This will be now my standard template for the technical support

That's the support forums. It gets worse with actual support, that goes all chummy friendly, adds emoji and exclamation marks randomly. I would not have been surprised if my last exchange with MS Support ended with "tee hee".

They're weird.

Somewhere in the not so distant future...

Google Search: "Install printer driver windows 11"

Result from random blog:
"My first experience with printer drivers was 35 years ago. My grandma had an IBM PS2 that ran MS DOS and an HP Deskjet printer. It connected to the computer via a parallel port and printed a whopping 1 page per minute. Every year at Christmas, Grandma would print off her famous pecan pie recipe and we would all gather around the printer, eagerly listening to the sound of the print head slowly whooshing back and forth in anticipation of the tasty goodness to come. Blah blah blah. Five more pages of meaningless stories that have nothing to do with installing print drivers followed by a solution that only works for Epson printers."

Dear, Valued Customer

chkdsk c: /f /r

Microsoft thanks you for your business

sfc /scannow will apparently fix any windows issue. All of them.

Forgot the replies from both the original requester as well as a number of other people who state this didn't work at all, or isn't remotely close to what they were asking. The 7 people who marked this as helpful must be other Microsoft "experts" giving their own useless help. And what I really love is how if I get to this page a simple back click won't get me out, I have to pull down the history to go back to the search page because they have a reload loop built in to trap you.

"Help! My computer is slow after an update."

"Try reinstalling window and reformatting you drive"

"Help I can't find my documents!"

I just had one today

"Do [registry edit that won't help]. Alternatively, try [setting that does not exist] Anyway this is not supported anymore as of [very old version] (actually still works)"

And in true windows fashion, the thing just needed to be disabled and enabled again. After it was broken by a windows update, of course.

I love tech “help” that basically suggests you nuke everything you’re trying to save.

I can't believe they are getting away with so many bullshit non-solutions to the point where you wonder if they even know how to read.

I wonder if they trained AI on this. Might explain some things

Usually it goes like this:

”Hey I have this problem. I tried this solution, but it didn’t work. Any ideas?”

”The fix is easy: just do the thing you said you already done”

And then radio silence.

For me, someone who uses a Mac for work but still has to use the office environment, it goes something like this:

Google the issue

Google the issue + office for Mac

Find a forum about the exact issue I'm having

Loads of people commenting having the same issue

Expert answers and says "That feature is not available for Macs at this time. How about you post it as a suggestion for the devs at this link here>>>"

Post is minimum 3 years old and there's still no solution.

Gee thanks.

Here's a handy Venn Diagram:

(Answers) (Answers DOT Microsoft DOT com)

Searching for a Linux error: OP: Hi guys', I have {situation }, how do I fix it?

Reply 1: Theres no way to troubleshoot this! Theres not enough information! Reply 2: I have the exact same issue on the same OS Reply 3: Have you tried {solution for a 6 year discontinued linux Distro}

Sometimes, You'll find an arch forum post that is perfect though and that almost makes the rest of the process worth it

Applies to macOS as well. These official support forums are such garbage.

Windows: did you run sfc /scannow and chkdsk? (This has never solved a single thing in my entire building PCs life, so since about 1999.)

macOS: did you reset SMC and PRAM? (This is basically a fancy restart and with Apple Silicon devices, it is literally just a restart.)

i once said has anyone fixed any problem with any of these ms threads? and they all say solved.

Looked up how to "close tabs to left" on Edge* since there's a button for right but not left. Click MS help link, the dude legitimately recommended moving all the tabs backwards then closing to right.
He also said you could do control click on them and "close selected tabs" which worked... decently. Still mad there's not a button for closing tabs to left though.

* this was on my education laptop where I can't use Firefox and Chrome doesn't save cookies so id have to log into everything every single time for 'safety'

I wrote about it on my other account a year ago: https://lemmy.world/comment/5005611

Hi, Micro$oft Community Advisor Alicia here!

I’m sorry to hear that your software occasionally crashes. Trying some of these steps may help you:

• Go to Windows Update and search for the latest drivers
• Run ‘sfc /scannow’ in command prompt
• Reinstall Windows

Please mark my post as “Answer” if this helped you solve your problem! Thank you!