drowning in vague "PC is slow" tickets even with decent monitoring in place
Posted by Nexthink_Quentin@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 146 comments
We've got solid RMM and Intune setup, patching is current, and hardware isn't ancient on most machines. Yet every week I still get a pile of "computer is just slow today" or "everything lags" tickets that take forever to troubleshoot because there's no clear smoking gun in the usual logs.
Resource Monitor and Event Viewer usually show something minor spiking at the exact wrong time (AV scan overlapping with OneDrive sync, or a policy refresh hitting during peak hours), but by the time the user reports it the moment has passed. It's just frustrating, takes up a lot of my day.
DesignerGoose5903@reddit
If I had a penny for everytime a user complained that something was "slow" while they have 100+ Chrome tabs open...
AltoGreen@reddit
Lol. Or 15 folders and 35 files saved to their desktop.
Tymanthius@reddit
Stuff being saved on the desktop doesn't slow a machine down tho?
I mean, maybe a little at boot up b/c it has to draw all that stuff?
the desktop thing that slow 'em down is the magic wallpaper change.
AndyGates2268@reddit
What's the magic wallpaper change?
Tymanthius@reddit
you've never seen any of those apps, and windows will do it too, where it changes the wallpaper ever so often? Some ppl have it set to do it every few seconds.
AndyGates2268@reddit
taptaptap These users are crazy!
No_Dog9530@reddit
If it was roaming profiles then year more files on desktop would slow it down and specially if the files continuously Sync.
phobug@reddit
Correct me if I'm wrong in my understanding, its the same number of files that need to be synced if the files are on the Desktop and for example in the Documents folder, as both are part of the profile. And this is only an issue on initial login, people usually don't complain about initial login times but slowness while in the middle of doing something.
No_Dog9530@reddit
Actually guess what, in Windows for roaming profile, the Sync on Desktop and Documents does not work the same way. Documents files are synced mostly in background using sync center without slowing the PC DOWN, but Desktop sync is in real time as well as at log off and log in, the fine integrity for desktop files is checked every time.
phobug@reddit
Oh, that makes sense. Thanks, I've learned something today.
sixothree@reddit
Oh I thought we were all just making fun of users who don't know how to organize files.
Here I am blaming microsoft for making my "documents" folder the "place where every application I don't give a fuck about drops shit I don't care about" folder.
Tymanthius@reddit
True, didn't think of that.
dinnerbird@reddit
On startup Windows does a headcount of all the files on the desktop before starting the Explorer shell. If it gets to a certain number of files it spends more time doing the headcount
christurnbull@reddit
35? I've seen 300+
_ryohei@reddit
there was a time I was helping an exec whose desktop was fully engulfed in files, with overlapping files. these people were beyond help lol
Greed_Sucks@reddit
Seriously though, this is obvious to us, but how the hell does a user get trained on best practices for using Windows? When and where does this happen in their education?
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
It doesn’t any more, because K-12 is underfunded and often uses Chromebooks and Chromeboxes with a Google Workspace for Education.
Even if they use Windows, computer classes are usually optional, and the one taken most is for typing, not “Computer 101”
(Worked in K-12 IT for 12-13 years, ask me how I know)
Greed_Sucks@reddit
That’s my point. How can we expect non-self-learners to know this stuff when they never get training?
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
The current avenues are unfortunately community education // community college, vocational/technical schools or particularly enlightened K-12 school systems. I agree this is problematic; here should definitely be more of a standard defined by states in the US; it would help if there were a suggested federal guideline, but I think it would become an unfunded mandate, which is problematic.
I think if more job environments required applicants to demonstrate proficiency it would probably drive the education side as well. That's an imperfect solution I admit, but I think it would help some. Beyond that, I believe that most people, even non-self-learners could YouTube search for basic visual courses, there's a lot of material there, but it would take effort on their part to do that. I've seen a great increase in the number of people who ask "How Do I..."in just the past two years, without being motivated to use a search engine to find an answer.
daschande@reddit
I used to teach IT to high school juniors and seniors. The first 1-2 months of every new group was focused on "how to computer"... that you had to turn on BOTH the computer AND the monitor, you can't just turn on one. How to left click and right click, the difference between the two and why you can't just do either way. How to perform a basic google search, click on a link, and actually read the website instead of letting google AI do it for you. How to reset a gmail password because even though I'm a teacher, I don't work for google. Etc. Etc.
