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This isn't a new phenomenon. In the mid 2000s I was working in a computer repair shop and similarly most of our fixes were just windows reinstalls with some lig

This isn't a new phenomenon. In the mid 2000s I was working in a computer repair shop and similarly most of our fixes were just windows reinstalls with some light backup. Why? Because that fixed basically every software problem and was mostly unattended work so it didn't cost a lot. Ultimately the customer wants the cheapest and fastest solution. They don't care that it was their limewire viruses or bonzai buddy IE extensions or whatever that slowed it down. Here's the big kicker imo: If we were charging $100 for a reinstall/backup, and we could sell them a faster computer for $400, then there is very little wiggle room for real repair to happen. Parts + labor could easily exceed the cost of a new budget machine. If there isn't a RMA (free part replacement) involved, the repair probably wasn't worth it. It's just the economics of computer repair, imo.

b112 2y ago
Yes. In the early 90s I did board level repairs on Amigas, the most fun was rewiring a board after someone spilt spaghetti sauce inside and just kept using it. Then ants got inside. It was like some sort of miniature world horror movie, mould, eaten traces, ants in dead poses from shorts. Did a bathtub soap off and dry in oven, used alcohol to second wash, replaced like 4473838 billion caps, and had to rewire a few traces. Good times, and still cheaper than a replacement board. (The soap ph was particularly important due to all the acidic leaking caps) But that was computing costs in the early 90s.
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  What kind of monsters spills spaghetti sauce and then keeps using it?!? Powerful.
  - b112 2y ago
    http://amigablogs.net/feed/2016/10/upgrading-amiga-1200-part-1 http://amigablogs.net/feed/2016/10/upgrading-amiga-1200-part... They spilled it all in the top vents, and didn't open it to clean. It oozed everywhere inside. They only cleaned the outside. The guy told me "it smelled really bad for a while, then seemed fine, until the ants came"
- lencastre 2y ago
  You had me at “… and then ants got inside…” I spit my lasagna all over my brand new HHKB.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
I mean hell, this is how I do things at home with my gaming PC. All data is kept on SATA SSD's and the OS lives on an NVMe for this reason. If Windows runs into issues, nuke it, rebuild, start fresh. I have a powershell script that sets everything up for me and links the user folders back to the ones on the SATA disk, and then I just download steam and my games. My rec time is limited, I'm not spending it troubleshooting bullshit. Like, I will a little? But if it turns into that weird genre of "well this app bumped this app and now I can't play this specific game while running discord without crashes" and the fixes involve enabling and disabling services or updating drivers or whatever the hell, nah. Reimage windows, off to the races.
yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
> This isn't a new phenomenon. In the mid 2000s I was working in a computer repair shop and similarly most of our fixes were just windows reinstalls with some light backup. Why? Because that fixed basically every software problem and was mostly unattended work so it didn't cost a lot. Surely that only counts if you actually execute on some light backup and restore? Like... if the computer isn't working, and you "fix" it and hand it back unable to run the software they had, I'm not sure that should count as "fixed".
arp242 2y ago
I worked as a repair tech for years, and I found that many performance problems could be fixed with that sysinternals startup tool (I forgot the name, it's been a long time) and just disabling stuff. This would be 5 minutes if you knew what you were doing. The second was hardware issues, especially slow hard drives that started to fail but hadn't quite failed yet. There was a tool to read all data and print drops in performance (again, I forgot the name). This was before SSDs became commonplace – I don't know what it's like with SSDs. I was as productive as anyone in terms of number of customers helped/week, but looking at my coworkers there were definitely two types of techs: the ones like me who knew what they were doing, and the ones who didn't. I know this sounds rather arrogant and pompous, but it's true. As a company, you can give people the time and space to develop this know-how, or you can't, which is how you end up with "just reinstall shrug" type of repair shops. I was lucky enough to work at a small independent shop where we were given lots of free space and autonomy, and some of us took this to become pretty good at fixing stuff in short turnaround times, which benefited everyone. We developed a bunch of internal tooling for this, too. I maintained Anduril, our FreeBSD-based live disk with tons of stuff (the company name was Aragorn, so this seemed like a good name). Of course, this store no longer exists. Or rather, they pivoted to business support, because there's just no competing against the online stores with €10 profit margins on every laptop they sell, and there just aren't enough consumers to care about quality support to make the financials work out.
- criley2 2y ago
  I mean, we absolutely did "Free PC Checkups" and obviously we knew how to tinker with startup and do virus and adware removal. These aren't some magical skills that only the rarest of employees knew, it was absolutely basic nerd knowledge that everyone who even applied knew front and back. Back then of course adware/malware scanners were huge. We certainly did hook computers up and start a bevy of automated scanners and tools and fix performance issues. And every single time it cost a lot more labor and a lot more money to the customer. But it's up to them and a lot of people didn't want a reformat or had a more expensive computer that wasn't as economical to replace. Believe me when I tell you that productivity wise, a guy reformatting 5 computers at once in an hour flat is lapping anyone who is spending multiple hours per computer running those scanners and tinkering setting by setting.

