Troubleshooting Is My Business

Good help is hard to find, especially when your PC knocks off without warning. You know the computer expert at your office won't answer your e-mail for at least a day. And the last thing you want to do is drop 35 bucks on some bored phone technician who leads you through an hour's worth of mostly irrelevant questions only to conclude that the problem is due to some other company's product and that you should call its technical support line for help.

Whew. Makes you want to dust off your abacus. But what's the alternative? Roll up your sleeves and fix it yourself.

That's right: Solutions to the most common hardware problems lie well within your grasp. You don't have to send e-mail or make any phone calls. All you need is a little guidance. And (ahem) that's where Doctor Kirk takes charge. I dispense guidance every month in my Hardware Tips column.

This month, I've vacated my usual position in the back of the magazine in favor of this plum territory, to give you intensive help with some of the most prevalent hardware maladies. I scoured newsgroups, talked with support techs, and polled other PC World experts to figure out which hardware issues trip people up the most. Is it the 32MB of RAM that keeps running low? Or the colossal hard drive that behaves as if it were pint-size? Maybe it's a hot new graphics card that performs no better than your old cruddy one.

For each hardware glitch, I've crafted diagnoses and prescribed procedures to help you solve it on your own. Don't be nervous, this won't hurt a bit. Just prepare to familiarize yourself with such inner workings of your system as the CMOS program, for therein lies the answer to many a hardware riddle.

Now, I don't claim to cover every possible hardware problem in the coming pages. Nor can I guarantee that my prescriptions will cure your PC's specific ailment. But start here, and when your frustration level approaches its board-snapping peak, follow my golden rule: Know when to give up. Troubleshooting your computer yourself has its benefits, but at some point you may have to send that e-mail or make that phone call.