Disclaimer: I am not a professional, but I have successfully troubleshooted computers for friends and family members over the years and figuered, heck, there's no tutorial for this kind of thing yet on this site. Since I have a few basic tips, I'd thought I'd share them, hopefully save newbs some time and/or money.
1. Eliminate the "basics": I don't know why, but as soon as the "non-savvy" folks have a problem with their computer, they always assume the worst case scenario while overlooking some basics. By basics, I mean, if you play a cd and can't hear any sound, before you start thinking there's something wrong with your cd drive, please try checking your speaker connections, make sure you don't have your compuer set on 'mute' (which can usually be discovered in Control Panel/Sound Settings) and, if you have powered speakers, make sure they are plugged in.
2. Right-click is your friend: well, for PC computers anyway, if you are able to get to your log-on screen, see your desktop and select files, right-clicking on them can yield at least some useful information---in fact, even if it doesn't display that much information, that itself can be informative, as that might indicate file corruption.
3. The good and bad of "Safe Mode": even though Safe Mode is good for analysis purposes, one important drawback of it is that when in Safe Mode, certain hardware drivers will not load...particular your optical (cd/dvd) drives, so don't be worried if you can't play a movie or install from a disk in Safe Mode; you're effectively not supposed to be able to until you can boot in regular mode.
4. Disk Defragment is your friend, too: since we download byte by byte, files are written to our computer in "discontiguous" fashion, meaning, instead of data written to our hardrives in linear, straightforward order, our computers sometimes (and especially for downloads) write "around" here and there; it's just like when we've probably all gotten as a gift that pretty, shiny little organizer where we can keep all phone numbers and addresses but most of us jot info down on the back of receipts, tickets, slips of paper and what not. Why? Because we're using what's handy at the moment; the computer kinda does the same thing with data sometimes. Disk Defragment (found in Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Defragment) is the computer's way of compacting/organizing it's 'scattered' files so that it can run and access data more efficiently...just like we ought to take those loose slips of info and collect them all to that shiny, pretty organizer. Some might suggest defragging every couple of weeks or maybe setting your computer to do so "automatically" at scheduled times. Others might suggest retail alternatives to Windows own defrag utility. In my case, it turns out that my most discontiguous files are indeed the ones I download; after archiving them to a cd/dvd and erasing them from my hardrive, my hardrive volume is in okay shape...but I guess I defrag once every few gigs downloaded.
5. Get to know your keyboard shortcuts: I've learned a certain "unwritten code" of computer professionals that has to do with efficiency and grace. The meat of the code is that, "the more professional a computer user is, the less he/she uses the mouse" . That may not be totally true, but knowing the keyboard shortcuts is a time-saver and makes learning new software applications that much easier. For typing short emails and letters, it might not make a difference, but for graphic, game and web designers, video work, animation, music, time can be money...and a penny saved is a penny earned. For pc users, the core 7 keyboard shortcuts are Ctrl+Z (undo), Ctrl+X (cut), Ctrl+C (copy), Ctrl+V (paste), Ctrl+S (Save), Ctrl+P (Print) and Ctrl+A (Select All); in some applications, these keyboard combos may have different, specialized functions, but are consistent for general usage...and they apply to data, not just text, so audio and video files can be shifted around too.
This of course applys to applications and their often-times specialized keyboard shortcuts too; I'd suggest you learn at least some of them for any software program you use on a regular basis (if applicable), even as some keyboard shortcuts are (for whatever reason) hidden (like, with some video files, you can hit "Ctrl+I" ["I" for "image"] in Windows Media Player and capture a still of the video; I defy anyone to find that little bit of knowledge in all of WMP's help files--it just isn't there!).
