Not just laptops, even. I've fixed desktops that way. Unllug and hold power button.

And I'm fairly sure it might still work in some exceptionally niche scenarios

The number of times I had been remoted into a user's system while they were "rebooting" is too damned high. Also, a lot of them got upset with me for then restarting their computer because they had unsaved work up.

Always fun to have that conversation with a supervisor, most of them don't like that their people wasted time and lost work because they were not following directions AFTER BEING TOLD TO SAVE YOUR SHIT AND REBOOT.

"I get an error when using the LOB app, help!"

What was the error?

"I don't know, I closed it already"

Ok, replicate the problem for me.

*Replicates the issue, immediately closes the error window*

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

I told my kid he needed to turn off his computer at night when he's done. He said "ugh...I always do". Then proceeded to lock it as if proving me wrong.

I've had people unplug the system "just to be sure it's plugged in properly" when they "absolutely restarted" but nothing worked. 'Miraculously', that solved the problem.

Systeminfo|findstr Boot

Works as well, but the B in boot has to be capitalized

Does get-ciminstance not do the trick? I know the PS wmic cmdlets are depreciated, but I doubt they'd remove it entirely given how much uses that in the background.

On the other hand, our endpoint management solution reported long, continuous uptime even if devices were shut down. Turns out fastboot was to thank for it.

Restart, shutdown, and halt are all different for Unix based machines as well. So you need that info to diagnose issues on Macs or Linux machines too

People expecting me to magically fix what Microsoft keeps breaking in every imaginable way, update after update, with bugs failing to be fixed for literal years, and then getting pissy at best or straight up an asshole Karen who wants to talk to the manager—or sometimes CEO!—while insulting me at worst, if I'm unable to fix or workaround this horrible closed source, poorly documented hot garbage with no real human support from Microsoft.

Meanwhile Linux. When shit breaks, I might spend days troubleshooting, but fuck if I don't manage to do it after finding some 5 years old thread on a forum that leads to a line of code in another random thread. Also logs. Love that shit.

Had a company tell us we needed to get our ticket numbers up, but we didn't have any open tickets to close. We were told users shouldn't have their machines up for more than 5 days without a restart because updates and such were pushed and w.e bs reasons. Just started running reports for uptime and had each tech ping 10 users and tell them to restart or kick off a restart if the machine had no logged on users on it. Poof 150 extra tickets a week from our office. When there is 75,000+ computers on the network... There are always computers that haven't been restarted in a week.

Only job I've ever had to create busy work at. And it was solely because they forced a return to office, so instead of supporting 60,000 employees we were small groups supporting far less (maybe 100 in my building).

Horribly inefficient

Yeah, had that. Reboots take longer than 5 seconds.

"Oh you mean reset the hard drive?"

If that is what we must call it to end this conversation, then yes.

One time a friend and I (both in IT at the time) tried absolutely everything to fix a bizarre computer problem, then he told me to literally pull the hard drive completely out if the case and sit unplugged overnight before putting it back in. For some reason that worked, even though unplugging everything and plugging it right back in did nothing. Asked him why and he said “No idea, I was desperate.”

Related to PEBKAC: In Estonian we have a saying: "the problem is in the cardan between the seat and the steering wheel"

Supposedly a fairly eccentric teacher I had (businessman and ex 90s "connected" guy got bored and wanted to teach middle school shop class to confirm the rumors that kids are indeed getting stupider compared to the "good old days") once managed to get an employee of his to go to the parts store to ask for said "cardan" for their car after asking him for advice.

Ooh I need to start using this

I wonder if I can get away with saying this to a client

Just the coffee then? Black, no sugar

When I worked for a small business MSP, my boss had an off hours call about an issue, walked the guy through rebooting their server. He was monitoring the uptime so he saw it go off. Then he told them to turn it back on. The guy said he did, but my boss never saw it come back online. He asked him if it was lit up, the guy said yes. He said "are you sure", and the guy, annoyed, said "yes! I see lights". Waited a bit longer and it never came online. He called another person at the business to check, and they too confirmed that it was lit up. So he drove 35 minutes to go to their office, walked in their network closet and hit the power button, and magically it turned on. They were seeing the lights on the router, an entirely different machine sitting on top of the server and thought it was on. The issue was fixed by the reboot alone and my boss drove home very very annoyed.

I miss my IT days, they were fun. I once saw a USB flashdrive taped to a postcard. It was the old owners friend who had sent him pictures from a meet up.

I loved it. The old guy wanted to send pictures. And send them he did.

Also did my last favor for a guy who needed a long ethernet cable for something at home, I said sure, but we need it back by next week. He never returned it. So I told him "I'm not gonna argue, either it's on my desk tomorrow or I'll send your department an invoice so we can buy a new one."

It was on my desk next day in a tangled pile.

Are you ABSOLUTELY SURE it's plugged in?

I know even more that don't know how to log off....