Yeah, on Win98 (or maybe Win2k), it would always find this obscure sound card driver for this crappy sound card in this Packard Bell I had. Amazing.

But not once ever for any other issue before or since.

strangely Network Troubleshooter always helped me when I was out of ideas why the network just... stopped working

tho never said the problem, things just got fixed in the meantime while it analyzed n shit and then it reported no issues :P

Yes it has.

I used to have a sound issue and the repair wizard would always fix it. It would happen again, I think after the next reboot.

Never. I've been using since Windows 3.11

Windows 95

Windows 98

Windows xp

Vista

Windows 8

Windows 10

Not once has it solved a problem

I once had the troubleshooter fix a networking issue I had. I'm still shook.

Well, it helped me boot into USB drives so I can remove windows and swap it with Linux on some annoying computers that would boot windows very fast...

the troubleshooter is great! – “problem not found” – it’s exactly the same problem you couldn’t find yesterday, or the day before, or the day before …

(I think I just keep clicking it out of a sense of ritual – it fixed itself once, so I keep doing the same unrelated set of steps in the same order in some forlorn hope of appeasing the Windows daemons)

The network troubleshooter often works alright. Just never run it if you have setup a bunch of virtual switches in hyper V or something, because it will delete them or otherwise fuck them up and it's pretty annoying to restore (you have to remove them via device Manager and stuff)

No, in 15 years in IT I have never once had any sort of Windows auto repair actually do anything. Otherwise it would've already done it behind the scenes.

Definitely, it is the first thing I always run. It is really great at checking all the "obvious" user errors like having no internet connection or having a full disk drive.

I can run it and go do something else.

It is also great to explain how to use it over a phone to people who aren't tech savvy.

Afterwards it gives you extra information about the issue if you click on details.

No, however I think there might be a bit of a trap here that skews perception for some. Namely, that the automatic tools are intended to fix problems simple enough that more technical minded people would attempt the solutions it uses themselves before resorting to a troubleshooter.

The Windows network troubleshooter is black magic from the depths of hell itself and is very opinionated and selective in choosing which issues to fix and whether you'll need to bargain your soul to recieve said fix. I have red hair and find it doesn't bother bartering with me, but your mileage may vary.

Yes -- frequently, but this is a bad thing.

The issue was that their automatic updater makes my computer unable to boot, due to some compatibility problem with an update. Which it keeps trying to apply. Then every time it fails, startup repair or some troubleshooter rolls back the update and it works again for a while.

Since I cannot turn off updates, it's stuck in this loop forever. However, I can turn off my computer via the power button (sending shutdown signal, not hard power off), and this avoids applying the update most of the time.

This is an older computer that is only used for games, and a slicer for my 3D printer. I've decided to leave it in this state -- at this point it's more a piece of performance art than a reliable computer. I moved my business and my clients away from MS a few years back.

This cost me a lot of easy money though -- there's no maintenance work for me to do and I've had to move on to more productive things.

Once. It was a long time ago, and I don’t remember exactly what was wrong, but it did fix it. Since then I’ve run it probably 10 more times and it’s never worked again. Even when the thing that’s wrong is something that it should be able to fix, like I formatted the EFI partition, and it just needs to add its own boot loader again.

I've occasionally had success restoring a network connection with troubleshooter. Generally if you switch between Ethernet and WiFi, Windows will get confused, but the troubleshooter will turn the network devices off and on which gets it back. I find it's easier to turn off the device I'm not using, but if that's too complicated for someone usually "run the troubleshooter" works.

Troubleshooter maybe once, but otherwise no.

Startup repair yes though, after doing the right set of SFC scan and updating Windows cache whatever thing

I often use the network troubleshooter because I know that all that is needed is to turn the adapter off and on, which the troubleshooter will always do, saving me a couple of clicks to do it myself 🤷

Start up repair, yes. Troubleshooter, never.

On windows 8 the network troubleshooter would restart my wifi driver and that usually fixed the problem. Aside from that nah

Back with windows 7, it did. I’ve never seen it work since then.

I've used startup repair many, many times to repair systems. The troubleshooters have never worked for me, no matter how minor the issue that needed to be fixed.

Yes, and I've also had success using tools like SFC and DISM to repair Windows.

Well, this is very specific, but the Windows 3D Builder repair tool is probably the best error fixer for 3D printing I have encountered, so at least they got that one right... I couldn't believe it when I saw it actually worked as intended lol

No, but you have to think that if they had an automated fix for a problem, they'd probably run it in the background before you even realised you had a problem.

Like if I have an network issue, they'd probably retry connecting immediately, rather than waiting for me to hit a Connect button like some caveman with a 56k dialup modem.

Like just cloning a drive and swapping your boot device, internally it's probably freaking the fuck out about why it's on NVME2 instead of SATA5 all of a sudden, but it just gets on with it.

Windows's ability to troubleshoot itself or at least point you in the direction of a solution is non-existent. One reason I switch to Linux fully.

Yes. Once a Win10 troubleshooter solved a backwards-compatibility problem with an old XP game.

I have tried this a few times actually but only on Windows 8 of all systems!

I don't remember the problem, but it actually found the problem and fixed it all by itself!

I remember I even liked Windows 8 after that because I thought this would finally be a turning point!

It didn't.

I've never needed the startup repair, but the troubleshooter does occasionally fix network or audio related things. I don't do enough to need it very often anymore.

I often had an issue that an audio device wouldn't show up or work. Just running the troubleshooter for it probably triggers some audio device rediscovery, which managed to fix it every single time I had the issue.

Windows startup repair did unbrick my system a couple of times, and the network troubleshooter fixes the issues most of the time, so yes they have.

Yes, a network issue fixed automatically. I was shocked as anyone.

I sometimes tell people to try the network troubleshooter if they're having issues because it's idiot proof. All it'll do is occasionally disable and enable a network adapter which can fix some common problems. If you're even the slightest bit tech savvy though, ignore it.

Startup Repair has been useful when I've actually gone to use it, but I can count on one hand how many times I've gotten to that point.

Otherwise, no.

Yes, probably about 5 times over 20 years and 100s of attempts. I usually try it when annoyed and want to see Windows fail.

I think it pointed out the right direction at least once, back when i was doing tech support (xp and pre-xp). Back when the toolkit includes whole stacks of cd's containing every driver known to exist. I don't even remember what it is, but it was something Realtek.

Not for me. I dual booted Fedora and W10 and W10 decided it could no longer boot.

Tried all those powershell commands to fix boot but no bueno. Gave up Windows after.

Yeah, startup repair fixed multiple pc's for me. And troubleshooter fixed both network and audio issues for me. Usually by restarting a driver or something dumb but it's lot easier to let the program do it than to restart your audio driver manually.

I think that back in the day I used the startup repair to restore a broken MBR.

But generally no, and I don't believe that the purpose of the tools are to repair anything, as much as it is to give a remote support tech some time to google the issue, while the wizard is running a lot of NOPs. Thus giving the customer a feeling that something is being done, while really just being on hold.