Time for a rant ----- is it just me or does anyone else lose their f*cking loaf when they see support DELETING ENTIRE USER PROFILES for the flimsiest of goddamn reasons? "User can't open Outlook" --> DELETES ENTIRE PROFILE (when they could just use a bit of nous and maybe JUST DELETE THE OUTLOOK-RELATED STUFF). "User's microphone isn't working" --> DELETES ENTIRE PROFILE (when the damn thing was probably faulty) Or even, hey, just rename the profile, see if that fixes the issue, then escalate it to someone with a bit more technical knowhow, if you're not sure how to remove the pertinent filesystem and Registry values for a particular app or feature. Hey, ask me nicely, I'll write some scripts that users can run that "reset Teams", "reset Outlook", "reset Office", etc. BUT JUST STOP DELETING USER'S PROFILES FOR NO REASON! Just had one come in, user had a session that disconnected a few times. So they deleted the profile. Amazingly, the problem hasn't gone away, so now the user is still getting disconnects but now has no f*cking profile either. End of rant. Sorry.

Good morning, how was your tea this morning, James?? I'm with you, diagnose before you take the drastic step to delete a whole profile... but troubleshooting is a skill that so many lack.

Maybe I need a cuppa 🙂 but you're right, basic understanding is dropping in standard and "AI" probably isn't helping

we lost the ability to write when mobiles and computers came along, we are not very fast losing our ability to think for ourselves.. everything is answered with "let me ask Chat" or "I asked AI"... You need a stiff drink I think 😉

It's a little early for that 🙂 am going to play football in an hour or so though so might dish out some heavy tackles

I feel sorry for the opponent

You're not alone.. I've ranted to my support teams about this many times. It's like.. office won't load... Format C: and reinstall the os.. that'll fix it

Service desk people pushed to close tickets as quickly as possible, or not given enough time to resolve issues? Could possibly be a top down management issue in some orgs

Definitely, probably not wanting escalations to second or third line without "trying everything". But it must piss the users off something rotten

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

you know the real solution to that problem is to restart the internet and maybe delete a domain controller or two..

technically you can't have replication issues if there's nothing to replicate

see, you get it

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I feel like this is a mixture of the aforementioned hammer and nail analogy along with incident scope obscurity. Helpdesk folks may be on a call with an end-user and are then unloaded upon with mixed signals. Maybe they're told that since problem A has occurred, issue B has arisen. And because they are being sensitive to the performance of their system, perhaps because their workflow was impacted by A and B, they throw in issue C. So now the helpdesk tech is looking at A, B, and C and due to this obscured view of the problem, the only commonality must be the profile, after all not everyone is reporting A, B, and C together so surely it's not the machine/image and is just something unique to this user's profile... OR they convince themselves A, B, and C must be related somehow... so they reach for the hammer that, based on their previous experience, seems to line-out multiple odd cascading issues, often with less callbacks. Could have simply used the pliers and addressed A; then B and C wouldn't have been an issue to the user. But of course the user needs it fixed like right now top priority. So to avoid a followup they give a quick smack, and then they're starting FRESH😅 But yes it's a dying art to even be able to use the pliers on problem A. Much less to recognize and stay scoped to problem A rather than make it into a bigger ABCDE problem that really isn't even the issue.

I have had servicedesk personell delete userprofiles because the user wasn't able to log in to the portal due to account issues or similar problems.... then again, in many cases it doesn't really matter as most user data is either saved in OneDrive or synchronized in the browser, Edge or Chrome. So the impact hasn't been that huge for the user.