The best tools and techniques for DIY tech support

Sooner or later, something is going to go wrong with your technology – and then you have a choice to make. As with all jobs worth doing at home, either call in the professionals and pay for help, or try to do the necessary repairs yourself. There are pros and cons to both options, but tech support for doing it yourself is less than you might think.

If you’re just getting started with tech troubleshooting yourself, we hope this is a helpful guide. Alternatively, if you have people constantly clamoring for you to rework their gadgets, maybe this is an article you can pass on to them. We know what it’s like to be a “tech guy,” and most of the time, you don’t need a lot of technical knowledge to find a solution.

Of course, it’s hard to provide a one-size-fits-all guide—and no matter how smart you are about them, there will always be issues that you can’t fix yourself. Sometimes it’s time to return or professional tools. However, this guide will help you decide when to hold back, or when to call in the big guns.

Detective work

Before you start fixing anything, it is very important to know what you need to fix. If there’s no internet on your phone, is it your WiFi or your device to blame? You can tell by seeing if other gadgets you’ve got at home are still available online—turn your attention to your phone if you can. Otherwise, your internet connection needs to be checked.

Many technology problems require some careful investigation: you need to consider both hardware and software. If your web browser is working, your internet connection, operating system, browser, or browser extension may be to blame. Uninstalling browser extensions or trying to replicate the problem in a different browser are ways to determine where the issue lies. Basically you want to test one variable at a time.

Another tip is to try to retrace your steps and consider what else changed about your technology setup when your problems started (a new accessory, for example, or a software update). In general, don’t just jump to conclusions when trying to figure out what the problem is.

Also, be sure to consider downloadable updates when troubleshooting, especially for drivers. The playing field is constantly changing, and the problem may just be that your device hasn’t caught up yet.

The basics

This won’t apply to every tech problem you have, but a good, reliable reset is the first troubleshooting method to try. Sure, turning something on and off again is a cliché, but it’s cliché for a reason: turning your device off and on clears corrupted data and corrupted processes from its memory, giving you a clean slate and a fresh start.

For a more comprehensive fix, try resetting your device and starting from scratch—that is, restore your phone, laptop, or whatever the device is back to factory settings. It may seem like a drastic step, but these processes are simpler than they used to be, and now that there are so many applications and so much data in the cloud, you can back up and do it much faster.

If you’re going the reset route, make sure all your important apps and files are backed up somewhere else first: you’ll need to reinstall everything from scratch. You’re in trouble for an hour or two, but it might be worth it for a fresh, hassle-free start. Here are Microsoft’s instructions for restarting Windows. over hereFor example, you can find Apple’s guide to restarting MacOS. over here.

Official support

We’ve cited a couple of sources from official sites run by device manufacturers, and they’re some great options to turn to when troubleshooting. The companies that made the hardware and software you’re struggling with probably know best when you need a fix, so head over to the official site (or social food) for the manufacturer or developer involved and start searching for their FAQs.

let it be Errors in Photoshop or problems with a Samsung Galaxy Phone CameraThere are officially written and verified troubleshooting guides on the web. It’s a good idea for these companies to keep the information on their site up-to-date and accurate because if they don’t, they could be in trouble – and they want satisfied customers, after all.

The official websites of hardware makers and software developers can be useful in other ways as well: they often provide software patches or hardware drivers and firmware for troubleshooting purposes. They’re not always easy to find, but they’re worth digging for.

Web platforms

Once you’ve exhausted all the official channels you can find online, you can turn your attention to forums and message boards and blog posts in general. There are more skilled, intelligent, amateur tech troubleshooters on the Internet than you can ever know – and chances are at least one of them has experienced the same problem you have.

Exactly where you should go depends on the issue at hand. You may find answers to your questions. Reddit sub For your device, for example, or a Dedicated platform For the software you use. This is where knowing exactly what went wrong can come in handy. Remember any error codes that may pop up when troubleshooting, and take plenty of photos.

Don’t forget social media either: it can be helpful to check your Facebook friends or Twitter followers to see if anyone can help you with your problem. Most of us like to appear helpful and smart in front of an audience, so if you have a wide selection of contacts, you should at least get some people to weigh in.

At the same time, beware of dubious or overly complicated solutions that require you to perform repairs. Unless you download something or sign up for a service, you won’t be inviting malware onto your system, but you could be compounding your problem.

YouTube videos

Although it’s less scrolling than a text-based website, YouTube has become a bit of a home for how-to and troubleshooting guides of late. Try to run a search for a specific problem or related repair and you should see a variety of matches – not all of them are useful, but it shouldn’t take you long to find the videos that are most relevant to you.

Let it be Gmail app is crashing. or a Blank PS5 screen Or Low size of AirPods, you have a chance to find some useful clips. If you want to do some advanced work on your technology, YouTube is a great resource. Updating RAM In a laptop, reaching you Router admin pagereplacing AirTag batteryAnd so on.

If you get a lot of results for your query, the number of views and subscribers are often (though not always) good indicators when it comes to judging which clips you should be interested in. Also see the comments below the video and speed it up if you need to quickly review the video to solve your problem (by clicking the cog icon in a desktop web browser and then doing so) Playback speed).

Google it

Doing a web search with some keywords related to the problem can be the first call for many of us when something goes wrong in technology – it’s not a bad approach to take, but it should be done within. Smart way. Many Google results these days, whether related to tech troubleshooting or not, are designed to attract clicks rather than provide any useful information.

The more precise the wording of your search, the better: something like “Android fix”, for example, won’t give you high-quality results, and you’ll do well with specific error codes, specific software versions, and specifics. Device names and functions. If you don’t get good results with a phrase, change it.

You might very well open a page on one of the forums or official sites we mentioned earlier, and you’ll quickly get a feel for the sites that are there primarily to serve up ads and have helpful troubleshooting tips. to you. Places like Life line, HowToGeek, iFixitAnd MakeUseOf It can often be trusted for example.