edit: [email protected] found it after I forgot to save the link: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/unable-to-install-updates-unless-battery-is/99bb073a-948e-4ccf-b14f-46e192fac457
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I saw a great one yesterday.
Question: Help, I can’t boot, here’s the error code. I’m stuck in a loop and can’t get into windows.
Answer: Open Microsoft explorer, navigate to…
The Microsoft support forums are on a whole level of their own, when it comes to being useless.
sfc /scannowand the troubleshooting button in the settings do fuck all, and compared to the usual systemd journal, the event log rarely gives you any useful information whatsoeverActually I had an issue where trying to sign into my samba share caused explorer.exe to crash constantly, running
sfc /scannowfixed it surprisingly. Glad that’s on my “these programs only work on Windows” system.sfc /scannowdoes fix certain problems, just not nearly as many as the Microsoft support forum would like.I do agree with you on the log, although that’s often because whichever component is misbehaving just doesn’t believe in error logs. I’m looking at you, Nvidia.
Are you trying to say that error 43 isn’t the only thing you’d ever need to know about it?
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealthand pray it fixes everything before you reinstall.I have never had ms troubleshoot button or autofix button ever do anything but return “no problems found”. And yes, I’ve also tried it in every one of those 20 control panels.
Sometimes it makes a network connection work temporarily.
It’s at the level where, after spending hours there, I feel like it has to be a conspiracy to waste your time. Because there is no way there could organically be that many posts about a topic without there being any useful or correct information.
sfc /scannowand the troubleshooting button in the settings do fuck allHey, that’s not true! sfc takes forever to run, so it’s a good way to waste time and get even more frustrated.
Even more infuriating are those messages marked [FIXED] when the freaking post had a negative response or no response at all from the user.
Those forums should be full of endless posts marked [PENDING] or [EXPIRED].CLOSED (Reason: No interaction)
That makes it sound like the fault is on the user side.
When there’s no interaction it’s usually because the user gave up.
The marker should be something that makes it clear that the responses were not helpful.
I’m John from Microsoft and I have over 25 years of experience.
Please update your drivers and run run sfc /scannow.
I hope that helps,
John
I found more help in stack overflow for windows related issues compared to Microsoft.
That’s right, linux is terrible since you have to use terminal. Microsoft doesn’t have terrible things like terminal. Just copy paste these commands into run.
Or then you do find an article that helps but its a registry edit.
With an alternative method involving a page in settings that only existed between may 2015 and feb 2016.
I’ve been running Linux for 4 years, but this still hurts to read
Into Cmd, super commandline or super commandline 2?
I think now it’s Windows Cloud Commander 11000, soon to be re-integrated into your Office 366 account. Elevated privileges require a premium subscription.
I’ve never had a case where running that fixed anything. I get it makes sense to verify system integrity but I’m guessing the OS already does that on its own once in a while.
It does when there is system corruption. You first need to find the thing that caused the corruption though
The most pissing thing is that the Microsoft “support” forum is always the top search result. Sometimes it occupies 5 or more of the top search results.
…but I haven’t had to deal with that since I switched to Linux last year, so…yay!
Ask about a specific error code on a windows forum: unhelpful boilerplate nonsense.
Ask about the vaguest symptoms of a recurring problem on a linux forum: a neckbeard wizard will show up and have you type 30 cryptic commands in your terminal and everything will be fixed.
The funniest part about this is that almost every linux installation is totally different from every other one, whereas every windows installation is almost identical.
But really, I certainly wouldn’t enter any random commands I was given from the internet on a linux machine unless I knew damn well what they did.
The entire thread is hilarious.
“I had to remove my laptop’s battery, now Windows won’t update.”
“Are you using a laptop or desktop?”
“I said I am using a laptop without a battery.”
“Please share a screenshot of your device manager, so I can make sure whether or not you are using a laptop or desktop.”
“Fine.” (Posts screenshot)
“According to your screenshot, you are using a laptop, and it has a battery in it. Please charge the battery to 40%.”
“That’s it. I’m using Linux.”
Very accurate 😂
Man, I hate all the boilerplate that Microsoft uses in their documentation, it’s a pain to read anything.
Does it solve whatever Windows problem they were having?
