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 Happy troubleshooting!

Compared to complex software issues where the fix is sometimes stranger than fiction, hardware issues are much more straightforward. It’s physics after all. Unfortunately, physics also describes how all things move toward chaos and stop working throughout time.

1. The printer isn’t printing

 Windows drivers for printers don’t always have the smarts to sense that the printer is low on ink. Error messages are important, but they’re not always included in Windows’ Plug and Play functionality.

 If you’re brave enough to fix what isn’t truly broken, go ahead and update the printer drivers with the proprietary ones from the manufacturer’s website to get alerts for low ink.

 2. The system clock keeps resetting back to days gone by

 Date and time is important to a computer, and the wrong date and/or time can cause a host issues that appear to be software-related, such as broken software licenses and confused browser cookies.

To an end user, this looks like the end of the OS as they know it. Luckily, it’s a cinch to fix.

The motherboard’s CMOS battery, which powers the onboard Real-Time Clock (RTC), is too low or dead, and needs to be replaced.

3.  Beeping coming from INSIDE the computer, but everything is fine

It’s easy to forget that desktop PCs have a speaker inside the case. It beeps once every time the PC is powered on as part of the Power-On Self-Test (POST). I mean, who actually turns off their desktops?

Aside from that friendly chirp announcing a successful boot, the onboard speaker will lurk silently in the inaccessible depths of the computer casing, until that one day when it has something urgent to say.

When insistent beeping starts coming from inside the computer while it’s running normally, it is often accompanied by appropriately alarmed end users — which is good, because the main purpose of the built-in speaker is to alert nearby humans in the most annoying way possible that the CPU is running too hot.

4. The computer is stuck in a restart loop

When the computer constantly restarts before getting to a login screen, a bit of troubleshooting is in order to make sure it’s not a software problem.

Try to boot in Safe Mode. If it doesn’t work, or you can’t even select Safe Mode before it restarts, then it’s almost certainly a hardware fault.

As many technicians can attest, RAM is the number one culprit. Essentially, the bootloader can’t load itself into RAM because the RAM has decided to take unofficial leave. The PC is able to power up normally, but it will constantly restart right before loading the OS.

The fix: Power down the computer, open up the case, and reseat the RAM modules. If the problem persists, the RAM might be bad. Keeping a few spare sticks of common RAM types (DDR2, DDR3) in your toolbox is highly recommended.  

Now, if the restart loop is intermittent, but isn’t resolved by new RAM and you can still boot into Windows, here’s a tip for easy troubleshooting: Turn off Automatic Restart on System Failure. This makes the PC pause on the Blue Screen of Death so you can see the specific STOP error code.

The Microsoft support page on STOP error codes is incredibly helpful in diagnosing which piece of hardware is faulty. Use it.

5. The screen looks like it’s on drugs

This problem is known colloquially as, “The screen is all messed up” or “My computer monitor is possessed.”The psychedelic screen issue manifests itself in many ways, but the root cause is almost always a connection problem between the VGA cable and the VGA ports.When the VGA cable comes slightly loose, it causes the screen to glitch out in all kinds of wonderfully random colors, or display similarly spooky behavior. For this, the fix is so simple you don’t even need to be called out.If you are already on-site, you can always make a show of the solution so it sticks in the affected end users’ minds, allowing them to fix it themselves in future. Crack your knuckles and tell the end user to step back. Now, carefully wiggle the VGA connector and then slot it firmly back in the port.