Steps to take when your computer acts up

Computers and cats have a lot in common. They purr along in a predictable way until, for no reason known to man, they painfully sink in their claws.

You don’t deserve any of this. But computers and cats don’t care.

I can’t do much about your cat, but I can try to help you cope with those times when you computer sinks in its claws.

Let’s take a typical outburst of computer madness. You are working along happily when the screen starts flickering and dancing around like a drunken movie screen. You didn’t do anything to cause the problem and yet there it is – interrupting your email to Aunt Beverly in the rudest possible way.

Here’s the first thing you should do when any glitch hits – this applies equally to any other computer glitch and sure isn’t limited to video problems.

Turn off your computer. I know that sounds like a cowardly act. You feel as if you should do something important and technical. Yet it is the right thing to do.

Now wait a moment or two and clear your head. Then turn the computer back on. If that house cat of a computer now acts normally, and the problem doesn’t reoccur then do one of the most difficult things I can imagine: Ignore the problem. Forget it ever happened; don’t even think of searching the Web for clues as to what went wrong.

What you experienced is a hiccup – something that happens at times for no apparent reason and then just vanishes. Trying to fix a hiccup is a foolish thing because it generally results in making things worse – your attempts to repair something that has fixed itself often will cause new problems that won’t go away so easily.

But let’s take the gloomy outlook now. You turn the computer back on and it continues to misbehave. Now is the time to try to examine what’s going on.

The first thing to do is to think, not act. I know there’s a temptation to start tinkering right away. But that’s the wrong path. Instead pretend to be a computer detective. Try to think of any recent changes you might have made that could be the cause of the problem. Did you recently install a new program? Was there a Microsoft update for Windows in the last day or so? Could you have added a new printer or other device?

Most times problems are caused by something you did. If you can come up with a recent change, then undo that change. Remove the new program, or the Windows update or the new printer. Restart the computer and see if the problem also has gone away. If so, you now know the cause.

But life is not always that simple. Despite your efforts the computer is still a mess.

In the case of our video problem example, now is the time to check the obvious. Your screen is still flickering. So you check the cables connecting the monitor to the machine. Remove them and tighten them down again. Does that fix things? If not and you are lucky enough to have another monitor around the house, connect it. If the problem persists, you’ve narrowed things down to the computer itself and not the monitor. Perhaps it’s a video card or some other malfunction.

It’s the same process for other problems. You check the obvious first and try to do things that – at the least - will do no harm.

Check the Web and see if others have had the problem. If things seem obvious, if many have had the same problem and found an easy fix then maybe you can tackle the job yourself. But if you do that, keep in mind that you are at risk of stepping on that mythical cat’s tail and making things worse.

For most home users, when faced with a problem that isn’t clear and simple, the best move to make is to take the computer in for repair. I know, I know, it’s the coward’s way out. But it is also the course of action that is most likely to work.

I’d much rather be a coward with a working computer than a hero with computer that won’t work.