These were topics that took a LOT of time, repetition, and reteaching for students to understand. At least for the ones who actually tried and didn't give up on day 1 because "it's too hard". If the high school junior who has a 6th grade education level and a kindergarden reading level can do it, you can too. IF you actually try.
Greed_Sucks@reddit
I don’t think anyone is doing that for high schoolers in Missouri.
sixothree@reddit
How are we "smart enough" to figure this stuff out, without any help whatsoever, just by being mildly observant, but nobody else is able to?
Greed_Sucks@reddit
Because we all exist on a cognitive spectrum. Accepting this reality will make life less frustrating. To quote the Jesus dude : people are sheep.
aes_gcm@reddit
"I'm sorry, I can't arrange it by penis."
DesignerGoose5903@reddit
I love this reference, best short format videos ever made, definitely needs a comeback lol.
AtarukA@reddit
Eh, tbh my desktop has thousands of files, but I also don't display the icons, it's just my random folder.
s_schadenfreude@reddit
I dealt with this scenario with one of our MDs years ago. Dude was complaining about a slow machine. Remoted in, and his desktop was wall-to-wall files, with multiple layers of file icons stacked on top of each other. Not a square millimeter of desktop space was clear. Don't know how he found anything. I took a screenshot and keep it for my personal wall of shame.
thejohncarlson@reddit
I came here to tell this same story. She had 16000 files in the desktop folder. Made a folder on the desktop, moved everything into it and BAM! New computer.
s_schadenfreude@reddit
This was a Mac too, and macOS (at least back then) treats every desktop icon as an open Finder window. bye bye RAM
Twitch84@reddit
When many files get dragged into the desktop folder in an explorer window then the icons overlap when viewed on the desktop? I've seen that a few times.
qkdsm7@reddit
OVERLAPPING! Oh, no! /S ;)
sixothree@reddit
I had a coworker who filled every space on his desktop with a folder. That way he could "know if something was missing". I wish I was kidding.
ImCaffeinated_Chris@reddit
Not joking, but about 300 chrome tabs is my norm. I work a lot of projects at once. Lots of documents and guides. And my work laptop is not slow at all. It's nothing special either.
Arudinne@reddit
Before we mandating switching to Edge (with CIO approval), and allow-listed extensions, we had some users who were using a chrome extension that allowed you to drag a selection box over a page and it would open a new tab for every URL it found in that area.
Fucking madness.
Even without that, we've still had to put 32GB of RAM in our users computers.
HappyDadOfFourJesus@reddit
I'm currently at 60+...
AltoGreen@reddit
Ahahahaha
Final_Tune3512@reddit
or 50GB worth of crap on their Desktop and wonder why it takes forever to load
Different_Back_5470@reddit
please educate me, but why would lots of files on the desktop slow down the pc? at its core all folders in userspace are equal no?
christurnbull@reddit
"but i need it all"
SpunkMasterSaga@reddit
We’ve started an uptime leader board at the MSP I work at, 324 days is the current #1
gotmynamefromcaptcha@reddit
Add 5 enormous Excel spreadsheets that may as well be a separate software at this point.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
you forgot they are set to recalculate EVERY value every time they open - buddy had one that linked to 4 other excel (I tell then XLSB is faster but they ignore me) and it took 12 minutes to open. Wanted a new PC. I unchecked that and now it opens in 30 seconds.
gotmynamefromcaptcha@reddit
That’s good to know genuinely, I did not know this XLSB trick and will add it to my notes!
Stonewalled9999@reddit
and using OneDrive with 40GB PST *and* OST on the one drive synched folder
No_Dog9530@reddit
Also while having 5 PPT OPENS AND 8 Excel files open with continuous Macro updates lol.
qkdsm7@reddit
An issue you see with... syncing to onedrive or otherwise? Zero issues for systems I use and... LOTS saved to the desktop. ;) This one is lighter than I thought it would be.
372 File(s) 810,158,720 bytes 34 Dir(s)
HeWhoThreadsLightly@reddit
My phone runs fine with 700 tabs, my desktop should handle at least half of the without a problem.
