-systemsboy

I’m saying it’s a bad general rule to follow.

Rebooting is a simple solution to so many problems. It’s fast and easy and it’s something the user can do without needing help from a sysadmin. If it gets them back up and running before I have a chance to take a look, then why wouldn’t I tell them to reboot? What’s the harm in that? I need to fix every problem I come across, but I don’t necessarily think I need to understand every single one. And it’s certainly not my responsibility to report every odd interface glitch to Apple.

The Final Cut glitch in this article is a perfect example. Why would I spend hours trying to figure out the cause of some dumb application hiccup when a simple reboot solves the problem once and for all? And understanding that problem doesn’t benefit me or my users in the slightest.

There’s no harm, and myriad possible advantages, to rebooting as a first troubleshooting measure (in cases where the user won’t lose data, of course). And I absolutely stand by the recommendation.

-systemsboy

I don’t believe we should accept that standard from OS X, and what kind of an IT person are you if you’re blindly proposing solutions without any reasoning to back them up?