How To Troubleshoot Your Computer

Jeff Weisbein -

Troubleshooting computer issues can be a daunting task. Here are a few simple ways to help you troubleshoot your computer issues on either Windows or OSX and hopefully resolve them.

Windows troubleshooting tips:

Check the Event Viewer located under Computer Management (right click My Computer, choose Manage, and you will see it listed). You can view three different options – System, Applications, and Security. If you go through the list of recording actions you can spot entries with either a red X or a yellow !. Go to the properties of those entries and it should provide a detailed summary of what happened at that time. This can be useful for crashing applications and/or driver conflicts.

Disable automatic reboot on system failure through the System environment settings (right click My Computer, choose Properties, and go the Advanced tab). By doing this when there is a system failure instead of rebooting (which actually will not help fix the problem) it will force a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). The Blue Screen of Death is actually a very useful tool for troubleshooting on Windows. If you write down the exact STOP error code it can be researched on Google. If you need additional assistance in troubleshooting BSOD error codes feel free to post on our forums.

OSX troubleshooting tips:

The Console built into OSX is a useful tool for troubleshooting on the Mac.  It is similar in a sense to the Windows Event viewer and can be found in Applications in the Utilities folder.  Additionally, if you would like to track the system log and console activity more in depth – check out GeekTool.

Activity Monitor and Disk Utility can also be used for other various troubleshooting techniques.  Those can also be found in Applications in the Utilties folder.  Activity Monitor is similar to the Windows Task Manager in which you can see which process and/or application is taking up your resources (CPU/RAM).  Disk Utility on the other hand is an enhanced version of Windows disk management and is an excellent tool for repairing disk permissions and/or other various issues.

If you are having problems with your computer whether it be Windows, OSX, or even Linux feel free to post on our forums.