When there is something wrong with your computer, but you don’t know what, then it can be difficult to determine how you can possibly fix the problem.
Troubleshooting is a common practice whereby people try and fix a problem that they have not yet determined based on a small amount of information only. This is complicated by the fact that the problem is not always with your computer and can be the fault of a web page provider or a software glitch that has decided to arise.
It is actually surprisingly easy to troubleshoot if you know roughly where to look, however, and this article considers some of the possible issues that you may be having as a way to show how you can best troubleshoot problems.
Grinding Hardrive Noises
There are many reasons why you may hear grinding noises when your hardrive is booting up, but none of these are good reasons. If you can hear grinding from your hardrive then it is likely to die in the very near future. Ordering a new hardrive and backing up your old one is the most important step in avoiding catastrophic failure.
A Loss of Compatibility After an Upgrade
When people upgrade they often forget to think about the history of programs and data that they still need to access. Many upgrades make it difficult to utilise older programs and even a change from Windows to OSX can cause havoc. There is no quick fix for this problem, but buying a Windows terminal emulator would give you the access you need.
‘Other People Are Logged In’
The ‘other people are logged in’ notice that appears at shutdown confuses and bemuses more people than you may expect. It simply means that another user on the computer is still logged in. You can either close them down and risk losing their data or find them and get them to sort it out. The easiest solution to this is to never leave a computer logged on when you are not using it.
Incomprehensible Websites
Particularly since the mainstream proliferation of smartphones and tablets, incomprehensible websites have become a more common problem. This is rarely a fault at your end and is usually a failure of the company. These website errors occur when companies do not bother to get proper web development completed for their pages, or if you have accidentally been redirected to a website built in the wrong format.
Beep Codes During Boot Up
If your computer starts beeping from inside when you boot, then you have a problem that needs checking over. All motherboards have a system built in that will identify when there is a problem with the inner workings of the computer.
Not all of these problems will be serious, but they will all need checking. The number of beeps will determine the problem and a search online for the codes for your motherboards will tell you what you need to know and do.
Slow Running
Slow running computers are perhaps the hardest to troubleshoot because there are so many potential problems. Restarting and cleaning the cache should help to free your memory up, but you may need to delete some files too. Freeing space and reorganising your hardrive with a defragmentation may not fix the problem but it will help. Other issues can be to do with overheating or it can be a result of Malware. Trial and error is the best option here.
