Has Windows startup repair or a troubleshooter ever fixed your issue even once?
Has Windows startup repair or a troubleshooter ever fixed your issue even once?
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.
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)
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...
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)
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.
Definitely, it is the first thing I always run. It is really great at checking all the "obvious" user errors like having no internet connection or having a full disk drive.
I can run it and go do something else.
It is also great to explain how to use it over a phone to people who aren't tech savvy.
Afterwards it gives you extra information about the issue if you click on details.
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.
The Windows network troubleshooter is black magic from the depths of hell itself and is very opinionated and selective in choosing which issues to fix and whether you'll need to bargain your soul to recieve said fix. I have red hair and find it doesn't bother bartering with me, but your mileage may vary.
Yes -- frequently, but this is a bad thing.
The issue was that their automatic updater makes my computer unable to boot, due to some compatibility problem with an update. Which it keeps trying to apply. Then every time it fails, startup repair or some troubleshooter rolls back the update and it works again for a while.
Since I cannot turn off updates, it's stuck in this loop forever. However, I can turn off my computer via the power button (sending shutdown signal, not hard power off), and this avoids applying the update most of the time.
This is an older computer that is only used for games, and a slicer for my 3D printer. I've decided to leave it in this state -- at this point it's more a piece of performance art than a reliable computer. I moved my business and my clients away from MS a few years back.
This cost me a lot of easy money though -- there's no maintenance work for me to do and I've had to move on to more productive things.
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.
Troubleshooter maybe once, but otherwise no.
Startup repair yes though, after doing the right set of SFC scan and updating Windows cache whatever thing
I often use the network troubleshooter because I know that all that is needed is to turn the adapter off and on, which the troubleshooter will always do, saving me a couple of clicks to do it myself 🤷
No, but you have to think that if they had an automated fix for a problem, they'd probably run it in the background before you even realised you had a problem.
Like if I have an network issue, they'd probably retry connecting immediately, rather than waiting for me to hit a Connect button like some caveman with a 56k dialup modem.
Like just cloning a drive and swapping your boot device, internally it's probably freaking the fuck out about why it's on NVME2 instead of SATA5 all of a sudden, but it just gets on with it.
Yes. Once a Win10 troubleshooter solved a backwards-compatibility problem with an old XP game.
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.
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.
Start up repair, yes. Troubleshooter, never.
I often had an issue that an audio device wouldn't show up or work. Just running the troubleshooter for it probably triggers some audio device rediscovery, which managed to fix it every single time I had the issue.
I've never needed the startup repair, but the troubleshooter does occasionally fix network or audio related things. I don't do enough to need it very often anymore.
Windows startup repair did unbrick my system a couple of times, and the network troubleshooter fixes the issues most of the time, so yes they have.
I had a problem once when my laptop display was just black after booting. Triend everything, nothing worked. Return to OEM authorized support. They had my laptop for 4 weeks, so solution. Then just refunded the full price & retuned back the laptop.
Ubuntu LTS since then & no sick or weird issues since.
Back with windows 7, it did. I’ve never seen it work since then.
Yes, probably about 5 times over 20 years and 100s of attempts. I usually try it when annoyed and want to see Windows fail.
Not for me. I dual booted Fedora and W10 and W10 decided it could no longer boot.
Tried all those powershell commands to fix boot but no bueno. Gave up Windows after.
Yeah, startup repair fixed multiple pc's for me. And troubleshooter fixed both network and audio issues for me. Usually by restarting a driver or something dumb but it's lot easier to let the program do it than to restart your audio driver manually.
I think that back in the day I used the startup repair to restore a broken MBR.
But generally no, and I don't believe that the purpose of the tools are to repair anything, as much as it is to give a remote support tech some time to google the issue, while the wizard is running a lot of NOPs. Thus giving the customer a feeling that something is being done, while really just being on hold.
I sometimes tell people to try the network troubleshooter if they're having issues because it's idiot proof. All it'll do is occasionally disable and enable a network adapter which can fix some common problems. If you're even the slightest bit tech savvy though, ignore it.
Startup Repair has been useful when I've actually gone to use it, but I can count on one hand how many times I've gotten to that point.
Otherwise, no.
Folks, Windows's own system image couldn't be restored from Windows. I had to go download some program called Macrium Reflect and use the underlying VHD files.
What broke? Oh, you don't know? It was a bad Windows update that had a broken driver or something causing driver verification to fail.
I was missing printer drivers it found the drivers (iirc)
Yes, a network issue fixed automatically. I was shocked as anyone.
I can't say I've ever had a problem solved by any of the troubleshooters, yet I always go to them just in case one day they do.
Usually they either direct you to the most generic solutions possible (that you've already likely done by the time you're resorting to the troubleshooter), reset your networking (thanks Windows, I felt like having to reconnect to all my networks again) or come back saying they couldn't find a problem...
Which clearly isn't the case Microsoft, because if there wasn't a problem, why the fuck would I be using the troubleshooter? For the shits and giggles?
I would usually have issues with my wi-fi, where the connection after a reboot won't work and the wi-fi GUI would reset itself everytime i tried. Network troubleshooter would fix it 100% every time and quite quickly, so there was no reason to actually figure out what was at fault.
Nah more features and flexibility the better
It will sometimes wipe your static IP configuration and switch it to DHCP which could theoretically fix something, but I've only ever seen this break things instead.
Many times.
only once for startup repair, twice for system restore. all client systems, not mine, since the introduction of those features. one of those ended up needing a full backup and reinstall soon after anyway.
plus the one time shadow copies from automatic system restore points saved a client's cad, docs, images, pdfs, and other files from a poorly-executed ransomware attack (that failed to clear out those vss copies). a nirsoft utility was able to save everything.
the 'fixit' troubleshooters are nearly worthless.
This would only be possible if it installed Linux.
I think it pointed out the right direction at least once, back when i was doing tech support (xp and pre-xp). Back when the toolkit includes whole stacks of cd's containing every driver known to exist. I don't even remember what it is, but it was something Realtek.
I had it work once for a wifi issue that was caused by an update, during either Vista or Win7 era. Outside of that, it fixed an audio problem for Win10 on a single app.
No. Tried it like 3-4 times in my life for really f-ed up not booting machines and it never worked for me. Haven't tried it since the ealy Win10 times, though.
It broke itselt, it broke Win2Usb and it broke grub. Thats it hahaa
both fixed things many times
The HP help and troubleshooting software did better than the Microsoft one.
The search service on my computer crashes from time to time and the troubleshooter gets it working again without having to reboot (I hate rebooting).
had a couple of windows 2000 pro and server recovery saves. haven't thought about it since. hrmmm
Not once as far as the Troubleshooting Wizards go.
I think it helped with a internet issue once, but I probably just needed to reset something.
I'm pretty sure it just does the absolute basic troubleshooting.
Troubleshooting has never been useful, and I think that was new-ish in XP. Startup repair (and chkdsk) have genuinely been useful.
Just been through the fire of having to clone my system to a new SSD and no, startup repair did nothing for me.
Yes, I've used it to fix multiple issues from boot issues to driver issues.
Troubleshooter was always able to fix my network issues. (Basically just resetting it)
It used to fix WiFi issues for me back on Windows Vista (bleh). Vista would always have issues when I woke my laptop from sleep mode, and my WiFi would be disconnected and unable to reconnect/properly turn off. Running the troubleshooter would restart my wireless card. Other than that I haven't encountered anything it's helped, but I don't use windows too often these days.
I had a number of occasions where Windows on my work PC f-ed up. None of the times, the windows "troubleshooting" wizard was anything but a waste of time before calling IT or digging into the problem myself.