-Satsujinn-@reddit
Uptime: 16d 11h 24m 43s
BisonThunderclap@reddit
If you hit a month, one of my last places would plaster an undismissable error message telling you to save your work and reboot.
ineyeseekay@reddit
Rookie numbers
LicksGuitar@reddit
Just sayin'
alexwhit80@reddit
We have a machine in our warehouse that 4 people log on to. 4 shift supervisors. They always complain it’s slow. All I do is remote on and log out the 3 other sessions and it’s back to normal.
The annoying thing every time I get asked about this I email the 4 people and tell them that at the end of their shift to log out.
PhilosophyBitter7875@reddit
Write a script that queries all active/disconnected user sessions and if the query finds someone who has been idle for 4 hours it logs them off.
Create it as a Scheduled task that runs every hour.
netburnr2@reddit
Sounds like that's your fault for not setting a log off policy
alexwhit80@reddit
We have a log off policy but they ignore it.
statikuz@reddit
lithnet/idle-logoff: A group-policy enabled utility for logging off idle windows user sessions
alexwhit80@reddit
That’s amazing thank you.
DaftPump@reddit
Could you add a reboot overnight function to mitigate?
alexwhit80@reddit
Thought about it but we are a 24/7 factory. Days and night shifts 4 on 4 off that’s why 4 people
BoomerAnnihilator69@reddit
I recommend creating a scheduled task that when a user logs in it logs the other logged in users out. The policies work as well, but I prefer this method.
Zealousideal_Yard651@reddit
Set a logout timer. Set the logout timer at a shift length and there are never more than two logged in users
Stonewalled9999@reddit
Frontier DSL with PC update 300 days has entered the chat.
ThatRealTay1989@reddit
This is my fucking life. 15 browser tabs 5 Excel sheets open and people complain things are crawling. Yeah they probably fucking are.
I think ultimately this is a management problem. I've told leadership time and time again we don't have a magic wand to fix slowness but they still want us to "investigate". Im so tired of digging through event viewer for any scrap of proof for anything. It really feels like I'm pushing a giant boulder up a hill.
HeWhoThreadsLightly@reddit
That is a trivial workload especially if they are engaged in complex work.
ThatRealTay1989@reddit
Especially for how much hardware we have right? Fucking windows I swear
alwaysdnsforver@reddit
Same here. looks at machine Sees 5 excel sheets, 10 explorer windows, ACAD and Siemens NX windows, calculator, a remote app and youtube open. FFS.
CPAtech@reddit
The response to those tickets is "show me." Don't rely on monitoring and logs. Have them physically show you the issue then go from there.
9 times out of 10 when I hear "my computer is slow today" they're actually only referring to a single application when pressed for details.
BlueClouds01@reddit
Exactly! That's what I always do, and what I tell the support guys to do. Never take the user's word for it, always see the issue yourself. Unfortunately, our support guys just see "computer is slow" on the ticket, and escalate it without doing much troubleshooting, if at all. As others have said, many support people are losing their abiility to troubleshoot anymore.
Downbadge69@reddit
I swear so many L1s are losing their ability to ask for proof of anything. The amount of requests I get of "slowness" with absolutely no evidence or troubleshooting is mind-boggling. "Your AI-generated summary of the claims of the user are insufficient evidence of a technical issue. Can not replicate, closing."
alexwhit80@reddit
I think the art of fault finding is going away. I had a colleague trying to fix an internet access at our remote site after a power cut. He checked everything from firewall to DHCP to DNS on the server after an hour he called me. My first question was “is the router powered on?” I’ll let you guess the answer.
TopCheddar27@reddit
I mean if he was doing nslookups to anything WAN side he would have known within 20 seconds that routing outside LAN was broken. Seems like a fundamental lack of troubleshooting.
alexwhit80@reddit
I think he was panicking as well.
Saritiel@reddit
Sometimes people get too much knowledge and they don't even check the basics because they think they definitely would've noticed if it was that easy, lol.
Once every few months I get a message from a tech notifying me that they cannot access their tools, and then they shirk away embarrassed when I ask if they're connected to the VPN, hahaha.
AggravatingAmount438@reddit
I've definitely had my share of failing to troubleshoot through the layers of networking, and just focusing on the next thing my brain thinks of.
When everything goes to shit, it's important to remember basics and work from there.
