Actually, the first thing to do would have been to read the manual of the machine.

Right, I'm off now. Mine's the one with the manual I forgot to read last year.

You do know that no self respecting chap will read an operating manual until after the kit has failed to work or is irretrieveably broken?

As Sir PTerry himself once wrote:

"One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual."

(I think from Jingo, but I'm open to correction...)

This reminds me, tnagentially, of a recent small talk I had with an elderly gentlemanin the doctor's waiting room. We talked about lithium batteries and how they are prone to catch fire when physically abused beyond their design limits, like throwing a smartphone on a concrete pavement from a window on the 8th floor. Or trying to force charge them when outside their designed temperature envelope. The gentleman, exasperated, exclaimed, but why nobody tells us? This is the first time I hear about this! Sir, was my answer, watch your grand children closely next time they unpack the newest electronic gadget you bought them, and marvel at the now inborn muscle memory of throwing the several booklets, chock full with warning and hazard information, nicely into the paper recycling bin, like a good child they surely are.

What are these things?

didn't they go extinct sometime in early 2020? When it was deemed that doctors were too important to actually see people in person...

Nowadays, getting to see even a nurse in person (for a blood test) requires membership of the magic circle inner link at least around this part of the world (Surrey/Hants border).

Everything is done online or by phone or if a real examination is required, you are sent to A&E where real physicians still exist.

Actually, the first thing to do would have been to read the manual of the machine.

I disagree. This may get me some downvotes but imho:

RTFM is no longer a thing , at least not the first thing.

My elderly father had a habit of printing the manual out for ,say, a new smartphone .

He'd then complain 500 pages of A4 was too much to read and none of it was about the bit he wanted to know about etc .

Even getting the manual in pdf which might have "linked" table of contents or whatever , and a ctrl-F function is not my first goto.

The correct thing to do , like in the article , is google it and find a discussion about the same issue.

there are caveats , and tips tricks and a knack to learn obvs , but this is the easiest path.

A really good tip is go straight to the one with the URL stackexchange , and then remember to go to the "accepted answer" and not try to emulate the first post , which is "how not to do it" , as described by the OP.

crikey , I'd forgotton about those buttons .

Totally didnt see that coming . Thrown by the Linux i guess.

Not to brag but back then I would have .

I remember it being on my mental checklist of things to ask users , right after , "is there a powercut there?"

And when it became clear that users were incapable of establishing where their wifi switch was , let alone if it was on or off I collected a series of photos of the models we were using with big red lines , circles and arrows indicating THIS! HERE ! should be in THIS position.

Been there, done that. 10 years ago there'd probably have been a WiFi indicator LED somewhere. There's little chance of that these days.

Same here, after exhausting SW solutions I went all the way and unplugged and re-plugged the wi-fi module on my circa 2005 HP laptop believing there might be an HW problem. Only to discover the wi-fi on/off switch when screwing the backplate in again

You didn't check the Access Point first?

That's not entirely a joke because I have one that sometimes goes into a sulk and has to be rebooted.

Monitor was broken the other day - not powering on. Re-plugged the HDMI, wiggled the USB-C adapter, the whole bit.

I'd forgotten to turn the plug on at the wall. Of course, being a laptop, that fired up instantly off the battery, and thus I was led up the "well, obviously I've plugged it in" path. Wasted a good 10 mins before my flakey battery informed me that power was running low....

Been doing IT professionally since 1987, fyi.

Nope, that exact same thing didn't happen to me a couple of months ago, no siree. Honest.

This is all part of validation of The Rules (They deserve the Capital Letters Of Seriousness)

Rule 1:

People Are Idiots.

Rule 2:

Even the smartest of people, can, from time to time, Be Idiots.

Rule 3:

Don't forget Rule 1.

Rule 4 - If you are lucky then rule 2 applies to you.

Rule 4a - Rule 1 applies to everyone, including you.

Or the plug that appears to be connected and switched on but in fact, is not fully located into the socket. And leads have two ends......

got the T shirt. A family member presented me with an old laptop he wanted me to install Linux on. No problem I foolishly said. I'd recently updated the Mrs Windows 10 laptop to the latest version of Mint so had an installation stick ready to use. It just wouldn't have it though. Kept failing to install with an unreadable error message flashing past the screen lasting a millisecond. I turned the laptop over and noticed it had a sticker for Windows XP. Ah! the penny dropped, it was so old it needed the 32 bit version. Dug a 32 bit version of Mint out of the archives and that installed great, except no WiFi. Connected the Ethernet cable and got it fully up to date with all the patches but still the WiFi wouldn't work. Tried a plug in USB WiFi adaptor, nope didn't work. Eventually after much gnashing of teeth, I waded through the BIOS settings and noticed one to "Disable WiFi" which was ticked. Bugger. Turned the setting off and the WiFi worked. It never occurred to me that there would be such a setting.

I want to be able to tell you that I have never done the same thing, but my Mother raised me to be an honest child.

But you are no longer a child.

Many years ago I had a Honda Express moped for getting around as we lived a little bit away from places I wanted to go.

One morning I was going to scoot to college (6th form - 11 miles) and it would not start. I changed the spark plug, checked the fuel was on and all the things I knew but still no joy. For several days it remained like this and my normal helper (Dad) was not speaking to me because we had fallen out about something else.

One day in a calmer frame of mind I re-checked the little fuel on/off/reserve tap and remembered that when the fuel was low, you could switch it to 'Reserve' which allowed the last pint or so to be used - hey presto.....

I decided not to explain to my Dad immediately as we were, by then, exchanging some words.

I had an Honda NSR125 which I had to sell last year after 20 years. One morning it wouldn't start, it was still under warranty so I got the AA out. Who also couldn't start it. I was only when the bike had been partially dismantled that the AA man noticed that I had accidentally pressed the emergency kill switch.

Yes. tell me about it. I was network manager in a school that owned 600 HP laptops and the most common problem brought to us could be easilly diagnosed by observing whether the little blue light by the little sliding switch was illuminated or not.

I have lot count of the number of times I've fixed laptop wifi issues by simply switching on the wifi.

Sometimes it's been a switch, sometimes a button and sometimes a function key combination. You always get the same sort of response from the end user, along the lines of "I never switched it off" or "it must have switched itself off" or my particular favourite "I've tried that several times" all of which are evidence of the end user trying to avoid either embarrassment or a call out charge.

..that many of us here like proper hardware switches for such things;- camera covers, microphone cuts etc.

I suppose ideally the OS should be able detect the switch position and report back to the user* but have no "ability" to change it.

*Ideally something like "The wi-fi switch on the outside of your machine is in the off position - please move it to the on position to enable wi-fi" - rather than "system error 3456HZQQF227 - please contact your administrator"

when it is a button, then it can be turned on and off by software as well. ;-)