Replacement laptop
NCC sounds large enough for them to have the strategy/policy of suspected hardware problems being dealt with by issuing a replacement laptop from the pool of spare laptops held by IT with a fresh new image on its hard drive / SSD. If the problem is resolved, it was hardware. If the problem continues, you have eliminated the hardware (unless, of course it is a common cpu / other hardware bug that only this user's workload triggers).
In my case, when in the past I was subject to the rigours of IT support, if this ever happened, it would be a real pain, as I had opted out of IT support (which was possible with manager's approval) - so *any* problem reported to IT would result in an offer of a re-imaged laptop or nothing. It meant I could set up my own machine as I saw fit (within limits), but had to support myself, and I was as good at searching on the Internet as IT were for whatever Microsoft patch or registry setting or arcane software configuration needed to be set . In fact, I had a considerably greater incentive to find the fix to avoid a hardware swap-out and a re-imaged system.
It meant I put my own DRAM into 'my' laptop, considerably improving performance, and replaced the fan (which required complete disassembly of the machine) when the original gave up the ghost. Thankfully, the BIOS wasn't locked, so I could boot off a USB stick and run up Linux (this was before the ubiquity of workable VMs), and PortableApps were a godsend* - I could debork, using OpenOffice (the LibreOffice fork hadn't happened then), the vast Word documents generated by my colleagues which would corrupt themselves shortly before the deadline of issuing an RFP response.
It's sad that it is not easy to get quickly to the root cause of many problems associated with Microsoft software, but I can well understand that it is not worth an IT department's time to do a full forensic diagnosis for each and every odd user experience. It is far, far easier to offer a drive re-image, or a PC swapout, and usually faster than a fault-finding session if you have a pile of spare PCs ready to go. You can then spend the time on the users that come back with the same problem after a hardware and software swap-out, or servers, where a drive re-image is more complicated due to needing to re-set-up complex application software.
*I have no connection other than being a satisfied user. YMMV. Use of such things might be forbidden by your IT / Data Security policy.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
