Describing Your Computer Problem to an IT Repair Professional
Today’s computing environment presents a lot of ways for computers to get into trouble. Viruses, malware and other malicious software can damage your computer’s software components and if not addressed in time, the damage can spread and affect even the hardware components of your machine.
Early signs of slowing down, freezes, error messages and hangs require you to make a visit to your nearest computer repair technician to prevent any major damages from happening. When doing such, it is important that you’re able to explain what happened in a brief, clear and concise manner for them to address the problem right away. This will also save you time and money.
Here are some things to keep in mind before visiting your local computer repair shop:
Remember All The Details
Remember all the time you invested into setting up the system to make it your own. Computer owners often makes the mistake of just letting faulty programs run due to the cost of having it repaired or replace. This is a wrong mindset which can only do more harm than good in the long run.
Take time to remember all programs or system components that have failed and stopped working sometime in the past and mention it when you talk to the repair professional.
This will help them fimd the cause of the problem and go to the root of it right away saving you a great deal of time and money.
Collect Necessary Information
Be sure to collect the information you need to clearly explain what happened. This information may include but not limited to the following items below.
Error messages that may have appeared on the screen
Whether or not your computer boots up to your Windows Operating System.
Any noise that you hear from within the computer itself. Strange sounds like whirring and grinding may come from the hard disk’s heads rubbing against each other.
What processes were run and the things done on the system before signs of trouble started happening.
Any unknown or uncategorized program that showed up on the screen and the name of such program.
Pinpoint When It Started
It will also help if you do your best to remember the time when the issues started showing up and other strange things that occurred right before you experienced the current problem that you are having with your computer.
When the computer started running slower, for instance, any strange message that appeared while you were working on something, any trouble on a program that you usually use or other weird occurrences that you experienced before the problem started.
Account for Previous Repairs
Another time and money saver on your part is remembering the times and types of software and hardware repairs that you or a friend may have attempted to resolve a problem that happened in the past.
The problem and resolutions history of your machine helps technicians understand more about the present problem. Generally, the more information you can give relevant to the problem, the better and faster it will be resolved which means lesser repair and labor expenses on your part.
Most Importantly, Give Accurate Information
It is important that you give accurate information to your computer repair specialist when you’re visiting them. Take time to remember the things that happened before giving them a call. Write down some relevant information on a piece of paper before taking your machine to the shop.
Trust me, this will save you time and money!