One of the most difficult parts of tech support or troubleshooting is trying to get the person with the problem to tell you what exactly the problem is. It often involves a long boring process of trying to gently coax the information out of them without making them feel bad.
Conversely, as someone who can explain things very clearly to a tech, I can tell them every step I've tried in the order of operations I tried each step and they still ask me to check my cables because they have a routine and can't seem to deviate from it for someone who actually has neurons firing.
@ThatDamnCat Oh no, that's an important step, because I've wasted so much time with power users when I've skipped over the most obvious steps and gotten into "real" troubleshooting only to find cable was plugged in wrong or caps lock was on.
@ThatDamnCat oh yeah that's annoying, I've had it happen to me where I list what I did in a ticket, then get a response back telling me to just do step 1 and marked closed and resolved without bothering tio find out what happens. About half my tickets with Blizzard are that way.
@Mycroft
What I mean is that before I even deal with tech, I check all the basics. Then, when I write the tech, I list how I checked all the things they are asking me to check again. I've done this stuff and even when I tell them exactly what I did, they still ask me "if I did it" because they don't actually read the notes people submit.
It's painful.