Troubleshooting Computer Problems - Where to Begin?

Computers are complex and sooner or later something goes wrong. While the hardware has become more and more reliable, software can go wrong causing all sorts of problems from the dreaded blue screen to freezing up, slowing down or restarting for no apparent reason.

We all have experienced some if not all of these unwanted habits of our PC's and they can be very frustrating. So what can be done about them?

The first step is to look back at what you were doing. Did you delete anything or install a new program or update? If you did that more often than not that will be the culprit. Try to undo what you did. Uninstall the new program and use Windows system restore to go back to a previously stable condition.

If the problem is serious enough you perhaps will not be able to restart the machine. You can try to start it in what is known as Safe Mode which is a more basic version of Windows.

This is usually done by pressing F8 while the computer is starting up but check with your own user guide to make sure it is the same for your machine. When you are in Safe Mode you can try to uninstall the software that caused the problem.

If you didn't install a new program just before things went wrong have a think if you did recently. Sometimes it takes a few days before a recently installed program starts to misbehave and do some damage to your machine.

Still faced with a problem? Cleaning up the registry is an obvious next step. The registry holds all sorts of information about your machine, the software on it and what you have been working on.

It often starts to get clogged up and full of incorrect information. Cleaning it up is an excellent maintenance step since errors in it can cause all sorts of problems. Unfortunately this isn't a job you can really do yourself without specialist software although there are many programs available that are simple to use and very effective at sorting out problems.

These programs are mostly automatic and scan through the registry to find and remove problems. They also can re-organize the registry to make it run smoothly in the future. The whole process usually only takes from 10 to 20 minutes to complete.

Other problems that can cause all sorts of unwelcome effects are viruses, Trojans or spyware. All of these sneak on to your machine, usually from the internet and then start to cause havoc.

While it is possible to remove these by yourself it is only something that should be attempted by people with substantial computer knowledge. Once again it is a much better idea to download a specialist program to scan, remove and fix the damage caused by rogue programs.