Try again. Most of the time, if something doesn’t work, a technically oriented person will simply try again. This covers web pages that won’t come up, documents that won’t print, rebooting the PC, closing and re-opening an application… There is a veritable whole class of problems which are “fixed” simply by giving them another go.
Typically, a normal user (the sort who does not consider him or herself to be very “computer literate” will not do this — at least, not as a rule. Thus when a problem comes along, this user is dead in the water, until their techie friend comes along and simply tries it again, at which point they marvel at how their friend has fixed their computer.
- Not Panic. There is almost never a cause to panic. Your data is not gone. The PC is not dead (at least, probably not — at least, not forever. Probably). The internet has not disappeared, you have not been “hacked” (uh, probably not, anyways).
The non-techie users tend to panic frequently. Almost anything is cause for panic.
- Read dialog boxes that pop up before clicking on them. This is a simple, effective, troubleshooting technique. You say that a dialog box has just popped up? It has two buttons, “Okay” or “Cancel”? Well here’s an interesting idea; have you tried reading what is written in the box? Is it an error? What does it say?
Again, a techie will do this without thinking about it, let alone considering it a “troubleshooting technique.” The tech would probably consider this so blindingly obvious it shouldn’t be on a list like this. But… You often see two other extremes regarding pop-up dialogs, these two approaches being:
- Click okay, no matter what.
- Don’t click anything. As long as there is a strange dialog box up, the PC is broken. Find an expert who knows what to do.
I’m not trying to be mean, but… there you have it.
- Check to see if everything is plugged in. What, you can’t send email? Is your network cable plugged in? Not much more needs to be said about this except that… there is a certain class of user who will never check this. Again, they will thank you for “fixing their computer” when you find and re-connect the offending cable.
- Look up the answer. We all know that if we don’t know what to do, we just open Google (or your favorite search engine/tech forum) and type a problem description into the search field, and try to find an answer. We assume (possibly naively, but whatever works) that there is an answer out there, that we can find it, and that we’ll be able to implement it.
Again, the typical user will not do this. The answer, they will presume, is too hard to find. They will probably not understand it, or be able to implement it if they found it — so why bother? (This is if it even occurs to them to search.)
You may consider yourself a “non-techie”, but be saying to yourself, I would try all of those things. Great! Stop considering yourself a non-techie, and stop being afraid of computers — you’re probably doing exactly the same first steps as an IT tech would do.
Now, if you still can’t find an answer, you have two options: 1) Just keep looking (the “IT” way ;-)), or 2) Get help.
There’s nothing wrong with getting help; but you might as well try to figure it out first.
You are _so_ spot on.
Man, oh man, but you are preachin’ a good message here! I have been doing tech support for an ISP for 5 years, and a major portion of the issues people call with can be solved with the first 4 things, but they are very much afraid of technology, or of breaking the computer by clicking on the wrong thing…I often tell them that techies don’t become techies without breaking a few things first.
That’s right. You almost have to break things. Of course, you do want to minimize the breakage… ;-)
I sort of chuckle now when I remember the first time I decided to reinstall Windows at home… this was long before I had got into Linux, and was probably the first hardcore piece of PC maintenance I had done, other than install the occasional bit of software. I paused for what seemed like an eternity at that last screen, the one that says something like “ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO OVERWRITE YOUR HARD DRIVE AND DESTROY EVERYTHING THAT IS CURRENTLY ON IT?” (When I read it, it seemed like it was yelling at me).
If I remember correct, I chickened out the first time I got to that point. Then I figured, “What the heck?” and went ahead and reinstalled Windows a few days later. Once that was done it was like, “Gee. That was easy.”
Of course, I did forget to back up any of my data… ;-) Like you say, you almost have to break stuff in order to learn.