Well, it booted, started up services on launch, launched my chat client, AV, went through all the Windows desktop crap ect..... then Windows starts processing something. About 5 mins later, it just locked up.
It's a Lenovo Intel Duo-Core Laptop with Win 7 and not near enough memory.....but it ran just fine for two weeks with zero issues. So, after about 5 restarts (in which it was fine under Safe Mode with Networking) I figured I had two options. Waste a whole day troubleshooting my own laptop, with uncertain chances of success, or just reformat it, with a fairly good chance of success.
It took 6 hours and most everything was reinstalled......except the Software which our company makes, that started presenting errors to me that another Tech Support guy says is a bug they've been unable to figure out for a whole year. (A bug which make it impossible to update the software, or even to launch it from 1.0.) Which makes it awful hard to provide customer support, when the program itself is broken for you. >.> Meanwhile, the whole company is sitting in the company wide chat watching me sign on and off to chat all day, until they ask me to change my sleep settings or something because they're tired of getting spammed. At which point I have to remind them I've spent all day re-installing my workstation. Blech.
So. In terms of what could go wrong in a Tech Support person's day, mine pretty much hit all the high notes. As an added benefit, my newbiness just slowed things down even further, mis-typing one of a dozen randomly generated passwords they've given me, pointing software at the wrong databases (of which we have about 4 each linked to different parts of my job) and generally being unable to solve my own problems. Basically any oddity that software could have shown, it showed me today. Right down to InstantVNC, which crashed as soon as anyone tried to connect through it to me, even though it's about as simple as programs can be. Still don't know why that's happening. At least I figured out why EchoVNC, my primary troubleshooting tool, didn't work. It's because it required an administrator login/pass to connect to the company-wide VNC server, credentials that neither I nor the other tech support guy knew. *sigh*
I'm sure there are worse days ahead, but this one was pretty goddamn annoying. Particularly because I have nothing to blame it on except Gremlins. People telling me there's no way I could know how to solve any of these issues doesn't really make me feel any better. I feel like I was hired under the assumption I can work these issues out myself, and while no one honestly expects me to do that, I still feel like I should.