You might be trouble shooting the computers from time to time to over come the challenges and make things work as it is. I have been doing this for over 10 years and every day I find it quite challenging and fun. Solving a problem will make you happy and bit prouder and it all depend on how challenging it is. If you enjoy challenges and trouble shooting or even you hate it but have no choice, you will find this post useful.
It can be a error message, data loss, Internet connection loss or dose not connect, pragmatical error or it can be any sort of issue or problem you need to know only one generic method to solve it. Knowing this system will make your trouble shooting life easy.
First step is knowing there is a problem in your system. It is obvious that if there is a error message or things are not working as they suppose to be mean there is a problem in your system.
Secondly you need to identify the problem. This need good observation skills. If there is a problem you need to know more details about the it in order to figure out a solution. This is a straight forward process. Simply by looking at the error message or observe the way system react for a input or a change of state will give you a good idea about the issue. In cases, error message nor system behaviour may not reflect the real problem. Your experience and your trouble shooting skills will come handy.
You can argue that the first and second step are the same. In real trouble shooting scenarios you will not notice big difference between these two step as you switch between these steps really fast.
However, skipping the second step is a common mistake we do most of the time. Specially if you do not have any computer back ground you tend to think that fixing a computer problem is hard as making a space craft. 60% of the computer problems do not require special skills. Even if you call for professional help, identifying the problem will give you a good advantage explaining the issue to someone and get help.
How many times you were disappointed after calling a support line. I am not pointing the finger at you only but if you can explain the problem well to the persona who is in the other end it is always easy to get a better solution. For example, “My computer is not starting”, “My computer is slow”, “I cannot go to mywebsite.com” or similar statements dose not make much sense. If you have asked couple of questions from yourself, in most cases you might able to solve these problems by your self. Worst case you can explain it clearly. In case your computer is not starting in computer language “not booting”, here is the couple of general questions you can ask.
Dose the power is on to the computer? Dose the power light of the computer is on?
Is your monitor is on? Monitor power light is on?
What is the last screen you see on the monitor? Is it completely black?
Is there a blinking line appears on your screen?
Dose it come to the Windows logo screen and stop working?
Dose it come to the log in screen and stop from there?
You do not require any computer knowledge to get answers to any of these questions. Do you? It is just general knowledge, Now you will realise how much more you know about your computer and the current problem.
Find the possible solutions for your problem is the third step. Information you gathered from the second step will come handy here. It is really hard to find a solution with out knowing the problem. Now you know the problem and need to know techniques to find the solutions.
Before I come to the techniques I would like to let you know couple of secrets.
* You are not the first one to experience this problem
* Don’t panic, patience is the key to solve problems
Google is the best place to look for the solutions to your computer and Internet issues. There are so many resources out there giving you step by step tutorial to solve problems or get something done correctly.
Another great place to look for how to fix solution is YouTube. Not only images and instructions, you can see how someone is fixing a it. What else you required.
As you identify the problem in step two, now try describe it in couple of words.For example “Computer stop booting from windows logo screen”. You can try this in google and check out the results you get. Key here is to give couple of good words that describe the issue. If you are getting a error message best way to search is to type the exact error message. You will be surprised the number of solutions given for a single problem. That is because you are not the first or only person to experience it. In any case you find something that no one else has experienced make sure to put it as a blog post. Will go one step back word. Try search you first explanation of your problem, in my case “computer dose not start”. You end up with lot of possibilities which you don't want to go through. This is the best way to become a Google ninja. Be more specific and describe it with couple of keywords.
There are lot of possible solutions in front of you. However, I will not apply any of them still or try to fix things up randomly. Because, it can create more issues. For example if my computer is not booting up and if I factory set the computer or reinstall Windows in first place I will loose all my data. Even though I may have fixed one problem it created a worst problem. Now I have to spend time and money to recover my data.
Here we come to the final step where you apply the solution you found. You required to go through the solutions carefully and first check how comfortable are you applying it to computer. I suggest this is the best place you should decide whether to get some professional help or not. Even if you go for professional help you will able to fix the problem easily as you know the situation very well and also you know the possible solutions as well.
If you have a computer background or you like to learn more about computers you should not afraid to take a risk. Saying that you should always know your worst case scenario and the limitations. I would not experiment thing on my work computer or someone else computer where I cannot afford to loose anything.
However, if it is a simple solution that really dose not have a risk I will definitely try it out knowing what exactly I am doing.
In this way you can easily trouble shoot your computer. I am sure you can apply thins on your day to day life as well. Give it a try and I would like to hear your story as well. Share it with me.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
