I sense a disturbance in the force...

[mhull616]

I agree, that is the only reason I still come to this site

[Pogi]

Originally posted by CrüeHeäd:
So why would I waste my time troubleshooting a hosed OS, when I just wipe out the drive and make a clean start?

You raise an excellent point, and very well put, too. There are times when a CI is indeed the only way to get a PC runnin' and hummin' again. I try, though, not to get in the mindset that a CI is the only way to go.

[ShadowKing]

Originally posted by CrüeHeäd:
I can slap together a box, and install Windows 9x or Me on it in less than an hour...

Thats the easy part, the problem is that the user usually has personal data on the hard drive, saved who-knows-where, and 27 pieces of software and shareware installed and customized to their liking... They are also very familiar with the way things "Were before you messed with it".

I upgraded my Grandma to Win2k, because she was having some stability issues, and she hated it because it had such a different startup screen, and was "nothing like" Win98...

[Larommi]

You have to remember that not everyone is using cutting edge parts. Or using parts that you can find support for. So you format a drive and can't get a device to work. So that $XX modem install turns into a bill for
$XX OS install
$XX for replacement part to that thing you cant find drivers for.
$XX in lost time...for a customer to reinstall software and restore backed up data.

As a customer I would be p*ssed!
Now I agree that there is a certain amount of time that should be given before it is easier to Slash n Burn, but that mindset of repair is dangerous. It is the last thing I think about when working on someone elses machine. Besides when you get into dealing with servers it becomes even more important that you can repair the problem.

[WebHead]

The parts don't even have to be "cutting edge". A pentium 200mmx w/ 32-64mb ram, a 2gb hdd, and a 24x cdr drive is plenty good enough. And for the customization party of it,... I usually take a screen shot of the desktop and the start menu, and then print it out so I can put all the appropriate icons back where they were before. That way the user will think everything is still in the same place. And as far as data and files and the related go, there's several easy methods. 1) Create a new folder on a working PC, slave one hdd to another, and drag and drop files to the folder. 2) Or burn a CD of all the data and files, and then give that CD to the customer with a little advice on what to do with the CD and how to retrieve files from it. Anyway, you guy's already know all this stuff. I just think it's senseless to give yourself a headache trying to troubleshoot these hosed OS's.

[WebHead]

Besides when you get into dealing with servers it becomes even more important that you can repair the problem

I agree with that though. Notice how I never mentioned Win NT or 2000.

But I'm just talking about the average Joe who just wants a PC to check his email with and doesn't want to hear a tech telling him all this mumbo jumbo about "registry" and "blah blah blah" and "$50.00" just to install a sound card, and doesn't want to wait 10 days or whatever for his PC to get repaired while a tech is busy in the background try to manually configure IRQ's, etc.