Yeah, basically that. I’m back at work in Windows land on a Monday morning, and pondering what sadist at Microsoft included these features. It’s not hyperbole to say that the startup repair, and the troubleshooters in settings, have never fixed an issue I’ve encountered with Windows. Not even once. Is this typical?
ETA: I’ve learned from reading the responses that the Windows troubleshooters primarily look for missing or broken drivers, and sometimes fix things just by restarting a service, so they’re useful if you have troublesome hardware.
Yeah, on Win98 (or maybe Win2k), it would always find this obscure sound card driver for this crappy sound card in this Packard Bell I had. Amazing.
But not once ever for any other issue before or since.
The troubleshooter was legitimately good in Win2k. And has sucked since they unified kernels.
strangely Network Troubleshooter always helped me when I was out of ideas why the network just… stopped working
tho never said the problem, things just got fixed in the meantime while it analyzed n shit and then it reported no issues :P
That one usually is successful by disabling your network adapter, then re-enabling it. Basically…
Have you tried turning it off then back again?
yeah, but if the troubleshooter does that it’s somehow works, if I do each step manually what the troubleshooter does, it never works.
there’s some black magic involved…
like the way how unresponding apps suddenly come back to life if I open Task Manager…
Only Windows can unfuck that which it fucked up on its own.
Yes it has.
I used to have a sound issue and the repair wizard would always fix it. It would happen again, I think after the next reboot.
I feel like I’ve seen a unicorn!
I’ve only ever had it fix a sound issue, as well. Bad driver?
This was nearly 20 years ago, i really do not recall what the issue was, order of if I ever fixed it. I may have replaced the card or something.
Sounds a bit like the repair tool broke the sound everytime itself you shut down to polish its image
Possible! I have also used it when I disabled my network and it was quicker to run the repair tool than it was too try and remember what exactly i had done to disable it.
No, in 15 years in IT I have never once had any sort of Windows auto repair actually do anything. Otherwise it would’ve already done it behind the scenes.
Never. I’ve been using since Windows 3.11
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows xp
Vista
Windows 8
Windows 10
Not once has it solved a problem
There was a troubleshooter in 3.11?
No. That was meant as a statement of I’ve been using windows for that long and since the beginning of Windows (and when ever they introduced the trouble shooter) it’s never worked
Everybody always forgets about Windows 1.0 through 3.1 .
I had a 286 machine that came with windows 2. It felt more like a tech demo than something you’d actually use.
Also there was no auto fixer that I can remember.
Yeah, it was a mess until 3.0, and the networking support in 3.11 is what led to widespread adoption.
Coincidentally, 3.11 is when I dropped windows for Linux,
Well, it helped me boot into USB drives so I can remove windows and swap it with Linux on some annoying computers that would boot windows very fast…
I once had the troubleshooter fix a networking issue I had. I’m still shook.
the troubleshooter is great! – “problem not found” – it’s exactly the same problem you couldn’t find yesterday, or the day before, or the day before …
(I think I just keep clicking it out of a sense of ritual – it fixed itself once, so I keep doing the same unrelated set of steps in the same order in some forlorn hope of appeasing the Windows daemons)
The network troubleshooter often works alright. Just never run it if you have setup a bunch of virtual switches in hyper V or something, because it will delete them or otherwise fuck them up and it’s pretty annoying to restore (you have to remove them via device Manager and stuff)
Once. It was a long time ago, and I don’t remember exactly what was wrong, but it did fix it. Since then I’ve run it probably 10 more times and it’s never worked again. Even when the thing that’s wrong is something that it should be able to fix, like I formatted the EFI partition, and it just needs to add its own boot loader again.
Ha! That’s one of the problems that it has failed to fix for me. I converted several machines from netboot to local boot; the EFI partition was there, but the startup repair couldn’t even handle copying the bootloader files onto it. (Or even diagnose that they were missing.)
I’ve occasionally had success restoring a network connection with troubleshooter. Generally if you switch between Ethernet and WiFi, Windows will get confused, but the troubleshooter will turn the network devices off and on which gets it back. I find it’s easier to turn off the device I’m not using, but if that’s too complicated for someone usually “run the troubleshooter” works.
My WiFi just is unable to connect sometimes and the troubleshooter fails. Useless.
No, however I think there might be a bit of a trap here that skews perception for some. Namely, that the automatic tools are intended to fix problems simple enough that more technical minded people would attempt the solutions it uses themselves before resorting to a troubleshooter.
I’ve used startup repair many, many times to repair systems. The troubleshooters have never worked for me, no matter how minor the issue that needed to be fixed.
Yes, and I’ve also had success using tools like SFC and DISM to repair Windows.
You fixed things with SFC and DISM? You are a god among mortals!
DISM usually needs an install.wim in order to be effective lol
Sfc and DISM have each worked exactly once for me.
I’m hitting over x3 now. I know, I can’t believe it myself.
I have tried this a few times actually but only on Windows 8 of all systems!
I don’t remember the problem, but it actually found the problem and fixed it all by itself!
I remember I even liked Windows 8 after that because I thought this would finally be a turning point!
It didn’t.
