Turn off and on again...or not

Turning the PC off and on again is indeed one of the most regular things we ask people to do and one of the things that fixes a lot of problems (save firing the people who cause the problems), this doesn't always go according to plan. This customer had been on the phone a few minutes previously and was told to restart her PC as it had been sitting "loading startup scripts" for ten minutes


Customer: Hi, I was just on the phone and was told to restart my PC but I'm still having the same problems
Me: Ok, so you've rebooted your PC, it's loaded up again and the same thing has happened?
Customer: Yes
Me: How long has it been like this since you switched it off? (She'd hung up literally a few minutes previously)
Customer: About ten minutes
Me: Right.. and this is since you turned the PC right off and back on again?
Customer: Well, I turned the monitor off and that went off but when I tried to turn the hard drive off that didn't do anything.
Me: So you've only turned the monitor off?
Customer: Yes

Had to advise customer that to reboot the PC she had turn the actual PC off and not the monitor. After actually rebooting, it worked!