No, I don’t mean give it a swift kick in the CPU either!

The following relatively comprehensive how-to and guide comes courtesy of your neighborhood  technology company…need I say more?

 

[Beginning Troubleshooting

 

So, what’s the problem with your PC? The first step is to determine in which of the four aforementioned areas the problem falls.

It may be a hardware problem if the following situations exist:

·                    The device does not seem to be getting power.

·                    The device is making a strange noise, such as grinding or whirring.

·                    The PC sounds like it’s starting up but there’s no text on the screen.

·                    The BIOS and operating system do not see the device, even though you’ve run the device’s Setup utility or installed its driver.

·                    One or more fans on the computer are not spinning that used to spin.

·                    The PC runs fine for a few minutes but then locks up or shuts down after it gets warmed up.

It may be a BIOS problem if the following situations exist:

·                    Someone has recently made a change to a setting in the BIOS Setup program.

·                    The hardware device you want to use is set to Disabled in BIOS Setup.

·                    You find information about a known problem with your PC that can be corrected by installing a BIOS update.

It may be a Windows system problem if the following situations exist:

·                    The PC seems to start up okay, with text on the screen, until it tries to load the Windows desktop.

·                    Error messages appear when you first start Windows.

·                    Error messages appear that are not associated with any particular application.

·                    Windows locks up for seemingly no reason, and it doesn’t matter which application you’re using.

·                    A certain device will not work in Windows even though it appears to have power.

It may be an application problem if the following situations exist:

·                    The problem occurs only when you try to run a certain application.

·                    An application terminates unexpectedly, either with or without an error message.

·                    The computer locks up when you’re using a certain application.

The preceding is an oversimplification, of course. Real-life problems can be messy and complicated, and can involve more than one component.

     

 

A troubleshooting example

     

      An effective troubleshooting technique is to go down the preceding list, eliminating each possibility until you come to the likely cause. As a reminder, the order is hardware, BIOS, Windows, and application.

For example, let’s say a friend has asked you to look at his PC. He says that his CD-RW drive won’t write CDs, and when he inserts a blank CD, Windows acts like it doesn’t see it. Here’s how you might troubleshoot that using the preceding list:

1. Check the hardware. When you turn the computer on, does the light on the CD drive illuminate? Yes. That means it’s physically getting power. When you put a CD into the drive, does it spin? Yes. That means the drive itself is operational.
2. Check the BIOS Setup. (You find out how to do that in Lesson 2.) Does the drive appear in the list of IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) devices attached to the motherboard? Yes. That means that BIOS sees the drive. If you’re in a hurry, you can skip this step, and come back to it only if Step 3 fails.
3. Look for the drive in Windows (in My Computer). Does the drive’s icon appear there? Yes. That means Windows sees the drive and an appropriate driver for it is in place.
4. Try to read a regular CD in the drive through Windows. If it reads okay, you know that at least the reading portion of the drive is working.
5. Insert a blank CD-R. Windows’ CD burning software pops up to tell you “please insert a blank CD,” meaning it can’t read the blank correctly. You’ve found the problem, just where your friend said it would be. But is it a problem with the CD drive’s device driver, or is it the CD burning application?
6. Try to write to the blank CD using some other CD burning program (such as Easy CD Creator or Nero Burning). If it works just fine, you know that there’s nothing wrong with drive or its Windows driver. The problem is with Windows XP’s CD burning application.
7. Check the Microsoft Knowledge Base to see whether there are any known issues with this problem. Also search the Web in general for information. From this search, you find that there’s an entry in the Registry that some people disable (using the MSCONFIG utility, which you’ll learn about in Lesson 4) because they can’t figure out what it’s used for; however, it’s necessary for CD burning through Windows and disabling causes problems.
8. Check the computer’s startup with MSCONFIG to see if your friend had disabled that line. Sure enough, he had. You re-enable it, and the CD writing works fine.

This is just one example, but this same basic procedure holds true in nearly all cases.

     

 

For more information

     

» 

HP Instant Support

 

» 

HP business support forums

 

» 

HP troubleshooting

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DID THAT MAKE SENSE AND/OR HELP YOU OUT SOMEHOW?