I am not a professional techie, but I can tell you that a customer doesn't really want to know the how and why, he/she just wants the computer up and running ASAP.  If they wanted to know the how and why they'd start doing it themselves and eliminate the need for techies.

What I do when I or a friend has a problem is use the tricks I've learned from screwing things up on my machine, from reading tech stuff, and from google searches.  If I could, what I'd do to leave a happy customer is, after I fix the problem as fast as possible, I'd install Roxio's Goback on their machines (for a fee of course), and teach them how to use it.  It would eliminate some of your service calls, but your customers would be so delighted you'd get a lot of referrals.

>I thought this might be a good place for this question since there
>are so many professionals -- as in working techs -- on this list. I
>have worked in tech support for a few years and have recently started
>taking on my own clients for Windows support and troubleshooting.
>
>Every once in awhile, I get a client who complains of general
>instability -- Applications crash. PC BSODs, GPFs, etc.
>
>My previous tech support experience has been working hand-in-hand
>with developers. So, I would, first, reproduce the problem, second,
>determine the steps to produce a hard failure, and, three, take it to
>development for logging and a possible patch.
>
>It seems to me, however, that my customers don't care for this
>approach. (Aside from the "take it to development" part, which may or
>may not be available, as we all know.) They want it all to be better
>as soon as possible and they don't so much want to know _why_
>something doesn't work.
>
>I understand their reluctance; they're paying me by the hour. It
>could be substantially more expensive for me to eliminate every
>problem one-by-one. But I cringe at the Scorched PC policy, as
>someone at Gateway Tech Support put it to me. "F-Disk, Format,
>Reinstall. Doo-Dah. Doo-Dah." For one thing, it may not eliminate the
>problem. For another thing, we won't know what caused the problem in
>the first place. (Learning from history and all that.)
>
>Plus, in all of this there I have the desire to create something
>affordable _and_ practical for the customer.
>
>I'm wondering how you guys deal with this? Do you apply some
>policy-driven set of fixes then, if those don't work, go into
>seek-and-destory-errors mode? Do you install in-place if the O.S.
>supports it? Do you backup files, format, and reinstall? Or, do you
>convince the customer to pay you to actually troubleshoot?
>
>


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