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A client told me to just reinstall Windows for every slow computer
He said it in my shop in Knoxville, arguing it's faster than actual troubleshooting. I had to explain that a fresh install doesn't fix a failing hard drive, which his machine had. How do you handle customers who think there's just one fix for everything?
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abbyhall7d ago
Tbh that's exactly what the original post was getting at though. People latch onto one solution like reinstalling Windows and act like it's a magic bullet for everything from bad RAM to a busted motherboard. The problem isn't that it never works, it's that they skip the actual diagnostic step entirely. A clean install can mask a dying drive for a little while, but that drive is still going to fail eventually and make the problem worse. You end up wasting time reinstalling software and drivers twice when you could've just tested the hardware first. Customers need to understand that shortcuts in troubleshooting just lead to more frustration down the road.
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kai_ramirez381mo ago
See this all the time with tech. People latch onto one solution they heard works. Then they apply it everywhere without thinking.
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beng511mo ago
Honestly I was the same way for years, but a bad power supply taught me real quick that you can't just reinstall your way out of hardware.
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michael_williams1mo ago
But what if the hardware failure is just a software problem in disguise? I've seen weird driver conflicts and corrupted system files that totally mimic a dying power supply. Sometimes a clean install actually does fix those deep, weird issues that look like hardware. Maybe people keep reinstalling because it works more often than we admit, even for tricky problems.
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