Asklemmy

strangely Network Troubleshooter always helped me when I was out of ideas why the network just... stopped working

tho never said the problem, it just got fixed in the meantime while it analyzed n shit and then it reported no issues :P

Yeah, on Win98 (or maybe Win2k), it would always find this obscure sound card driver for this crappy sound card in this Packard Bell I had. Amazing.

But not once ever for any other issue before or since.

I once had the troubleshooter fix a networking issue I had. I'm still shook.

Yes it has.

I used to have a sound issue and the repair wizard would always fix it. It would happen again, I think after the next reboot.

Well, it helped me boot into USB drives so I can remove windows and swap it with Linux on some annoying computers that would boot windows very fast...

Definitely, it is the first thing I always run. It is really great at checking all the "obvious" user errors like having no internet connection or having a full disk drive.

I can run it and go do something else.

It is also great to explain how to use it over a phone to people who aren't tech savvy.

Afterwards it gives you extra information about the issue if you click on details.

The Windows network troubleshooter is black magic from the depths of hell itself and is very opinionated and selective in choosing which issues to fix and whether you'll need to bargain your soul to recieve said fix. I have red hair and find it doesn't bother bartering with me, but your mileage may vary.

Yes -- frequently, but this is a bad thing.

The issue was that their automatic updater makes my computer unable to boot, due to some compatibility problem with an update. Which it keeps trying to apply. Then every time it fails, startup repair or some troubleshooter rolls back the update and it works again for a while.

Since I cannot turn off updates, it's stuck in this loop forever. However, I can turn off my computer via the power button (sending shutdown signal, not hard power off), and this avoids applying the update most of the time.

This is an older computer that is only used for games, and a slicer for my 3D printer. I've decided to leave it in this state -- at this point it's more a piece of performance art than a reliable computer. I moved my business and my clients away from MS a few years back.

This cost me a lot of easy money though -- there's no maintenance work for me to do and I've had to move on to more productive things.

No, however I think there might be a bit of a trap here that skews perception for some. Namely, that the automatic tools are intended to fix problems simple enough that more technical minded people would attempt the solutions it uses themselves before resorting to a troubleshooter.

Troubleshooter maybe once, but otherwise no.

Startup repair yes though, after doing the right set of SFC scan and updating Windows cache whatever thing

I've occasionally had success restoring a network connection with troubleshooter. Generally if you switch between Ethernet and WiFi, Windows will get confused, but the troubleshooter will turn the network devices off and on which gets it back. I find it's easier to turn off the device I'm not using, but if that's too complicated for someone usually "run the troubleshooter" works.

The network troubleshooter often works alright. Just never run it if you have setup a bunch of virtual switches in hyper V or something, because it will delete them or otherwise fuck them up and it's pretty annoying to restore (you have to remove them via device Manager and stuff)

On windows 8 the network troubleshooter would restart my wifi driver and that usually fixed the problem. Aside from that nah

I've used startup repair many, many times to repair systems. The troubleshooters have never worked for me, no matter how minor the issue that needed to be fixed.

the troubleshooter is great! – “problem not found” – it’s exactly the same problem you couldn’t find yesterday, or the day before, or the day before …

(I think I just keep clicking it out of a sense of ritual – it fixed itself once, so I keep doing the same unrelated set of steps in the same order in some forlorn hope of appeasing the Windows daemons)

Yes. Once a Win10 troubleshooter solved a backwards-compatibility problem with an old XP game.

No, but you have to think that if they had an automated fix for a problem, they'd probably run it in the background before you even realised you had a problem.

Like if I have an network issue, they'd probably retry connecting immediately, rather than waiting for me to hit a Connect button like some caveman with a 56k dialup modem.

Like just cloning a drive and swapping your boot device, internally it's probably freaking the fuck out about why it's on NVME2 instead of SATA5 all of a sudden, but it just gets on with it.

Start up repair, yes. Troubleshooter, never.

I've never needed the startup repair, but the troubleshooter does occasionally fix network or audio related things. I don't do enough to need it very often anymore.

I often had an issue that an audio device wouldn't show up or work. Just running the troubleshooter for it probably triggers some audio device rediscovery, which managed to fix it every single time I had the issue.

Back with windows 7, it did. I’ve never seen it work since then.

Well, this is very specific, but the Windows 3D Builder repair tool is probably the best error fixer for 3D printing I have encountered, so at least they got that one right... I couldn't believe it when I saw it actually worked as intended lol

I sometimes tell people to try the network troubleshooter if they're having issues because it's idiot proof. All it'll do is occasionally disable and enable a network adapter which can fix some common problems. If you're even the slightest bit tech savvy though, ignore it.

Startup Repair has been useful when I've actually gone to use it, but I can count on one hand how many times I've gotten to that point.

Otherwise, no.

A while back I had network issues, ran the troubleshooter and apparently the IP address was incorrect. Went into Control Panel, changed it and it worked again. Not sure why the troubleshooter couldn't do that but whatever.

I think that back in the day I used the startup repair to restore a broken MBR.

But generally no, and I don't believe that the purpose of the tools are to repair anything, as much as it is to give a remote support tech some time to google the issue, while the wizard is running a lot of NOPs. Thus giving the customer a feeling that something is being done, while really just being on hold.

Yeah, startup repair fixed multiple pc's for me. And troubleshooter fixed both network and audio issues for me. Usually by restarting a driver or something dumb but it's lot easier to let the program do it than to restart your audio driver manually.

Folks, Windows's own system image couldn't be restored from Windows. I had to go download some program called Macrium Reflect and use the underlying VHD files.

What broke? Oh, you don't know? It was a bad Windows update that had a broken driver or something causing driver verification to fail.

I often use the network troubleshooter because I know that all that is needed is to turn the adapter off and on, which the troubleshooter will always do, saving me a couple of clicks to do it myself 🤷

It will sometimes wipe your static IP configuration and switch it to DHCP which could theoretically fix something, but I've only ever seen this break things instead.

both fixed things many times

I would usually have issues with my wi-fi, where the connection after a reboot won't work and the wi-fi GUI would reset itself everytime i tried. Network troubleshooter would fix it 100% every time and quite quickly, so there was no reason to actually figure out what was at fault.

Many times.

Not that I've ever seen. It usually means it's time to reinstall.

My old desktop seemed to have something wrong with its LAN port and the troubleshooter fixed it pretty consistently.

I think it pointed out the right direction at least once, back when i was doing tech support (xp and pre-xp). Back when the toolkit includes whole stacks of cd's containing every driver known to exist. I don't even remember what it is, but it was something Realtek.

I had a problem once when my laptop display was just black after booting. Triend everything, nothing worked. Return to OEM authorized support. They had my laptop for 4 weeks, so solution. Then just refunded the full price & retuned back the laptop.

Ubuntu LTS since then & no sick or weird issues since.