April 27th, 2020

The paradoxical sense of relief when instructions to solve the problem fail at the first step

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

I couldn’t get something to work. The details aren’t important.

I found a very old internal wiki page that listed a long, complicated process for getting the thing to work. I strongly suspected that it wouldn’t help, but out of thoroughness was obligated to give it a try, so that if somebody asked if I tried it, I could say “Yes, and it didn’t work.”

It failed on step 1.

Yay! This is so much better than failing on step 23.

Now I could ask for help with a slightly clearer conscience.

Category
Old New Thing
Topics
Other

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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  • Brian

    My favorite is when it fails on step 1 with an error like,
    “You appear to be trying to use [Long process X] to enable [feature Y]. However, [feature Y] is no longer supported via [Long process X]. Instead, please select, [enable feature Y] in the settings menu.”

  • AlanW

    This comment has been deleted.

    • smf

      I didn’t think they actually expected you to try those unrelated solutions, I thought it was a creativity test.

  • cheong00

    That’s why it’s so helpful to see troubleshooting guide that list out things that “If you see any of these, the troubleshooting steps don’t apply to your case.”

    • Dave Gzorple

      Another issue, and this is particularly egregious with Google products, is "If the date on these instructions is more than a few weeks old then they won't work any more since the UI on whatever it is you're using has changed". And that's not snark, that's literally true, try looking for help online for some incomprehensible UI and you'll find posts documenting how to decipher it from two, three, four, ... twenty-seven revisisions ago,...

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      • smf

        Even if they exist, the “helpful” person often doesn’t explain where to find any of the options listed & that is the most important thing.

        If I could have found it without help, I wouldn’t be looking for help

  • word merchant

    Did you try turning it off and on again?

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