Spagman_Aus@reddit
yep, or a website took a few seconds more than usual.
greet_the_sun@reddit
We have a medical customer who will never migrate off of their shitty self hosted EMR instance because the server and network are finely tuned to give the docs literally 1 second or less loading times, because even 1.5 seconds of loading would be "too slow" as far as they're concerned.
BoltActionRifleman@reddit
Our internet is down! Turns out it was one user, one specific website, and the user was informed by the vendor they were doing sight maintenance today.
Doso777@reddit
Asking for additional details closes quite a few of those tickets.
Brilliant-Advisor958@reddit
So many times over the years we got a ticket saying my computer is slow. We contact the user to get details, and turns out its a web site they use having issues, and wouldn't load.
Tatermen@reddit
Or it's the monthly Cloudflare outage and absolutely nothing to do with their computer or any server or network under your control.
jhuseby@reddit
100%. And then you troubleshoot from there. If it truly is “everything lagging” graphically, then update or reinstall the display driver. If you can have the end user show you the issue, you should be able to troubleshoot/resolve. If they can’t show you the issue, there’s not much you could or should be spending time doing.
CeC-P@reddit
Just to sanity check this, is your company one of those "16GB is enough for everyone in every position and nobody needs above an i3!" and then you have stats people that need 15 chrome tabs open? Because then IT is the problem and you need to hire someone who knows hardware and benchmarking.
Mrproex@reddit
10 excel docs at the same time
kagato87@reddit
Only 10? You ain't seen nothing!
Dozens of excel sheets, so many browser tabs the tab scrolling has pages, a dozen word docs, don't even want to count how many emails open. And then three instances of quick books...
Fuzzy_Paul@reddit
Did you think of search index and exclusions? Or onedrive sync for firsttime users. The same for Outlook application. Mostly it's something like that. Sometime it is dns and the system wait for a dns address that does not responds. Hope these help.
mjbehrendt@reddit
You need a DEX tool. We started using ControlUp about a year ago. It's pointed out so many problems we never new we had.
ManLikeMeee@reddit
Is Intune setup correctly?
Are you using Intune just for the compliance side or are you building actual images with autopilot+Intune?
What's your RMM?
I've known NAble and ManageEngine in the past to cause slowness on the OS with all stats checking out.
JerryRiceOfOhio2@reddit
those of us in network... first time?
kerosene31@reddit
Are you forcing daily/nightly reboots? I find that the people who complain tend to be the same ones who refuse to reboot. It is Windows, a daily reboot will reduce a ton of that (and force people to close tabs). Windows is Windows, a quick reboot will fix most issues and should be step 1 before opening any ticket. It takes longer to put in the ticket than it does to reboot.
After that, it is a training issue. "Computer slow" is not an IT ticket. They need details, what application were they in, what were they doing, and at what time? Screenshot everything they had open (this will prevent most of them in the future).
I'm willing to help people with actual problems, but hunting down vague "slowness" is a waste of everyone's time. Plus so much is cloud based now, I simply can't make Zoom or 365 run any faster. If our network actually has a problem, we know about it right away (and it rarely does).
HeWhoThreadsLightly@reddit
Procure office soft that runs faster then.
Thyg0d@reddit
Force power settings to balanced on battery and full on power. That sorts half of my users issues who decide to or somehow manages to enable power save mode which makes the machines behave like a 486 DX2
MCHellspawn@reddit
Maybe network issues?
Secret_Account07@reddit
This is so weird…
I’ve had a Dell Latitude (I think 5285?) for the past 5 years. 0 issues.
Yesterday I got a brand new Dell Pro (new naming? Model is like PB1599 something like that) and it’s running like dog shit. New image. Patched. Rebooted many times. Found no issues.
I was wondering if there’s something with our image. Just weird I saw this post.
ludlology@reddit
If there’s suddenly a lot of this where there wasn’t before, figure out what changed before the problems seemed to ramp up
First culprits I’d check are a windows update, security software agents, and one drive. Test one variable at a time with a smart patient user who’s having the issue until the slowness goes away. Then repeat that solution on a few more machines to confirm. If yes, roll out to everyone.
JumpScared8902@reddit
if you cant reproduce it, it isnt a problem. Seriously..... .
