT!!!!!
This confused the hell out of me the odd time I had to use a windows PC and opened task manager.
Apparently the last time the machine was turned on can be found in the event viewer, but I can never remember where.
Fast startup technically shouldn't cause problems, but I wouldn't be surprised.
It is in task manager, I can't remember exactly where and can't look as task manager is blocked by our IT department where I work. As to why it affects it, fast reboot saves most the stuff in ram to a sector in mass storage, this way when you turn back on whatever you were doing comes back up fast.
I started giving people the benefit of the doubt when I had a user tell me they had restarted the computer only to discover they were actually just power cycling the monitor. Not everyone is computer savvy, they really thought they were restarting the PC.
To be fair, they probably shut it down and then power it back on. If they did so, it means the computer went into hybernation mode and doesn't actually restart shit (thanks for shit MS). So they may have been telling you the truth, from their perspective. Only selecting reboot actually does it.
Usually it’s because we have users waiting for our attention with issues which genuinely need our help to resolve or which are seriously affecting something important, whilst we are having to faff about with someone who is wasting our employer’s time and money.
Then simply tell the user that's wasting your time, that they're wasting your time, or more specifically, have not rebooted, etc. Because honestly these attitudes tell me that certain IT pros think they are remarkably superior, and that's why users HATE it pros, and the vicious cycle goes on and on
Same reason folks tell me they never miss a dose of their medicine, yet it’s been 51 days since they last got a 30 day supply. When I challenge the narrative they just avert their eyes, shrug, and say ‘I don’t know, I always seem to have plenty of that”
To be fair, they could just be ignorant and not know what reboot means. Maybe they logged off and logged back in thinking that was it. But still, true, they are a dipshit for lying.
Okay, to be fair, on a lot of modern Windows PCs, clicking restart does not reset the uptime counter - it basically hibernates the OS and restarts. You have to actually shut down and power back on. Ran into an issue doing win11 upgrades at my site where it wouldn't start to download the update
Until after it had fully restarted the system, and people would swear up and down they hit restart. Sure enough, clicking restart wouldn't fix it, but shutting down and powering back on would. I blame Microsoft.
So much this. I was chastised by my office IT person for having a long uptime despite hitting shut down every day when I finished working. Turns out I have to "occasionally" chose restart as that actually shuts it down (before starting it back up)
I had to tell my IT guy today to close my ticket about phantom keystrokes when he told me to try with a different keyboard and I realized that my cat was lying on my wireless keyboard in the other room. I took the L.
I had a trackpad failure recently that was just like this, it would move the cursor but wouldn’t click. Turns out my wireless mouse in my bag was being squeezed in a state of semi-permanent click. Bullet dodged.
Because they think when the monitor goes off its turned off. Thats how human brains work when they are not inside tech people. Tech people brains are thinking well did i hear/see/action several subtle things, or did the monitor just go off which is a common signal that means nothing
BTW, the uptimes of Unix-based systems don't even hold a candle to OpenVMS (an operating system that's equally foreign to both Linux and Windows users). There are servers that've been running for *literally decades*, and this reliability is why VMS is still in use in 2025…
True. OpenVMS has a reputation for being "disaster-tolerant" and is used primarily by banks and government databases where it's imperative that records be accessible at all times.
you're playing in a different ballpark. a linux pc can run fine for a year. a windows pc can barely make it past the 6 hour mark without weirdness popping up.
unless it's my pc and it sleeps, then the OS doesn't matter, it's going to act up no matter what when it wakes. shoutout MSI motherboards
Experiences vary. My PC is perfectly fine until an update forces a reboot, I hibernate it when I’m not using it because it’s a pain to reopen all my work.
My work PC is Windows. I also only reboot it when updates require it (and in that case, I mean I go to use the computer and find that it has mysteriously rebooted itself when I was away from it and instead of getting right to my tasks, I have to start everything up again). Varies from daily to ~week
I reboot my PC because I know I should do it but the IT at my job is actively telling people to have their computer on 24/7 and I lose my mind about it whenever I have to think about it.
Expectation is, in an office context, your PC shouldn't be experiencing instability. And if it is, you should be contacting IT.
