4 ms·

Sometimes these magical sequences are really just a set of hoops you send your users through so they will actually do what you want them to do (unplug machine f

Sometimes these magical sequences are really just a set of hoops you send your users through so they will actually do what you want them to do (unplug machine for 60 seconds, plug back in). Otherwise they'll half-ass it and miss the simple fix.

bombcar 5y ago
Exactly - I suspect that often "unplug, wait X seconds, hit power, plug in" would do most of it but the "wait X seconds" part is what people have trouble actually doing, so you add the busy work. The ones where weird sequences do something are with power still plugged in (the chipset can react differently when it notices the power button is held down as it turns on, etc).
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
  Having worked phone support for a dial-up ISP in high school, I can confirm that tons of people will assume and skip steps for any number of reasons - faulty mental models, misunderstanding the reasons we wanted to check things, who knows. If there was a "no dial tone" call the first thing I needed to check was obviously if the phone cord was plugged in. And I had a few of these calls that ended the same way: me several pages deep in the troubleshooting tree before the customer sheepishly admitting that the phone cord wasn't plugged in. I asked my coworkers and they all had their own tricks. One liked to have the caller unplug/plug the wire back in at the modem while they looked for a serial number printed by the jack. Another knew the Bell system pinout order and would have customers unplug and "check the wires" on both ends to be sure they "had the right wire". No one cared what the results of those questions were – of course the cord you bought from Radio Shack was wired up correctly. But you checking means you have to unplug and plug back in and that makes you discover that "oops, when I moved the filing cabinet I must've ripped the plug out of the wall". Or "oops, the pin on the back of the modem broke off and I was too cheap to get a new one and it wasn't making contact". Or whatever.

bombcar 5y ago

Exactly - I suspect that often "unplug, wait X seconds, hit power, plug in" would do most of it but the "wait X seconds" part is what people have trouble actually doing, so you add the busy work. The ones where weird sequences do something are with power still plugged in (the chipset can react differently when it notices the power button is held down as it turns on, etc).

35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
Having worked phone support for a dial-up ISP in high school, I can confirm that tons of people will assume and skip steps for any number of reasons - faulty mental models, misunderstanding the reasons we wanted to check things, who knows. If there was a "no dial tone" call the first thing I needed to check was obviously if the phone cord was plugged in. And I had a few of these calls that ended the same way: me several pages deep in the troubleshooting tree before the customer sheepishly admitting that the phone cord wasn't plugged in. I asked my coworkers and they all had their own tricks. One liked to have the caller unplug/plug the wire back in at the modem while they looked for a serial number printed by the jack. Another knew the Bell system pinout order and would have customers unplug and "check the wires" on both ends to be sure they "had the right wire". No one cared what the results of those questions were – of course the cord you bought from Radio Shack was wired up correctly. But you checking means you have to unplug and plug back in and that makes you discover that "oops, when I moved the filing cabinet I must've ripped the plug out of the wall". Or "oops, the pin on the back of the modem broke off and I was too cheap to get a new one and it wasn't making contact". Or whatever.