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Yeah, but what are your other options? * procmon, if you're lucky you'll catch WTF is going on somewhere deep in the registry * Hoping Microsoft still has the

Yeah, but what are your other options? * procmon, if you're lucky you'll catch WTF is going on somewhere deep in the registry * Hoping Microsoft still has the answer in a KB article somewhere (hope you didn't need any Server 2008/2012 stuff that was on UserVoice, it's gone now) * WinDBG if you're that good Which brings us back to cargo culted answers like sfc /scannow I wouldn't compeltely discount social.microsoft, very very occasionally it's had a tiny tidbit of information in between the people incorrecting each other.

arp242 5y ago
I used to fix Windows computers for a living; this was 10 years ago and I don't really know what changed in Windows 8/10 as I never used it, but I imagine it's roughly similar to XP and 7. With some knowledge and experience it's possible to fix a lot of problems. Actually, a lot of problems people chuck up to "Micro$ucks bad" are just hardware problems. If someone comes in with "I get random BSODs" then there's a good chance it's just faulty a faulty RAM module, disk, or something like that. The first step for random issues should always be to run memtest and a disk check tool (I don't recall the name of the tool I used for that, but there are some subtleties involved in testing this well, and I don't know the status of SSDs as this was kind of before they became common). Checking hardware is easy, checking software isn't. Software problems can be a bit trickier to solve, depending on what the issue is. They're very hard to debug remotely over the internet: but there's a lot more you can do than "sfc /scannow" if you're sitting in front of the computer. You really don't need WinDBG in most cases.
- pixl97 5y ago
  Most problems can be solved if you want to put massive amounts of time in it. The issue you state, without realizing you've stated it, is that 'knowledge and experience' is in demand and expensive. So I have the option of investing a few hundred bucks of someone's time into fixing the issue, or running 'sfc /scannow' and surprisingly often fixing the problem.
  - arp242 5y ago
    It's not that time-consuming if you know a little bit what you're doing, you can go a long way with just 30 minutes; and this saves time/money too as 1) 1) hardware problems are correctly identified and fixed instead of lingering for ages (and reducing productivity), and 2) no need to reïnstall everything, which is time-consuming as well.

arp242 5y ago

I used to fix Windows computers for a living; this was 10 years ago and I don't really know what changed in Windows 8/10 as I never used it, but I imagine it's roughly similar to XP and 7. With some knowledge and experience it's possible to fix a lot of problems. Actually, a lot of problems people chuck up to "Micro$ucks bad" are just hardware problems. If someone comes in with "I get random BSODs" then there's a good chance it's just faulty a faulty RAM module, disk, or something like that. The first step for random issues should always be to run memtest and a disk check tool (I don't recall the name of the tool I used for that, but there are some subtleties involved in testing this well, and I don't know the status of SSDs as this was kind of before they became common). Checking hardware is easy, checking software isn't. Software problems can be a bit trickier to solve, depending on what the issue is. They're very hard to debug remotely over the internet: but there's a lot more you can do than "sfc /scannow" if you're sitting in front of the computer. You really don't need WinDBG in most cases.

pixl97 5y ago
Most problems can be solved if you want to put massive amounts of time in it. The issue you state, without realizing you've stated it, is that 'knowledge and experience' is in demand and expensive. So I have the option of investing a few hundred bucks of someone's time into fixing the issue, or running 'sfc /scannow' and surprisingly often fixing the problem.
- arp242 5y ago
  It's not that time-consuming if you know a little bit what you're doing, you can go a long way with just 30 minutes; and this saves time/money too as 1) 1) hardware problems are correctly identified and fixed instead of lingering for ages (and reducing productivity), and 2) no need to reïnstall everything, which is time-consuming as well.