Whats your interpretation of this term?

Alright, where I work (a computer repair store) we tag every system that comes in here with a printed note that states the customer name, the appearance of the unit and of course the problem or fix to be performed.

Now, if you seen this:

"wipe reinstall"

How would you interpret that - what would you do?

format the hard drive and re-install the operating system, seems pretty straight forward to me.

Let me guess the customer's name is Wipe and he has no backup

-DG

Exactly guys! And thats what I've done.

But my boss on the other hand (the one who brought the machine in + wrote the label) thinks it means reload the OS and then restore all the data from a backup...can you see where I'm going with this? :L

Needless to say he aint happy - but then again, the label was written as I mentioned - so, whos to blame here? To make matters worse, the PC in question is a corporate one with accounts, etc all lost...

IMO that's exactly as my esteemed fellow gurus already told: wipe the HD and reinstall OS. Tell your boss to be more verbal in the future, for instance "Backup, wipe, reinstall, restore".

Kari

Unfortunately you can't tell your boss what he should hear without being fired.
Clearly your boss messed up and looks at you as a scapegoat
I know my boss cut me down to size a few times in front of customers, to cover his behind while showing that customer's problems are important (covering up his own mistakes that way). It was fine with me since it was just a Show
Besides what company keeps backups on the same hard drive. That's foolish if done on a private PC but borderline sabotage on a corporate machine.
-DG

FWIW: I always felt that my Job was to always make my boss look good. Even when they were wrong.
It worked for me as I ended up well paid and I did not have to compromise my ethics. Even in the service
I tried to make my boss look good. I did not have to grandstand to take credit, let the boss take the credit as the people who really knew what was going on knew that I did a good job.
Everyone has a boss, even the self employed as they have clients that are the boss.. :)
Rich

reminds me of this picture: