Computers are a lot like cars in that people everywhere rely on them for their day-to-day lives, and yet most of those people have no idea what goes on inside of them. If they start making funny noises or something stops working properly, it's often time for a trip to a specialist who will be happy to fix your issues -- for a fee. Sometimes, though, you can figure it out yourself, and DownloadSquad has some suggestions on how you can figure out simple problems on your own:
- Make a toolkit - A cheap USB thumb-drive or CD-R can save the day if you load it with a virus scanner or other repair software utilities. DownloadSquad has quite a few, perhaps the most important being Clam Anti-Virus, a free virus scanner that might just make your sick machine healthy again.
- Troubleshoot - This one seems obvious, but try and remember the last thing you did before the problems started? If your printer isn't working, were you shuffling your feet and dislodging cables? If your computer won't turn on, did your surge protector blow a fuse? And, before all else, did you try restarting your machine?
- Go slow -DownloadSquad's main advice is to not take it too far. It's pretty difficult to make a mess of your computer, but before you start deleting things or changing configuration files, make sure you know how to get them back and reset your settings. If you don't, maybe it's time for a call to the Geek Squad.
If you do call in reinforcements, though, maybe you should try to get that shower out of the way before they arrive. [From: DownloadSquad]
by Tim Stevens on December 27, 2008 at 09:46 AM
http://www.switched.com/2008/12/27/how-to-fix-a-broken-computer-or-at-least-try/
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