Oops, sorry; there I go daydreaming again, after helping my husband once again resolve another conflict on his laptop.
Do you blame me for daydreaming? Even with 29 years of experience with computers, I still can't figure out why my Firefox browser continually crashes or locks up on me. Or avoid getting the Blue Screen of Death (shudder).
But what I do know that helps me maintain my sanity and keeps my computer in almost perfect working order is how to use Google to its fullest when I do have problems.
When something goes wrong, you almost always get an error/alert message pop up on your screen. Most people just click "OK" in the message window in disgust and wonder what to do next. Next time this happens - heaven forbid - you can follow these steps.
- Write down the error message word for word.
- Bring up the Google search engine (Bing probably works well for this type of search, also).
- Enter the error message in the search box and hit Enter.
- You'll see a link near the end of each result called "cache." This is Google's copy of the web page that it saves to its own server. The benefit of clicking on the "cache" link is when you open the page and scroll down, you'll see your search words highlighted in different colors. This makes it super-easy to find what you need on the page, especially for super-long pages.
When doing this type of search, you'll most likely bring up web pages from tech forums in which someone asks a technical question and other people respond with their solutions. A lot of times I'll find the answer in the first forum page I look, but sometimes it takes going through several pages of Google results before I finally find the most workable solution. I recommend reading through several web pages before trying any of the suggested troubleshooting steps, because I often get a more comprehensive picture of the issue after reading bits and pieces in various forums.
For Windows users, if you don't find the solution you're looking for, you might need to resort to performing a System Restore. If the problem has happened several times before, try to remember when it first started, and restore your computer to a date right before the problem began.
When you finally get resolution of the problem, make sure your PC is tuned up.
And then you and your computer should be good buddies for awhile. Uh...unless you just happen to get one of these error messages:
