This is one of my favourite xkcds because it made me more consciously aware of the peculiar intimacy of the situation in the comic. Furthermore, in addition to the link that exists between me and someone on a forum with my particular tech problem, it also made me feel connected to everyone who had a different problem to me, but were also desperately trawling forums for help
This comic made me go back to a post I made and put in the solution I found to a really strange problem. 2 years later someone responded saying they had the same problem and my solution fixed it for them.
Even worse when they post „Found a solution“ and close the thread.
“Already answered in another thread. Locked.”
The other thread: “I found this guide on (dead site), and it fixed my problem”
I think about this XKCD every goddam day.
This will be now my standard template for the technical support
That’s the support forums. It gets worse with actual support, that goes all chummy friendly, adds emoji and exclamation marks randomly. I would not have been surprised if my last exchange with MS Support ended with “tee hee”.
They’re weird.
Somewhere in the not so distant future…
Google Search: “Install printer driver windows 11”
Result from random blog:
“My first experience with printer drivers was 35 years ago. My grandma had an IBM PS2 that ran MS DOS and an HP Deskjet printer. It connected to the computer via a parallel port and printed a whopping 1 page per minute. Every year at Christmas, Grandma would print off her famous pecan pie recipe and we would all gather around the printer, eagerly listening to the sound of the print head slowly whooshing back and forth in anticipation of the tasty goodness to come. Blah blah blah. Five more pages of meaningless stories that have nothing to do with installing print drivers followed by a solution that only works for Epson printers.”the funniest part of the story is the idea that anyone’s grandma in the 90s had a computer and printed recipes, instead of a handmade old growth hardwood box full of 100 year old recipes handwritten with a quill pen
edit: nvm, my brain didn’t register the “in the future” bit
Also, reprinting the recipe every year.
Uhhhh
Mine did both
The final solution will be to renew your printer driver subscription at the low low cost of $15/month.
sfc /scannow will apparently fix any windows issue. All of them.
And if that doesn’t work, run dism and then do it all again
That didn’t work?
Oh
Reinstall or buy a new computer. K NEXT.
✅ Accepted Solution
Nah, just run chkdsk with any flags you like, this should probably fix it.
Dear, Valued Customer
chkdsk c: /f /r
Microsoft thanks you for your business
“Help! My computer is slow after an update.”
“Try reinstalling window and reformatting you drive”
“Help I can’t find my documents!”
Dont forget sfc /scannow
everyone loves sfc /scannow
What does that even do? I’ve used it many times.
Not even Microsoft knows.
*cricket noises* closed as resolved
I just had one today
“Do [registry edit that won’t help]. Alternatively, try [setting that does not exist] Anyway this is not supported anymore as of [very old version] (actually still works)”
And in true windows fashion, the thing just needed to be disabled and enabled again. After it was broken by a windows update, of course.
“update your drivers and run windows update”
I can’t believe they are getting away with so many bullshit non-solutions to the point where you wonder if they even know how to read.
I wonder if they trained AI on this. Might explain some things
I kinda like the MS Support Forum. If it’s in my results, I don’t open it for the solution. I just want to see the braindead support answer and the countless complains about it for fun. It’s amazing how stupid these threads are and even more amazing that MS doesn’t care.
"I see you have problems with GAME NAME crashing. I have played games since my childhood they always let me immerse myself in the world and relax after a stressful day (…)
(…)
Useless suggestion
(…)
Even more useless suggestion that requires you to launch a command prompt
(…)
If that doesn’t help, download our totally-not-a-virus.exe to prevent crashes in OTHER GAME YOU WEREN’T GOOGLING"
The only time a Windows solution doesn’t use command prompt is when it uses Power Shell
I switched to Linux because everything just works and I never need to touch CLI
I love tech “help” that basically suggests you nuke everything you’re trying to save.
This applies to almost everything tech related whenever there is an official support and non-standard issue. These people (or bots) just follow some script and as soon as there is a bit more complex or non-standard situation, they will have no clue what to do because they are not technical.
As far as Microsoft Support Community goes, if issue is popular there often is a decent answer deeper in thread, do not focus on ″best answer″.
As per this, it seems these Independent Advisors are outsourced by Microsoft from some company called Directly. Answer is from 2019 November so it might be outsourced to different company now. There might be also several. Same happens with at least M365 enterprise support. I have seen supporters from Accenture and other companies.
For me, someone who uses a Mac for work but still has to use the office environment, it goes something like this:
Google the issue
Google the issue + office for Mac
Find a forum about the exact issue I’m having
Loads of people commenting having the same issue
Expert answers and says “That feature is not available for Macs at this time. How about you post it as a suggestion for the devs at this link here>>>”
Post is minimum 3 years old and there’s still no solution.
Gee thanks.
Searching for a Linux error: OP: Hi guys’, I have {situation }, how do I fix it?
Reply 1: Theres no way to troubleshoot this! Theres not enough information! Reply 2: I have the exact same issue on the same OS Reply 3: Have you tried {solution for a 6 year discontinued linux Distro}
Sometimes, You’ll find an arch forum post that is perfect though and that almost makes the rest of the process worth it
Theres not enough information!
Well maybe tell me what info you need instead of complaining about it?
Here are some paraphrased ones I’ve actually encountered, back when I tried to make Linux work for me as a daily driver
“Any Linux user knows how to do that, or if they don’t, they’re too dumb to use Linux”
“RTFM!”
“Why are you trying to do it that way? You should try doing it this completely other, much more difficult way.”
“Why are you trying to use that application? You should use this one instead.”
“You should reinstall (their preferred distro) and it will work fine”
“You don’t seem to know what you’re doing”
“This book on Linux command line for beginners might help”
The “Why are you asking about X? Here’s Y” always infuriates me. I’ve been daily driving Fedora for almost 4 years now and the amount of people who say that shit drives me mad. There are instances where it makes sense but if its something like “Hi I’m using GNOME Boxes, how do I transfer files?” and the response is some shit likr “WHY ARENT YOU USING VIRT-MANAGER AND QEMU YOU FUCKING IDIOT”… Ugh…
To be fair, that shit isn’t restricted to Linux. I was just reading a camping forum where a guy posed the idea of extending a roof box over above the windscreen of his car to fit more stuff, and one of the suggestions was “You should just get more compact, lightweight gear, maybe a smaller tent. Get rid of some of the luxuries. Leave the toaster oven and microwave at home.”
I wanted to reach through the screen and slap that asshole.
Thats so real, I wish these people had more than one brain cell to think about what theyre saying 😭
Reply 1 is correct though; if you don’t post relevant logs, any solution given is just a guess. A helpful poster could make an educated guess, and you might get lucky and it’ll help but it also might not and then you’ll have to go to the logs anyways.
That’s the problem with ms answers forum, they rarely care about logs and so many hey simple give 1-3 generic solutions that will solve ~50% of peoples problems. If you’ve taken even a single step off the path of most users their forums will be more often than not be useless.
Its more reply 1 not telling you how to provide the information. If it wasn’t provided theres a good chance you dont know how to, and them being condescending about it doesnt help
Here’s a handy Venn Diagram:
(Answers) (Answers DOT Microsoft DOT com)
Yeah, it’s pretty funny that occasionally when looking up a real problem they refer you to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/ which is way better