b112 2y ago

Yes. In the early 90s I did board level repairs on Amigas, the most fun was rewiring a board after someone spilt spaghetti sauce inside and just kept using it. Then ants got inside. It was like some sort of miniature world horror movie, mould, eaten traces, ants in dead poses from shorts. Did a bathtub soap off and dry in oven, used alcohol to second wash, replaced like 4473838 billion caps, and had to rewire a few traces. Good times, and still cheaper than a replacement board. (The soap ph was particularly important due to all the acidic leaking caps) But that was computing costs in the early 90s.

datadrivenangel 2y ago
What kind of monsters spills spaghetti sauce and then keeps using it?!? Powerful.
- b112 2y ago
  http://amigablogs.net/feed/2016/10/upgrading-amiga-1200-part-1 http://amigablogs.net/feed/2016/10/upgrading-amiga-1200-part... They spilled it all in the top vents, and didn't open it to clean. It oozed everywhere inside. They only cleaned the outside. The guy told me "it smelled really bad for a while, then seemed fine, until the ants came"
lencastre 2y ago
You had me at “… and then ants got inside…” I spit my lasagna all over my brand new HHKB.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

I mean hell, this is how I do things at home with my gaming PC. All data is kept on SATA SSD's and the OS lives on an NVMe for this reason. If Windows runs into issues, nuke it, rebuild, start fresh. I have a powershell script that sets everything up for me and links the user folders back to the ones on the SATA disk, and then I just download steam and my games. My rec time is limited, I'm not spending it troubleshooting bullshit. Like, I will a little? But if it turns into that weird genre of "well this app bumped this app and now I can't play this specific game while running discord without crashes" and the fixes involve enabling and disabling services or updating drivers or whatever the hell, nah. Reimage windows, off to the races.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

> This isn't a new phenomenon. In the mid 2000s I was working in a computer repair shop and similarly most of our fixes were just windows reinstalls with some light backup. Why? Because that fixed basically every software problem and was mostly unattended work so it didn't cost a lot. Surely that only counts if you actually execute on some light backup and restore? Like... if the computer isn't working, and you "fix" it and hand it back unable to run the software they had, I'm not sure that should count as "fixed".

arp242 2y ago

I worked as a repair tech for years, and I found that many performance problems could be fixed with that sysinternals startup tool (I forgot the name, it's been a long time) and just disabling stuff. This would be 5 minutes if you knew what you were doing. The second was hardware issues, especially slow hard drives that started to fail but hadn't quite failed yet. There was a tool to read all data and print drops in performance (again, I forgot the name). This was before SSDs became commonplace – I don't know what it's like with SSDs. I was as productive as anyone in terms of number of customers helped/week, but looking at my coworkers there were definitely two types of techs: the ones like me who knew what they were doing, and the ones who didn't. I know this sounds rather arrogant and pompous, but it's true. As a company, you can give people the time and space to develop this know-how, or you can't, which is how you end up with "just reinstall shrug" type of repair shops. I was lucky enough to work at a small independent shop where we were given lots of free space and autonomy, and some of us took this to become pretty good at fixing stuff in short turnaround times, which benefited everyone. We developed a bunch of internal tooling for this, too. I maintained Anduril, our FreeBSD-based live disk with tons of stuff (the company name was Aragorn, so this seemed like a good name). Of course, this store no longer exists. Or rather, they pivoted to business support, because there's just no competing against the online stores with €10 profit margins on every laptop they sell, and there just aren't enough consumers to care about quality support to make the financials work out.

criley2 2y ago
I mean, we absolutely did "Free PC Checkups" and obviously we knew how to tinker with startup and do virus and adware removal. These aren't some magical skills that only the rarest of employees knew, it was absolutely basic nerd knowledge that everyone who even applied knew front and back. Back then of course adware/malware scanners were huge. We certainly did hook computers up and start a bevy of automated scanners and tools and fix performance issues. And every single time it cost a lot more labor and a lot more money to the customer. But it's up to them and a lot of people didn't want a reformat or had a more expensive computer that wasn't as economical to replace. Believe me when I tell you that productivity wise, a guy reformatting 5 computers at once in an hour flat is lapping anyone who is spending multiple hours per computer running those scanners and tinkering setting by setting.