While I understand that restarting a windows machine is probably the most common and successful fixes of all times, its just shameful that a lot of desktop support systems ask you to restart without bothering to ask if the caller has done a bit of fact-finding and troubleshooting on his own!

When I started my career back in 2001 with Dell, working as a Tech support associate, I  was told to ask questions, and rephrase to understand the problem before suggesting a fix! and today, its rare that a technical support engineer would ask you the problem or try to understand it before fixing a problem. Most service desks are happy sending a desktop engineer across or asking you to restart and call back!