I recommend my clients restart regularly in lieu of shutting down, as restart does what shut down used to. Shut down is more like hibernation now in Windows 🙃
A lot of devices don't fully shut down when that function is used, so they think they have actually shut the device down but in actuality the device just goes into hibernation. Thats why the reboot/restart function usually gets mentioned by name.
Comments
Seriously.
Reboot it.
Oops.
Maybe journalists could do that too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvsSZsJlSQc
“Press any key”
“I don’t have an “any” key. “
Printer’s not working
“Hi, yeah, unplug it. Yes, from the socket. Plug it back in. ok, bye. “
Something like that
You have to have auth and other crap.
Been 5 years. It’s getting fuzzy.
I used to have dozens of script to check various things.
Use the English. Did you push the power button until the lights went out?
OK now push it again so the lights go on.
That's a reboot.
20 years Level 1 Help Desk. Translating Geek Speak to normal folk so the smart guys don't have to.
I got the simple solutions attempted, documented and passed on the real work to Level 2. I had fun.
I was a tech onboard a research ship. 1 of the science crew was making my life hell. So I turned the intensity (CRT's back then) to min, on his equipment during overnight down time.
By the time I came back to the lab, he had the gusts of his control box strewn all over the floor.
Do you:
A) Explain to them that sleep mode is not the same as shutdown/power off.
B) Realize they are an idiot, and just tell them to do what you say exactly as you say it.
the Task manager claims it’s been “Up” 6 days 2 hours 25 minutes.
Does a BIOS upgrade not need a reboot? I claimed it did.
Why do IT professionals trust what Microsoft claim?
Have you looked at what your own PC claims?
I'd guess the vast majority of folks who did a full shutdown would assume that it counts as a reboot (and "lie"). It does for me now... but only because I disabled fastboot myself.
A lot of people think "reboot" means closing your laptop lid and opening it again.
they do not know that the thing they did is not rebooting it
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
"Rule number one in IT: everybody lies"
Also “did you spill anything on it?”
“no? Then why is the inside gummed up with juice?”
We need to tell it to "restart".
No wonder people are confused 😵💫
Some people think the "hard disk" is the chassis/case.
When I speak to people that have Phds in their fields it's not like I know every detail about all other professions.
Most people don't lie to piss you off.
Most people just use the devices they get as a necessary "tool", and don't care about the specifics of the internals of the device...
Stay humble, and they might not call you a "liar" when they tell your boss you are not [‘S’,’u’,’n’,’s’,’h’,’i’,’n’,’e’] while providing tech support!😉
They don't know the difference.
rarely shuts the computer off
Leaves 10 to 12 internet pages open at a time
will not clear cache or cookies because it's faster to
login
or re-open a page
(always mad the computer is getting slower)
https://bofh.bjash.com/bofh/bsmh1.html
"Trust, but verify"
😂😂😂
$ uptime
12:27:32 up 1210 days, 8:32, 1 user, load average: 0.26, 0.14, 0.14
The only reason it isn't longer is because we took down the battery bank for a few hours for maintenance about 3.3 years ago.
"What's Windows, Mommy?"
(We all wear both hats at different times in our lives ;-) )
Not many people actually 'restart' their devices, but they do 'shut down every night' - which isn't the same thing with fast start-up enabled.
Shakes the ghosts out.
Routers without power buttons sometimes need a full five minutes.
There are capacitors on mother boards, and leaving it unplugged long enough (or pressing the power button while it's disconnected) will discharge the capacitors, ensuring that it fully reboots everything.
Did this help?
[yes] [no]
Apparently the last time the machine was turned on can be found in the event viewer, but I can never remember where.
Fast startup technically shouldn't cause problems, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Unplug your router for 10 minutes, restart your computer, leave the router unplugged, THEN call IT!
Disabling that is a good first step
Definitely not Windows 11 on that thing.
I just checked my uptime(1), and it reported that my machine's been running for 27 days. Which is nothing, BTW.
unless it's my pc and it sleeps, then the OS doesn't matter, it's going to act up no matter what when it wakes. shoutout MSI motherboards
I recommend my clients restart regularly in lieu of shutting down, as restart does what shut down used to. Shut down is more like hibernation now in Windows 🙃
mm ok ... shutdown /r
"what did you do??"
rebooted your system
"but everything I was working on is gone!"
ticket closed: and so is the problem you were having