Troubleshooting PC applications

Troubleshooting a PC application can be very frustrating sometimes. I know, I have been doing it now for the past 6 yrs. Each application is different and usually the issues are different as well. Recently, I had the pleasure of troubleshooting a financial application known as Peoplesoft (or JD Edwards now...the name keeps changing). Basically, JDE support could not figure out what the issue was (I will not go in depth due to it may take all night) so they advised us of our last resort option....."reformat the PC and call us back if you still have a problem."

Honestly, I hate that answer. This "fix" is only available when there is absolutely no other solution. In this case, there was. I never reformat (or reimage as some call it) a PC without first exhausting all options. Today, I did just that.....and what do you know, an hour later, I found the solution.

Now granted, sometimes reimaging a PC is the only option. But if you can fix it yourself, why not? I was very excited that I figured out a solution even when the application's own support team could not. Doing stuff like that is one reason I love helping people fix computers.