The troubleshooting step you would never consider taking

I'll start by saying that I spend 3 hours troubleshooting a connectivity issue yesterday that would have been resolved in 1 minute. Here's the story.

I upgraded my sister's PC to Windows 10 the second day it was relased but she was having some issues with a huge excel file used for accounting and asked me to downgrade back to windows 7. After 30 minutes trying to convince her not to and instead figure out the issue with the spreadsheet I gave in and downgraded to windows 7.

After the downgrade the PC restarts and all the apps and files are working fine. But the PC lost network connectivity. I start troubleshooting the issue, wireless access is working but no LAN. Checked cables, restarted the PC, shut down the PC, reset the Fios router, multiple times, called Verizon and still no luck. I hang up with Verizon and decide to continue the troubleshooting on my own.
After doing all that troubleshooting i started thinking about any steps that I might have missed. The only thing that I had not done was to unplug the power cable from the power supply. I shut down the PC, remove the power cable from the power supply and leave it alone for about 3-5 minutes while surffing online on the wireless trying to figure out why there was no LAN connectivity. I plug the power cable back in and restart the PC. I log in and the PC connects to the network and everything works fine. That was my WTF moment. Really? Seriously? I guess loss of power reset the memory and when plugged in the power again, clean data was provided. Can't think of any other reason why that would happen.
Anyway, thats the troubleshooting step I would have never thought of taking first, waste a good 3 hours on nothing.

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Comments

scaredoftests

But what great experience it was. LOL. It is funny on how the simplist thing works after much hair pulling....

E Double U

The good ol' power off/on trick works every single time.

nascar_paul

That's happened to me before. As I'm troubleshooting, I'll kind of go over my steps in my head and sometimes I'll think: "I can't believe that I haven't tried that yet!"

kurosaki00

What is the mac address?
Extended ping?
Are other users having the same issue?
Swap cables?
Deleted wireless connection and re-added it manually?
Reboot computer?
Event Viewer?
Try to replicate issue, take notes on problem?
What is the exact error that pops up?
Was there a configuration change?
ipconfig/traceroute/ping ?

Oh, hahaha I thought you meant troubleshooting steps help desk never do before kicking it to network.
Silly me

TheFORCE

kurosaki00 wrote: »

What is the mac address?
Extended ping?
Are other users having the same issue?
Swap cables?
Deleted wireless connection and re-added it manually?
Reboot computer?
Event Viewer?
Try to replicate issue, take notes on problem?
What is the exact error that pops up?
Was there a configuration change?
ipconfig/traceroute/ping ?

Oh, hahaha I thought you meant troubleshooting steps help desk never do before kicking it to network.
Silly me

Lol exactly! By the way, did everything mentioned above too.

eansdad

Hello IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again?

varelg

Oh, an interesting Windows 10 experience...

vinnypolston

Did you try turning it off.... annnnd unplugging it. Haha. Seriously though, I've been there. It's frustrating to know you spent so much time when a simple thing like that would fix the problem. Who would have thought that would cause your issue though. Good times

Hondabuff

Sounded like the NIC driver needed a reboot to fully install. What did device manager show?