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General Tips

Before troubleshooting and fixing anything

Calm down!

The first thing to do in any situation is to walk away. Clear your mind, collect your thoughts. In other words, calm down.

Once you have calmed down, you can approach the problem at hand with a clear mind. A panicked mind will not be able to approach any situation in and ideal manner

Do a general check

Often we gloss through the obvious method and make our problems worse. Check all the cables and connections. Is the cable to the power supply unit properly connected? Is the connection from the cpu to the monitor properly secured? Has you sound system been turned on?

It is not uncommon to find that cables have been disconnected accidentally. Do a physical check before proceeding to make matters worse.

Also, if the system fans inside the case have stopped working, this may overheat the computer. Computers have a tolerance level where it will refuse to work after a certain temperature is reached.

Have you installed anything new?

Computers do not like change. A new sound card, driver or even that program you downloaded from the internet can cause problems.

Viruses and spyware may have also invaded your computer through email, or apparent “needed downloads”. Remember anything that you did to your computer recently.

Of course, you may not remember everything that you have done to your computer, thus which brings us to…

Trial and error

The tried and true method of getting to the root of the problem. Shut down your pc, and remove the hard ware you just installed, be it a sound card, graphic card, or that new external drive you just bought.

If you installed any new softwares, uninstall the software and see if that works. Alternatively, use the windows “system restore” to bring your pc back to its previous state when it was working. That is another whole section by itself of course.

Take Notes

If you get any error messages, take note or screen capture (Take a picture! Not literally of course) of the error message(s).

How do you take a screen capture?

Well, assuming your keyboard is still working, there is a screen capture button on the top right hand corner of you keyboard. The position varies, but its generally is on the top right hand side.

Go to your start menu, go to all programs and the accessories, there is a program called paint there. Paste the image (press the [ctrl] and [V] buttons) in the program, save and there! You have a screen capture.

Boot disks

Create boot disks in case you have problems booting up you computer. Also, there is the option of bootable cd’s, which is basically your original windows operating system installation cd.

Back Up! Back Up! Back Up!

ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR DATA! Whether you burn your data onto a cd or dvd or save it into a separate hard drive, always back up your data. Installing a new graphic card? Back up. Creating a new partition? Back up.

Get the latest drivers

If your sound card or graphic cards stop working, check the manufacturer’s website to see if they have any new drivers for you card.

Restart Windows

There is nothing wrong if you have to force restart your computer if you find that it suddenly slows down or stops working. It does not mean a major fault.

However, you may want to check if there are any installations or downloads currently in progress, which might actually be eating up your system resources, slowing your computer down in the process.

Clean your computer

Yes, that's right. Clean your computer. Dust builds up over time, resulting in the blockage of the cooling system inside of your cpu. This restricts air flow (hot air is not expelled, cool air does not enter) resulting in the system overheating.

Suck out the dust with a normal household vacuum cleaner to clear out the dust, thus ensuring that the cooling system works as it is intended.

Keyboard shortcuts

Use your [ESC] or [CTRL] + [Z]. The [ESC] will cancel whatever application that is taking place in the foreground. Sometimes, it is these applications which are slowing down your computer. [CTRL] + [Z] is undo command. Works wonders if you just want to undo that last step.

Call troubleshooting suppport if necessary

If you really have no idea what you are doing. Call technical support or a friend who knows better. However, remember that technical support is difference from sales. Do not call the wrong department by mistake.