Copyright Expert Articles

              When I handle service calls, they frequently end up with me training the user on how to work with the computer rather than actual repair jobs. That’s because many beginners have a lack of training and jump to the conclusion that the computer is broken. Here are a few of the most common complaints, which I try to handle over the phone on the first call:

      Q: What happened to my taskbar?

      A; Often what happens is the user has accidentally resized the taskbar to where it’s just a thin bar across the bottom of the screen. Re-sizing the taskbar usually corrects the situation.

      Q: Where’s my program?

      A: When I hear this complaint, I usually determine the user has accidentally deleted a shortcut from the desktop. I just walk the user through re-creating the shortcut.

      Q: My documents disappeared.

      A: The first thing I do is ask the user what program they were in when they noticed this. The usual answer is they are using Word. When they save files they normally see stored files in My Documents folder. Suddenly, they don’t see that folder anymore. What apparently happened is someone changed the file location that appears in the Open dialog box. The user may not be aware of how to change folders so I give the user a quick lesson on how to change file and folder locations.

      Q: I unzipped files, now I can’t find them.

      A: Here, the user used extracted files but didn’t pay attention to the folder where the files were extracted. When this occurs, I suggest to the user to unzip the files again and note the location, or use the Search (or Find) command to locate the files if their names are known.

Startup problems

      “My computer won’t start” is a wide area. The cause can be anything from the monitor being turned off to a bad DLL. Here’s a breakdown with some ideas for troubleshooting each situation.

      One of the hardest problems to solve is when you turn your computer on but don’t see anything on the screen. It’s kind of hard to see error messages when there is no video to look at.  Here are some things you can check when you’re not getting any...

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