The number of things that can trigger a specific computer error message may rival the number of things that can trigger a specific medical complaint.
What do doctors do when faced over the telephone with an unconscious patient whose temperature is 102.3F?
They dig around to find out if the patient has swollen tonsils, was bitten by a rabid bat, or was found lying in the sun in the desert during a marathon.
One of my clients has generated four different specific error messages in the last two months, depending on what they tried to do first AC after the nightly backup went into an endless loop and filled the hard drive, a situation that could only be diagnosed by digging around the system.
The analogy is good but not perfect. In medicine, the patient has to come to you. But, medicine has a lot of phrases which help students become good residents become good licensed doctors.
History, history, history, then go back and get more history. So, you don't go examining someone until you know what to examine. Then you go to exam. Only after this do you do labs and x-rays. So based on this, the tech shouldn't just jump in and look around.
It isn't black and white. When to log in and look around and when to examine someone in your office is based on the history. Some things are going to be complicated and require logging in and some things may be as simple as asking how much RAM they have in the computer and finding out it is 2GBs and they are using 1.95GBs.
Just curious. How do you deal with an unconscious patient? And, rabid bat? Heat stroke?