1RedOne@reddit
Are these repeat offenders who are constantly reporting things?
If so, then I would suggest you take their PC and offer them a loaner for a day or two…
While you have their PC maxed out whatever specs you can if you’re able to upgrade their ram? do it! if you can put in a faster hard drive mirror data over and make the switch
Then alter the settings for things like antivirus, and make sure that it’s only scanning during all hours, turn off real time heuristics, etc
Does this only happen while they’re on a call? Then get them a fancy web cam which has onboard h264 encoding to offload the cpu usage
There’s a million things you can do to speed things up
emveezee@reddit
More often than not you could just remote in, look busy and throw some technical jargon their way. Itll change their perception ( when it was subjective to begin with ) and they’ll claim its fixed now. ( this actually happens at our Co. )
elpamyelhsa@reddit
I’ve seen a heap of Dell 5530 Laptops slow down due to SSDs running about 10% of their speed. Low endurance Mini NVME SSD just wearing out but can be replaced and restores the speed.
You can run the WinSAT tool to get SSD Mbit/s to see what speed it’s getting.
KAugsburger@reddit
Once you get workstations older than ~4-5 years it isn't a bad idea to be doing a hardware diagnostic when you get 'slow' PC tickets. YMMV but it isn't unusual for SSDs to start failing as most vendors aren't going to spend a premium on the drives when they assume most customers will start retiring machines by that time.
bcredeur97@reddit
Windows 11 did slow things down a bit I find, in general over windows 10.
DistantFlea90909@reddit
These people have a million chrome tabs open at all times
cdoublejj@reddit
do you have at least 16gb of ram? has anyone sat down with them for an hour to see whats slow? web apps perhaps? have you stripped down windows or run LTSC? some of my clients run legacy software that IS slow, especially on new hardware. also up time is something i look at? are you cross comparing with network monitoring?
SugeMalleSuger@reddit
Clear temp files from %temp%, clear browser caches and least but not last, disable and deletel windows recovery files, which is useless anyways. Windows uses a lot of time to scan those file locations. As a bonus you can clean up old windows update files.
KAugsburger@reddit
It isn't a bad thing to do but I generally wouldn't expect any significant improvements in performance clearing out temporary files unless those folders are taking up hundreds of GB or the disk is almost full.
OneSeaworthiness7768@reddit
This account is purely for advertising Nexthink.
Next.
Creative-Package6213@reddit
Ha, you're absolutely right!
kyle-the-brown@reddit
I never look at usernames, which is my issue, but thanks for the heads up
Fallingdamage@reddit
9 times out of 10, for me its their PC running update/drive cleanup background services at the most inconvenient times. That or the PC was running a cleanup process while the screen was locked and it took a bit for it to taper off once the user logs back in.
"My fan is noisy today" is another common one that tells me windows is very busy doing something the user has no control over.
kyle-the-brown@reddit
PC is slow or computer lagging I quit troubleshooting years ago and just run manual drivers via the manufacturer site or software followed by checking startup apps and disabling everything not needed to run the computer, a scheduled task that forces a reboot every Saturday night at 11:59 pm for my frequent flyers and a reboot before closing the ticket.
ltobo123@reddit
Do you have extra budget (haha I know)? If there's some wiggle room, a DEX platform can be helpful to catch/track down some some key culprits like misconfiged patches or failing hardware that isn't the easiest to diagnose through RMM/Intune
The top line (Nexthink) is going to be expensive, but smaller providers have more affordable intro plans (like Teamviewer, ne 1E).
randomman87@reddit
If you work in Finance then you know the answer is usually "that's by design". We have like 10+ different agents on our workstations all doing different and slightly overlapping things and our InfoSec team struggles to get them to stop fighting each other. Love it when I get asked why we can't conclusively optimize all this. Because it's now more complicated than NASAs first moon landing, that's why.
rootcurios@reddit
I don't take those tickets seriously. It's 99% of the time a user issue whose either impatient, not rebooting but said they did, 10000 tabs open, or they have tons of Excel and spreadsheets open on top of the rest.
iamliterate@reddit
The user hasn't restarted in 9 days. And it's always the Microsoft OneNote app acting up for no reason.
