Quick ways to help your friends solve their computer woes

WHEN family or friends call on you to fix their computer issues, I’m sure you do your best. But no matter how much you know about technology, correcting a problem can be challenging when you’re guiding someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.

No matter how patient you are, sometimes you need help to be helpful – that’s what this series is about.

This is part 3 – there will be more, and then I’ll make the entire series available as a handy PDF file.

Remember, it’s not always helpful to dive headlong into a difficult computer issue with a lengthy phone call to the hapless victim.

I’ve wasted many hours trying shots in the dark to no avail, leaving exhausted friends wishing they’d never mentioned the issue.

Perhaps just establish the basics of what’s wrong, especially the exact wording of any error messages, and if no cause is immediately apparent, hang up and take some time to research the problem uninterrupted.

For deciphering obscure software error messages, nothing beats a search engine such as Google (www.google.com). Enter the name of the affected programme and at least a portion of the error message – five to 10 concurrent words is usually enough to distinguish it from other messages – and comb the results for any hints or suggestions. Be sure to include any specific error codes or identifiers.

As you type an error message into Google, if you notice it auto-filling the rest of the error message text in for you, chances are your problem has been searched for many times before; you may have a greater hope of finding an answer.

If there’s no error message to work with, try to describe the issue or symptoms in your search terms, bearing in mind that a problem can often be described in several ways – for example a programme’s “freezing” might be described as a “lockup”, “pause” or “hang” so try a variety of different searches and omit unnecessary words – in this instance, you’re just looking for keyword matches.

As an example, searching for something like “Excel 2003 hangs right click cell” will work just as well, if not better, than a more complete sentence.

Another tip: Teach your grateful supplicants to save screen shots of error messages when they appear.

Screen shots are simply pictures of whatever’s on-screen at the time the shot was taken. In Windows, the easiest way to take one is to press the Print Screen key when a screen shot is required. Often marked “PrtScn” or similar, this key is located near the upper right of most keyboards, next to the Scroll Lock and Pause/Break keys.

In days gone by, the Print Screen key did just that, dumping on-screen text to a printer. Nowadays it simply copies a picture of the screen to the Windows clipboard. To retrieve the picture, simply open a programme such as Paint or Microsoft Word, and press CTRL and V or click Edit – Paste to paste the screen shot image into a document. Guide your friends to www.tinyurl.com/sstips for more help with screen shots.

Here’s another: Windows Vista and the newer Windows 7 include a useful diagnostic and reporting tool.

The results are a little technical, occasionally flagging issues that aren’t actually of any concern, but it does give useful performance information after a brief test, and will certainly make any detected driver or hardware problems clear.

To access the tool, click Start, then type “Performance Information and Tools”, and click the identical text in the list of results. In the left pane of the resulting window, click “Advanced Tools”, then click “Generate a system health report” at the bottom of the window. After the report is generated, File – Save As to save the report.

Next week I’ll cover two clever products that make remote controlling a PC a cinch. One of them is better for ad-hoc support, while the other can be used as a permanent way of accessing a computer remotely, even when it’s unattended.

See you then!