I work in IT. When I ask if you've tried turning it off and on again, that's a real question. Please give a real answer.
A. Is it plugged in?
B. At both ends?
Were you at my house?
I legitimately did this. I spent the weekend without internet, and when I finally caved and rang support they asked me to unplug the cable. I got under my desk and ... it already was.
I didn't tell him, waited until he gave me the rest of the instructions and pulled the "hey, look at that, it works now!" line.
So embarrassed. I must have kicked it out with my foot.
I'm going to come down on the other side of this one. I'm also in IT (tier 3 tech support and everything). If I tell you I turned off the machine and waited and turned it back on again. BELIEVE ME. Sweet Jesus, why would I lie about that? Most of the time when I break down and call support the first thing they ask is if I turned it off and on - I say yes - and then proceed to ask me to do it again.
Side note for other people: Don't lie, I guess? It's kind of a weird thing to decide to lie about, yeah? It really is the solution to most of the problems you are going to encounter.
I think people lie because they're embarrassed. For the non-tech-savvy, there's a certain amount of anxiety that goes into these events. When something doesn't work, and you don't have a clue why and are afraid of potential consequences, you freak out and maybe aren't thinking the most clearly. Then you have to face talking to an IT person and you are already feeling a little defensive about looking like an idiot. (I'm not entirely tech-non-savvy, but I definitely see this effect on people, as well as on myself, occasionally.) And then of course, when they ask you the "did you turn it off and then back on again" question, and you realize how dumb that sounds -- especially if you DIDN'T -- some people cringe with embarrassment and lie reflexively.
God, this reminds me of one of the worst cases of computer-induced anxiety dumbness I've witnessed.
Back in the day (and by "in the day", I mean the mid-1990s), I was in grad school. In our department, there was a room with four computers where people could go and write their masters theses and dissertations without having to deal with an undergrad computer lab. One of the people in my program was a woman who was probably ten years older than I was, and not from the US. She clearly was not from a culture that was very used to computers, and she had very little idea how they worked and a lot of anxiety around them. She was writing her dissertation around the time I was writing my master's thesis.
This woman somehow decided that I was the person who knew all about computers, so she'd come to me with any problems she had. Well, a lot of the time, she'd have done something kind of boneheaded, like hit "cut" instead of "copy" and then freak out when an entire paragraph or page would "disappear." Unfortunately, when anything like that would occur, she would immediately determine that the computer had "a virus" and shut it off. And then come find me.
I cannot tell you how many times I told her not to do that. I couldn't possibly tell you how many times she lost paragraphs, pages, or probably entire chapters because this was before computers kind of automatically saved everything for you. And all because of her anxiety.