Hardware Diagnostics - Page 2

When a Problem Occurs
With all of the information you've been collecting, you're almost prepared for problems that occur. But there are some specific steps to follow when you actually see a problem with your system:

• Ask the right questions
• Establish what conditions always cause the problem to occur
• Eliminate potential causes of the problem one by one
• Determine a fix for the problem
• Document the problem and solution in your journal

Let's take a look at each of these steps in turn. That way, we will be able to apply them to the actual problems you run into with your PC. You should start a page in your journal for the problem and include the date and time. Then take detailed notes of your troubleshooting process.

Note that as you become more experienced, you will find that you can do more of these steps almost without thinking. But to start, writing down everything will help you hone your troubleshooting skills with each new problem you resolve!

Asking the Right Questions
When you face a problem with your PC, it is important to ask the right questions about the problem so that you head in the right direction when you attempt to solve it. As you become more experienced with troubleshooting, you may find that some more specific questions are also helpful for certain kinds of problems. But to get started, ask yourself the following basic questions:

• What is the exact error message or description of the problem?
• Did this configuration ever work (especially useful for troubleshooting problems that occur after a change)?
• When did you first notice the problem?
• What applications were running when the problem occurred?
• Has the problem occurred more than once?
• What were you doing at the time the problem occurred (e.g. what application were you working in and what task were you performing)?
• What changes have you made to your system between the last time everything was working smoothly and the time that the problem first occurred?
• Your purpose here is to pinpoint what was going on with your system when the problem occurred and what changes you've made recently that might have contributed. It is also important to be as specific as possible in your description of the problem. This will serve as a good reference if you run into similar problems later.

Reproducing the Problem
Any good technician will tell you that the key to solving a problem is figuring out how to reproduce it. So the next step in solving your PC problem is to establish what conditions cause the problem by trying to make it happen again.

For intermittent problems, you may find that you may not be able to reproduce the problem at will until after it happens enough times for you to find something in common with all the occurrences. If your problem is intermittent, answering the questions we asked in the last section and recording them in your journal will be as far as you can go.

But before you assume that is the case, try loading all of the applications you had running when the error happened. Load them, if possible, in the same order, and put each in the same state (minimized, maximized, loaded with whatever work it was performing at the time, etc.). Then, perform the actions in your active application that you were performing at the time of the error. Does the problem happen again?

If you aren't able to reproduce it this time but the problem has happened before, be sure to examine your previous journal entries for the problem to see if you can notice any patterns. Is a particular application always running when the error occurs? Are you performing the same task in an application each time? Does it seem to occur at a particular time of day or perhaps after your PC has been running for a fairly consistent period of time?