Base state of a software application

This is a post on the importance of base state or initial state of a software application.
In the last post, I had mentioned about activating mobile office on my mobile.

I had not taken any note of the condition of my mobile connection settings. After I deactivated my mobile office, I was unable to access any websites on my mobile. After a lot of trial and error, setting up some other settings, I decided to approach the customer care and ask them to solve my problem. Finally I got it solved.

Observations:
> I was careless not to note the initial settings of the connection.
> I should have gathered more information about the new service(mobile office) as it did not support my access to wap enabled websites.

Connection with testing:
How many times have we come across a situation where we could not reproduce a defect or a behavior due to the change in the initial settings. We waste a lot of time reproducing the issue and finally realize that it was environment specific and had to ghost the system and start afresh. After this mobile experience, I realized the importance of noting the settings of my mobile. In testing, an environment of a test plays an equal role as the test itself.

Lessons learnt:
A tester has to know each of his test case/input. We never know which test may give the unwanted result/behavior.
How about running a test in our mind, imagining the probable consequences before running it in real. If testing was that simple, anyone could do testing.

Sometimes, we do need to probe a defect further to unearth even more critical defects. At the same time, we have to be careful to note the initial/base state of the application.

So, how do you deal with the ever changing state of a software?
Do you know each test you do?
How do you handle the issues you fail to reproduce at the first attempt?

Share your comments. And finally a question to you:
Is it necessary to know the initial/base state of the software under test?

Happy testing :)
-Ajay