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Tech support problems often begin with one tiny detail nobody thought worth mentioning.

What happens when an application refuses to open even after a complete reinstall?

This technician discovered the user already had detailed instructions but had made one interesting choice while following them.

Read on to see which impossible-to-miss step caused everything.

Wonder why it’s not working

Years ago, I was working in a large IT service desk and was in a voice account.

While I was there, I noticed that many end users skipped steps in instructions.

I am not sure if this is a generation thing.

But the amount of people skipping steps was quite large.

This man received a call from a user complaining that his app wasn’t opening.

I had this one call where a user said his softphone app was not working.

He said it was not able to open.

I remoted into the computer and tried reinstalling the app.

It still was not opening.

He checked that document carefully.

After reinstalling, the user said he had been given instructions on how to install the application.

I asked him to show me the document with the steps.

I read and checked the steps in the document.

I found the reason why it was not working.

I asked the user if he had done the first part of the document.

Turns out, the user skipped the most important step.

He said no, like there was nothing wrong with skipping it.

In the Word document, in large bright red lettering, it said:

“DO NOT SKIP THIS PART. THIS IS REQUIRED FOR THE APPLICATION.”

I then proceeded to clean uninstall the app. I did the steps in the document exactly.

The app was then able to open. It connected to the softphone successfully.

Let’s see how others reacted to this story.

Short and makes sense.

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This person recently experienced the same.

This is why we have installation packages, says this one.

Here’s an honest opinion.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a delivery driver who, after being scolded for ignoring parking policies, decides to maliciously comply himself into some serious overtime.

Finally, somebody said it!

This technician reinstalled the broken softphone before learning that the user had skipped the very first setup requirement.

Once the app was removed and every written step was followed correctly, it opened and connected without another problem.

The warning was bright red, but optimism was apparently brighter.

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Author

Chris Allen