AccomplishedVisit545@reddit
I have created a "Friday problems" catagory in ticket system where all of these problems go, my way to track who is looking to ride the clock by parking the bus on me. then first step is a restart of their computer so they have to save and close everything fixes the issue most of the time and puts the bus back on them.
Maverick_X9@reddit
Uptime: 62 days
With every m365 app open + chrome 14 tabs
taker25-2@reddit
This is why I buy computers that are generally overkill to help combat this.
Skorn42@reddit
Not always a computer problem.
Sometimes a user is getting faster at the tasks assigned to them which then translates into them perceiving the ‘waiting’ time for things to load/progress much more often.
Sometimes of these things can be then spun in a conversation to make them feel good that they are getting faster than the computer.
Just a thought, hope you find your answer.
krilu@reddit
This makes them feel good, but then they feel because they are so smart/fast then they deserve a faster computer and will gain a "power user" mentality.
I prefer my users feeling stupid but still good enough. Like we all are, in reality.
Skorn42@reddit
Depends on who you’re talking to. Every business user is different. A lot of the times I ran into the problem OP described, they were standard fare users like a front desk lobby using a form of check in software.
The system was loading for about a second and this was what the user was reporting. This is normal but when they first started they were more patient because they were still learning themselves. After the learning period is over and they know the routine, they notice the ‘slowness’ because they are already prepared for the next click.
bikeidaho@reddit
Dude, this is brilliant!
czj420@reddit
"show me"
zzmorg82@reddit
We don’t get these types of tickets often, but when we do it’s usually because the software the user is using is slow/locking up on them. Their Windows OS itself and everything else is usually fine.
Unfortunately, we can’t change that because majority of the software is 32-bit, no amount of hardware you throw at it can change how much RAM it’ll use, and the vendor has been dragging their ass to convert it to 64-bit for the past 15+ years.
They’re probably unable to because the vendor’s initial SWEs left the company years ago and the current management/tech team are too cheap and inexperienced to untangle that spaghetti code.
Sorry, I went on a tangent but I had to get it off my chest lol. 🤷♂️ I feel you though OP.
thaughtless@reddit
How much security shit have you layered on it? Theres a reason why youre getting tickets.
sonicdm@reddit
My approach to this is asking for more detail including dates and times of when it lags and what they were doing. That usually ends in them realizing it's only happened twice but they think it happens all the time. People tend to focus on the bad and create a whole story when there's nothing actually to it. It's not malice or anything. It's just human nature.
Obvious-Water569@reddit
75% of these tickets are people wanting to blame IT for their output being slow.
They'll open a ticket and then sit there doing next to nothing because they're "waiting for IT to fix it".
The rest are a combination of them being impatient or an unfortunate overlap of AV updates and OneDrive syncs that they won't be able to reproduce.
ledow@reddit
If you can't reliably reproduce the problem, I cannot fix it.
It's honestly that simple.
Show me something that you do that consistently causes slowness.
Otherwise? (shrug).
And if it's not reproducible, or even regular enough to actually demonstrate to me... then it's honestly not a big enough problem for me to spend time diagnosing.
It's just like a car mechanic or any other profession "Well, the other day, it made this funny noise". I can't work on that alone, I can only punt guesses and get it wrong most of the time. You want me to fix it? I need more info so I can determine the problem before I can even BEGIN to work out how to fix it.
Obvious-Water569@reddit
That judge would fucking ruin your life!
medium_wall@reddit
I think this attitude quickly turns into excusing laziness. A lot of times if the person knew how to reproduce the error then they'd also be able to figure out how to fix it.
Ii think a better protocol would be to have the person fill in sufficient context in which the error occurred. If they just "don't remember" what they were doing when the error occurred then that's unacceptable for a bug report. But if they say "I was in X apps and did Y things and then this happened" I think, even if they can't reproduce it, that would be an acceptable report to warrant investigation in many circumstances.
40513786934@reddit
we may never understand exactly why or how, but this is probably a DNS issue
Creddahornis@reddit
Check if Copilot desktop is running in the background. I nearly binned off a bunch of new ish machines last year because this was causing terrible RAM issues for everyone
also
My condolences if it does, because I can't work out how to disable this behaviour without uninstalling Copilot desktop
ncc74656m@reddit
Define "not ancient." My experience with this is people who think 16GB is the new 640k. Aside from one job where they were nursing along a mess of at the time 8-10 year old computers packed to the gills with RAM with bad images that were slow when they were first deployed, I told everyone 32GB or bust. I grant, that was in the "before times" but still.
