PC Repair 101: Fixing What is Wrong Without Doing More Damage
This is no joke either. Grizzled veteran or novice, we have all broken something in the pursuit of repair at one time or another.
First, prepare to work. If your desk is a chaotic mess of papers disks, move everything out of the way so you can focus on the job at hand. If you think the problem is hardware, you will need the space to open up your PC case. Also, don’t plan on answering the phone or getting involved in other distractions. Turn off the TV or the CD player, send others away – your cat or dog included – and move any food or beverages out of your work area.
Next, understand that the single biggest factor in getting out of the mess you’re in is to approach it logically rather than with desperately. Just like a good detective, you want to eliminate suspects which you need to do one at a time. Start by retracing the most recent operations you did with the machine. If you just installed new hardware or a new program, look there first.
I often answer questions in tech help rooms online, and 7 times out of 10, the problems someone encounters are directly attributable to something installed or removed just before the problem cropped up. Once you rule out your previous steps as a possibility, then you can move on to look at other potential causes.
As you work, be thorough and careful. If a help file or article tells you to try “these five simple steps” in resolving the problem, perform all five steps. Don’t just do three steps and decide it won’t work. Also, do not dart in one direction and then another because you are much more likely to make stupid mistakes when you do.
Watch for error messages on screen. If you run Windows, visit the Microsoft Knowledgebase at http://search.support.microsoft.com, a database of known problems and ways to work-around them. Write any suggestions down or print them out, as needed.
Here’s a tip: if you’re using a crash or virus protection program which loads automatically at boot, you probably want to disable this before you install anything serious, like a service pack or Internet.
Occasionally, you’ll have a hardware failure where it’s not the hard drive or the CD or whatever peripheral itself failing; it’s the cable which has gone bad. If you – or someone close by – has spares of the same type of cable, perhaps salvaged from an older machine, you can try this to see if it cures the problem.
Even when you’re pretty sure it’s a hardware problem confounding you, don’t ignore what Windows (if you use this) can tell you about a device. In Windows, you want to consult Device Manager which you can find when you open Control Panel, double-click the System icon, choose the Hardware tab, and click Device Manager. Click the plus sign next to a device category to expand it to see individual entries. A red X next to a device entry means the hardware is disabled, while a yellow question mark indicates there is an issue with the driver, that Windows can’t quite identify the exact hardware installed, or something else is wrong.
If you see a yellow mark on a device entry, right-click the entry and click Remove. Then restart your PC. When Windows loads again, it reassesses your hardware and will try to add back support for the device you just removed. This may clear up a problem or hardware conflict you previously had. But to be sure, you will want to return to Device Manager after the restart and check.
If the device has a red X, right-click the device and choose Properties. From the General tab, select to enable the device again. If all goes well, the red X should disappear, at least temporarily. But again, you want to restart the system and recheck Device Manager. If the red X has returned, you probably need to investigate the device itself or try to locate a fresh driver for the device from the manufacturer’s Web site.