No? Then it is not helpful.
It is like asking for help to fix a hole in your pants, and someone replies with “just buy a skirt”.
I’ve replied to someone having a problem with Linux to just install Windows. It is the exact same useless vibe.
Just think, an extra long shirt can cover that hole, and we could embed a flexible display, wifi module, and a camera in the extra space. This could scan the faces of those around you, and display personalized ads! This is an excellent solution to the hole in your pants, and frankly, the only secure one.
Please don’t install a camera in my hole.
Well it is more like your ceiling is leaking from the apartment above and your landlord ain’t doing shit. Installing Linux would be like moving out to another apartment or home. Even if it doesn’t fix the leak the problem is now gone for you.
Ok, but what if the problem was that you didn’t like the door color and you weren’t allowed to paint it because of your landlord.
Are you still going to move your entire life to a different location?
Most problems on the Microsoft forums aren’t going to explode their computers.
It has to be something that is nearly fully outside your control but is affecting you, there are probably milder problems as examples but I think this apt.
In the metaphor, half of the answers are asking you to do a useless workaround, blame you and/or are irrelevant to solving the problem. Hence the leak, where the answers are telling you to try running your taps for 10 minutes, put a bucket under the leak, telling you that there is no leak and that’s actually a water fountain, etc.
I don’t think that’s a great comparison. You’re most likely never allowed to paint your door. I would say it’s more like curtains, your apartment has proprietary curtain rods, that you can’t put your own curtains on for some reason, so you ask all your neighbors how to change them. They respond with “have you tried opening and closing your curtains yet?”, “Try vacuuming them to get the dust off”. Then you finally get a hold of the landlord and they say you can’t replace them.
Are they still experiencing whatever problem they were having?
No? Then it is a solution. Not the solution, and not a possible solution for everyone, but it is a solution.
So what you are saying is that if someone has a problem with Linux, replying with “just install Windows” is a valid fix?
You “fixed” the issue by giving them 10 more problems.
Are you also giving them alternatives to all the software they use daily that isn’t compatible with Linux?
What if they have hardware that is incompatible? Like Nvidea and certain printers?
You are essentially telling them to rip out everything and start anew. Which just isn’t feasible or even necessary when they just have one problem.
So no, you did not fix anything.
TIL that millions are spent buying nvidia hardware but none of those companies can actually use them
Did you completely miss the part where I said “Not the solution, and not a possible solution for everyone, but it is a solution”? I don’t know what you think the usual troubleshooting process is, but it doesn’t start with “uninstall Windows”. Obviously the user was sufficiently intelligent to consider the advantages and disadvantages of switching, and based on that information, chose a course of action that they thought was correct, and it ended up being the solution to their issue.
I don’t know how else I can spell it out for you. Computer users are not dumbasses. They have agency over their own actions.
Most replies are useless anyway. With linux you tend to get useful replies at least.
Microsoft should replace support team with llm chatbot. Much better.
The microsoft forums are the one place that could be fully automatized. You post a problem about anything, really anything. Can’t change wallpaper? Can’t login? Screen flashing? Files disappearing? Constant loud pitched noise? It’s all the same. The answer, whatever your issue, is
sfc /scannow, “Restoration point” and “Reinstall”.And arguably, that last step will most likely make the issue go away, at the price of not having a fucking clue as to what was wrong, losing a lot of time afterward, and having a fair chance of re-doing the same things, causing the issue to show up again. Great stuff.
You forgot the dism scans.
Also launching an update to see if it fixes things.
I said this before on another thread, but the only time sfc /scannow actually did something was when I had a machine with a drive that had a few bad blocks.
And of course it didn’t actually fix anything because a system DLL was corrupt so DISM couldn’t even repair the system, meaning the only solution was to reinstall windows.
Semi-relevant xkcd, but replace the last sentence with “Oh, he just wiped Windows and installed Ubuntu? Uh, cool, that works too.”
“What about DropBox? It’s this recent startup…”
Man, sometimes I forget how long xkcd’s been going
Saw one earlier today where the “community support” person opened with “please make sure you have applied all Windows updates”. Given that it was a web page issue and I was on my phone I didn’t mark this reply as helpful.
