The Art of Troubleshooting

Let's see if this sounds familiar. You're trying to do something you do everyday, checking email or reading the news, when all of a sudden, everything stops working. Something freezes, or the dreaded "can't connect to the internet" error appears and you feel like your world is ending.

Remain calm. It's going to be okay. Resist the urge to pick up the phone and call the tech-savy person in your life because most likely they are going to tell you the same thing I am. 

Turn it off and turn it back on again. 

These nine magic words have been spoken across telephone lines since the beginning of the computer age for a reason. It works. That black box in front of you works through a series of smaller processes, sort of like a to-do list, but a list that must be done in a very specific order. If one thing fails, it can cause a chain reaction that results in the error messages that you dread so much. Thankfully, most of the time, these problems can be fixed by resetting everything. 

If you don't know how to do this, it's very simple. On mobile devices, (pretty much any piece of technology that isn't your computer) hold down the power button until something happens. On an Apple product this will appear: 

You guessed it. Just slide to turn it off. Hold the same button to bring it back from the dead. 

Now for a Windows PC, there is a recommended way to shut down, and an emergency method. For the recommended method, right click on the start button, and click shut down or restart. 

If your computer freezes and you can't interact with it in any way, hold down the power button until it shuts off. Press and hold the same button to bring it back to life. 

 <----------- Universal Power Symbol

These tried and true troubleshooting techniques are the first step to finding out what the problem is. In the next post, we'll work through a few more specific issues. If your problem continues, you can at least proudly and defiantly tell the tech support people "I ALREADY TRIED THAT" when they ask you to:

Turn it off and turn it back on again.

Happy Troubleshooting!