Anyone who works on or with computers are all to familiar with the processes of trouble shooting. Most of your trouble shooting will be with software issues. I can tell you now software issues are a lot more difficult at times to troubleshoot than hardware so we will focus more trouble shooting hardware in this post.
When your computer is having issues you must first ask yourself what are the symptoms and what was the last things I was doing when my computer went down? Why is this important? Knowing what the symptoms were and what you were last doing can tell you a lot about what the issue may be.
Lets say your computer runs great for the first 15 to 30 minuets of the day when you first turn it on but gets slow and slow till it finally just shuts its self off... What do you think the issue is? Well honestly there are several possibilities but the most likely cause of this issue is the heat sink to the processor has a lot of dust build up in and on it where the processor cannot cool down properly.
Lets say you just installed a new hardware card (A PCI Express x16 video card) and your video worked fine before with the onboard video. Now you have no video at all. The first step is to pull the video card back out and try the onboard and the video works just fine. Put the new video card back in and no video. What could possibly be the issue? Well truth is many people forget that you must on PCI Express x16 cards there is a separate power cable off the power supply that must be connected before the card will work. It could also be possible that the socket on the board known as a PCI Express x16 Bus Slot could have a lot of dust in it. If the bus slot was clean and the card is connected properly then it is possible that the new card may be bad. All hardware in computers are shock sensitive and it is easy to buy hardware and accidentally ruin it if you are not grounded or you and the computer are at the same potential. You can hit the card with a 30,000 volt plus zap and not even realize it.
Lets say your computer was running find then suddenly goes to a blue screen lock up (In Windows) and you don't understand what is going on. Every time it says something about the memory when it goes into this lock up. Your memory chips may be having issues. Pulling them and re-seating them can often fix this issue along with making sure there is no dust on the chips or in the sockets they plug into. If all this doesn't work then pull one chip at a time to see if the computer suddenly works right. This can narrow down which chip is bad. If that still doesn't work try a different chip because all chips in the system could potentially be bad. It is less common that all chips go bad and more common that it is only one memory chip that went bad in the system.
The basic thing to remember when trouble shooting hardware is to actually check all the simple things first. Most of the time it may just be a corroded connector, a loose or disconnected cable, or possibly bad hardware. Checking cables can save you lots of money and with hardware chips or cards sometimes just pulling it out, dusting it, and re-seating the hardware can fix the issue. If the hardware is bad having another piece of hardware that is similar or identical to what was pulled can help you determine if it is actually the hardware that has gone bad.
So the secret is to keep yourself grounded and the computer case or to keep yourself at the same potential the case is when working with hardware, keep your system dust free because dust is a computers worst nightmare, check the simple things first such as cables and wires, clean and re-seat hardware, and try to test with other hardware if possible to determine that the hardware you have trouble with is bad and needs replaced.
