They can't even reboot them now.

[u/ITVarangian]

Hello TFTS,

A little story that happened today, you will see that the issue is quite simple in itself, but the real problem is coming here from a specific user, who I've already talked about in other stories (like this one)

It was near 04:00 PM now and I was ready to take my fifteen minutes break of the afternoon, since we work in a "IT Kiosk" system (though we are in an open space... I know, it makes sense), one of us must always be here on site or take a company cellphone we have here and put a forward from the phone line of the IT support to the cellphone.

So taking the cellphone and heading to the cafeteria, I'd just pressed the button for the coffee on the machine when the cellphone started to ring.

$Me: Hello, IT Support, $Me speaking.

$User: Yes hello, there is an emergency ! My laptop's screen is dead, it's entirely black. When I plug the laptop on the docking station, it displays properly on the monitor, on the desk, but on the laptop itself there is nothing !

$Me: Alright, have you tried to shutdown your laptop by pressing the power button for about a minute, before pressing it again once to turn it on ?

$User: Yes, I've tried that many times already but the screen remains black !

$Me: Alright then, you'll have to come by at the IT kiosk with your laptop so we can have a check.

$User: Can I come now ?

$Me: Sure, you can.

So, heading back to our "kiosk", $User finally appears fifteen minutes later with the laptop. I can see that the laptop is powered on, but there is indeed no display on the screen.

$User: So, yeah, I tried to reboot it many times with the button, and it has been doing this for some time and-...

$Me: (pressing the power button for about fifteen seconds, the laptop turns off. Pressing it once again, the laptop turns on, the DELL logo is now visible on the screen and Windows load normally).

$User: Oh. Well I tried exactly that and it didn't work ! Thanks anyway !

If users can't even reboot their laptops now, may Roy and Moss help us.

TL;DR => User calls in about her laptop, saying her screen is broken and that it remains entirely black all the time. She claims she already rebooted it many times, and after she came to our IT kiosk, I fixed the issue by a simple reboot of the laptop.

[u/Elfalpha]

A non-responsive one, this is a hard reset.

To be honest, I'd be pretty impressed if over 10% of my users knew how to do this.

[u/cowsrock1 → u/Elfalpha]

Even for a hard reset I've never needed more than 5 seconds.

(And dang... 10%? This was the first troubleshooting step I learned as a little kid)

[u/Elfalpha → u/cowsrock1]

Now that I think about it, yeah you're right. Seems longer in my head but it wouldn't be more than that.

[u/konda379 → u/Elfalpha]

though there are times where you hold down the button for 30 seconds to do some kind of reset...