Pro tip: pulling the power cord for 30 seconds fixed a boot loop when a 4 hour reinstall didn't
Had a customer's Dell at my bench in Mesa that was stuck in a boot loop after a Windows update, so I went straight to the usual fix and started a clean reinstall. Four hours in, same loop, same error code, and I was ready to tell her the drive was toast. Out of options, I unplugged the machine, held the power button for 30 seconds, plugged it back in, and it booted straight to the desktop. Now I'm stuck on whether this is a real fix or just dumb luck that wastes everybody's time before we get to the real diagnosis. The drain clears leftover charge in the caps and resets the board, but half the shops I know call it voodoo and go right to swapping parts. Do you run the power drain first on every boot issue, or do you save it for after the obvious stuff fails?