IFarmZombies@reddit
I usually threaten people with a reimage and then magically everything is working good enough for them again
gonewild9676@reddit
What's in task manager?
I've had anti virus apps chew up 40% of my cpu and being everything to a crawl.
ParticularDonut7555@reddit
Create a "Help Yourself" guide for the users. Simple things like "How to check for Chrome tab sleepers" or "When to reboot" can cut your ticket volume by 30%. Sometimes, just showing them that you see the spikes makes them feel supported, even if the fix is just "stop opening 100 tabs."
FatalSky@reddit
Gotta figure it out. Napkin math on a 10 minute computer login to outlook syncing across a 2,000 user setup at $100/hr is $8,000,000 yearly in wages for downtime.
qrysdonnell@reddit
Get a stopwatch. Time whatever is slow. Check a reference computer. If it's slower than the reference computer troubleshoot for a little bit. If you can't figure it out in 30 minutes, wipe the computer.
This is tad extreme, but don't spend forever troubleshooting. Also I have an assistant that likes to 'fix' desktop issues. Whenever he fixes someone's weird issue it comes back and then I have to wipe the computer a week later because I don't have time to spend forever troubleshooting. Wipe for me also means moving them to a pre-built spare running the same hardware. User downtime is usually less to move them to a new computer than to troubleshoot.
hkusp45css@reddit
Part of the issue is that your employees seem to be trained with unreasonable expectations.
If you can't train them to accept some level of friction throughout their day, you're going to be polishing brass all day everyday.
Get SLAs ion place. Get ticket priorities in place. When you have 4 tickets, 3 of which are general slowness and one which needs attention, you can use your SLAs to justify the priorities.
Don't allow your users to abuse you. Set up your workflow in a way that doesn't suck your day away handholding people with unreasonable expectations.
enigmaunbound@reddit
Also they get to many spam messages.
thetrivialstuff@reddit
This is just the state of things now, with the intermittent Microsoft outages and how cloud-reliant (and also locally extremely resource-intensive) Windows is.
The only version of Windows that doesn't randomly slow down because oh, oops, we need to make a round trip API call to someone else's datacentre in order to display that new copilot icon in the special context menu that no one wanted, is Server Core.
simAlity@reddit
My protocol: Sfc Check event log while this is running. Check for driver updates Dism if all else fails
I assume they ate using SSD/m2/nvmes right?
ahazuarus@reddit
drop ticket priority to rock bottom, circle back hours or days later (whatever your process calls for), confirm if user is still experiencing the issue presently. IMHO, I think its unwise to spend any amount of time investigating apart from a quick glance at the various dashboards readily available (which dont require remoting into the target machine). nothing stands out? sit on ticket, maybe back and forth asking for more specific information adn guidance what to look for, re-confirm later if issue still persists. The goal is to and filter out transient issues. there will ALWAYS be transient issues.
I think the idea I'm getting at here is focusing on answering the question how much time investment is warranted based on specific criteria and metadata available, user ticket history, where are they at on the org chart, etc. I feel like alot of us get tunnel vision on a reported issue looking for a smoking gun that doesnt exist or it did but disappeared never to be found again. I think we can still put more pressure on the user to guide us to the problem and patterns and still provide far superior support than big tech like Microsoft would ever be willing to give us. like, actually reading tickets and previous case notes.
jhuseby@reddit
Shouldn’t take forever to troubleshoot. Call the user, ask them to show you the issue, go from there. Start at square one, ie you don’t take anything they said as fact, verify everything.
azspeedbullet@reddit
they need to restart the pc, after restarting it makes everything fast
paleologus@reddit
Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?
HappyDadOfFourJesus@reddit
I have a standard template for those tickets that runs the gamut from "please reboot and let me know if the slowness persists" to "close any unneeded browser tabs", then "what exactly is slow". Responses are usually something like "thanks, it's better now" or the ticket goes dormant and closes out automatically.
Civil_Inspection579@reddit
Yeah this is super common “slow” issues are usually timing overlaps you can’t easily catch later. Adding lightweight continuous monitoring or user-side logging during the moment can help surface patterns.