There are only three paths to troubleshooting, ignore the problem, seek outside help, or do it yourself. The first can be extremely dangerous to your computers health. Problems do not heal themselves and can evolve into new problems which cannot be ignored and are much more difficult to resolve than the original. Do not ignore problems. If you determine that they are not significant, you will also have determined what is necessary to correct them. Inconvenience is not an acceptable excuse for not fixing a problem. It’s your neck, don’t stick it out.

Seeking outside help involves determining if the solutions offered are valid or, if you seek the help of professionals, money (sometimes a lot of it). There is also the fact that professional help is often draconian causing loss of all data you have not backed up and forcing you to reinstall and reconfigure all your programs. You can do the same thing using the restore disk that came with your computer or, even better, restoring the full backup you have you have (of course) made.

Fixing a problem yourself is the best solution. Users, particularly beginners, are often apprehensive about attempting some of the procedures involved. This is usually just a matter of confidence and lack of familiarity with terms used. You can do this! Have confidence in your ability. It’s always greater than you think and the self satisfaction of accomplishing some new task is nothing to sneeze at.

My next few articles are going to be troubleshooting related. In order for them to be effective it’s necessary to establish some initial attitude and ground rules. We all dislike unpleasant surprises, particularly those that occur when we are in the midst of doing something. If you’re the type, however, who goes into a blue funk, explodes into the computer equivalent of road rage, trots out the latest conspiracy theory, dusts off one of a series of prejudices (real or imagined), or responds in any other inappropriate emotional fashion which can prevent logical and rational thought, I suggest that you just shut down your computer and do something else until you relax and can think calmly and logically about your computer. When you come back and turn on your computer you may be pleasantly surprised. The pundits say that 90% of all computer problems are transient in nature and disappear with a simple reboot operation.

You now have the first rule of troubleshooting a computer (or solving most any problem). “Don’t try to fix a problem when you’re emotionally agitated.” You’re not likely to succeed and will most likely make the situation worse.

If a reboot does not solve the problem, think about this. A computer is the ultimate logical device. It does what it was designed to do, in the way it was designed to do it, and it does it when it receives the instruction it was designed to accept. It stands to reason then that the first step in troubleshooting a problem is to determine if the computer malfunctioned or is it received an unintended instruction. Hopefully you just goofed in telling the computer what to do. That is certainly the easiest problem to fix. Since this is seldom the case, we need to determine whether the problem is hardware or software related.

The same pundits that tell us that a reboot will solve most computer problems state that less then one percent of computer problems are hardware related. With the exception of intermittent problems (usually memory, power supply, or heat related) most hardware failures are dramatic enough to be easily identified, if not so easily corrected.

Fixing software problems, assuming that the problem isn’t just poorly written software, is usually very easy. Finding what is wrong is a trial and error process to determine exactly what the computer is doing (or not doing). Once this is established the corrective action is usually clear. For some obscure problems it can mean starting over. That is, reformatting the hard drive then reinstalling the operating system and all your programs. This is not a project to be undertaken lightly. Even if you have backed up all your data you will probably never get back to exactly the configuration you had and there is that major commitment in time and effort. Fortunately this type of problem is the exception instead of the rule. You need to be careful if you take your computer to a repair shop. If the repair shop cannot find the solution to a software problem in a very short time reformatting the hard drive is the path they often take. They cannot charge you for the time it would require to find the actual problem and after all they don’t have to do all that program reinstallation and configuration.

CAG