Solve any problem on your home computer

When they work, computers seem simple. With a little practice, tasks such as surfing the internet, creating documents and sending emails can become second nature. But then, just when everything seems to be going swimmingly, disaster strikes: the computer breaks.

Whether you’re suffering from an internet connection that suddenly disappears or programs that worked yesterday but now refuse to do anything at all, the reason for the trouble, let alone how to fix it, can seem elusive. Even if you’d feel confident hunting down a problem on a faulty car or washing machine, for instance, computers just don’t work in the same way. Or do they?

In fact, although they may have very few moving parts, it’s possible to troubleshoot computers in much the same way as a mechanical device by applying a little logic. In this issue we’ll explain how and present three unique troubleshooting guides to print out and keep.

Don’t panic!
The most vital thing to keep in mind when something goes wrong is not to panic. When programs or devices break it’s often tempting to start fiddling with settings in the hope that one will make everything right again, but this is more likely to add other problems.

So instead of attempting to guess the cause of the problem, employ a little logic. Computers and computer networks may seem willful, but all they do is follow a single set of programmed instructions. This means that if something worked yesterday it should generally work today, and if it doesn’t then the cause is probably something that has changed in the interim.

With that in mind, the first thing to do when something goes wrong is to think back: has anything on the computer changed since it last worked? Have you installed any new hardware or peripheral devices or added some new software? If so, this is likely to be the cause of the problem. Try undoing the change and see if the broken program or device is working again.

Chain reaction
If your problem is not easily solved by looking for a recent change that might have caused it, the next step is to consider all the different devices and programs that relate to your difficulty. Just as mechanical devices rely on many interconnected elements, and can fail if any one of those breaks, computer programs and networks can be broken should any one of several interconnected parts suffer from a problem.

This is sometimes easy to recognise. If a printer stops working and it is connected to the computer via a USB hub, for example, common sense dictates that we should check the printer, its connection to the hub, and then the connection between the hub and the computer. With some other systems, though, it’s a little more complicated. If a wireless network stops working, for example, the problem could be caused at one end, with the computer, at the other, with the router, or in between.

If working with networking equipment, it’s important to understand that the links in the chain of products must sometimes be connected in the right order. In particular, most home networks rely on many devices connecting to a single router. Restarting each device is often enough to fix simple problems, but as all the other devices rely on the router to provide them with a network address it’s vital to restart that first.
If simply restarting or reconnecting every device in the chain does not work, employ a process of elimination. If you are having trouble with a printer connected to a wireless network, for example, you should first check whether other devices are connecting properly. If they are having no problems, then the problem is likely to lie with the printer’s settings.