Had a user call me because their computer was super slow. They were complaining that everything was taking forever to load. I started with the usual steps, checked for malware, cleared up some system junk, and asked them to restart. Simple, right? Well, after every reboot, they’d claim the system was still slow, but when I logged in remotely, everything looked fine on my end. After a couple of rounds, I asked them to check if they were properly shutting down the computer, and, of course, they hadn’t! They were just hitting "sleep" instead of doing a full shutdown and restart.

At this point, I couldn’t help but laugh, but it’s honestly something I encounter a lot, users thinking they’re rebooting when they’re really just putting the system to sleep. It’s always that extra layer of troubleshooting that takes forever, but the fix is so simple. Anyone else run into this type of endless ‘restart loop’ where nothing seems to work until you dig into the most basic settings? How do you stop your brain from melting after the 20th call like this? And how do you break the news without sounding like you’re trying not to scream into the mic?