5. Save often: Self-Explanatory (I needed one easy to write tip in here!!)
6. (the most controversial one) IT'S NOT A VIRUS!: Probably none of my 'tips' are gonna receive ire as much as this one, but sometimes a person just has to stick their neck out and separate from the herd and here's one such moment for me. In my few short years of troubleshooting computers, I've seen dozens of machines and nearly every time a worried family member, friend, co-worker, friend-of-a-friend with the problematic pc (a few macs too, but mostly pc) suggested "I think it's a virus" and every single time...it wasn't. The closest equivalent most people I've attempted to help (there was two failures in all; those two eventually got new computers) have had to a virus is poorly-written adware that ended up causing booting/OS loading problems, but that was the extent of it. Maybe I should've labeled this tip "Chill Out, dude", as there's really not much advice in it--except, before plunking down dollars per hour to have someone look at it in a store, please consult your local 'geek' to have a crack at it; us geeks like being able to solve problems and would likely do it for free or hundreds less than the store would plus do a better, faster job (as the store may have HUNDREDS of machines to deal with, while we can dedicate ourselves to your machine alone).
7. Spring some dough for a cheap, backup computer: even cheaper than the stores or the (less altruistic) gurus, the internet is an online university where there's likely at least some useful info for a computer problem. Sometimes, if you just had a second computer to log on and snoop around with, you could find a fairly simple answer to an issue. Consider the purchase of a $50 used computer an investment against paying over $100 per hour (two-hour minimum at most places just to look at a machine and call you back in two weeks to tell you, "the computer has a problem") for compuer 'repair'...I should address that more as another tip.
8. "Stand-By Mode" just might also be your (computer's) friend: Please imagine being on a bike. Now imagine you're at the foot of a hill. Finally, imagine that you start peddling right at the foot of the hill. Most of us know that it's better to get a nice, 'running' start on a bike before having to peddle straight up hill.
But every time we power on our computers, we're doing the same thing to them. Over time, this can cause minor to serious wear and tear on our machines, resulting in problems.
Me? I've probably had my machine turned off about 6 times (for a total of like 25 hours) this year; otherwise, when not using it, I had it in "Standby Mode". That way, when I'm ready to use it again, the computer has a 'running' start; despite what you may think, it hasn't really hit me hard on my electric bill. I'm used to paying less than $20 a month for electricity and I've paid less than $20 a month for electricity before and since I had a computer and before and since I started standby mode. Knock on wood ("knock knock"), 4 years and I've never had to take 'my baby' to the shop (I mean, it's had problems, but I've gotten through them myself). I honestly attribute that (largely) to keeping my computer in standby mode. The average computer uses about 250-300 watts of electricity at full mast; that's about 3 light bulbs burning--I can't imagine that's even $4 a month extra on the bill (which is a small investment to help keep the computer in it's best performance shape).
9. Only reboot your computer with the power button as a last result: the proverb for aging is "the eyes are the first to go". There's a tendacy in computers, especially after numerous times a user has rebooted the comptuter with the power button, for the boot/OS initialization files to "go" first too, which can be a real headache to resolve. For XP users, we have the benefit of "Task Manager", which can be called up by pressing [/b]Ctrl+Shift+ESC[/b] to turn off an individual process/application that might hang up a computer; older Windows OS's can use Ctrl+Alt+Del and (hopefully) cut off a non-responsive program there.
Otherwise, if your boot routine gets corrupted and you can't even boot in safe mode, you're stuck dealing with (in Windows) DOS, which fewer and fewer people these days know how to work with, and the ones who DO know charge a stiff fee to troubleshoot in. At that point, most people have to look forward to a loss of data (like, if you have to reformat the hardrive and reinstall the OS) plus paying for some new equipment to resolve...especially if they don't have a back-up computer (tip #7) to research DOS or (usually and additional purchase) don't have any books on the subject.
10. My "get out of jail free" card : at this point, I just want to welcome/ask/encourage some of the gurus (like the mods) who are part of this site to please amend/correct and/or add to this list. Although these "tips" seemed important to me, I'm sure there are possibly more primal things I've overlooked...possibly because I don't know them either, or certain basics might have seemed too obvious even to me to mention.
Except, good luck and I hope you enjoy your computing as least half as much as I do!
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