Today’s article is more of a case study or lessons learned and a break from our normal article format.  Why the switch?  Well, a couple of days ago we asked our readers what problems they were running into or questions they needed answered and BOOM! a great issue was presented to us.  Who knows, maybe some of you are experiencing similar issues and will benefit from the answer.

ISSUE: I received a call on Monday from a client who was having trouble with his 2 year old eMachine.  The PC had Vista installed and had been running fine until his kids installed a new program.  Instantly, the computer slowed to a crawl and the owner thought that the new program was to blame, so he uninstalled it.  Suddenly, the computer quit playing sound of any kind.

RESOLUTION: After a few minutes of tinkering and a quick Google search, my initial thoughts were confirmed.  The problem was most likely related to the drivers for the sound card.   The hardware (sound card) was  fine, but for some reason the drivers were corrupt.  The result was silence from the computer.  The owner had already tried to update the driver, but that didn’t do a thing.  I decided to take the hardware back to square one and deleted the driver altogether via control panel.  Once deleted, I rebooted the PC and BINGO! the sound was back.  Vista was smart enough to recognize a “new” sound card and go out to the web to locate the drivers.  The sound was back and a quick test of a music video on YouTube confirmed that everything was functioning correctly.

LESSONS LEARNED: The moral to this story is that most PC problems are fairly simple to fix, given enough time.  But what can the average computer user to do correct these issues themselves?  In this case, my client was lucky enough to find me and didn’t have to spend too much for the repair, but he easily could have spent $100 – $150 if he had gone to another local PC repair shop/person.  Here are some quick tips:

1. Always start by restarting. Yes, when in doubt, restart the computer.  You would be surprised how many issues this corrects.
2. Google it.  Plug any error codes, displayed messages or problem descriptions into Google and research your issue.  Someone else HAS had the same issue and, if you are lucky enough, they have posted the solution.  If you don’t get an answer from the first few links provided, be more specific in your search by providing your PC make/model, hardware make/model, or any other specifics you can find.  The information is there and you just have to find it by changing your search up a bit.
3. Try something different. A wise person once shared this with me: “The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.”  In other words, you have to try different things to get different results.

Of course, the best defense is a great offense (close enough).  By following the tips we have provided through our blog articles over the last few months, this issue probably could have been resolved within a few minutes.  The computer in question was already having issues and installing a new program was simply the catalyst for the sound card issue.  Proper maintenance and a regular backup would have prevented the issue or at least provided the user a good restore point from before the issue.

These issues are exactly why JumpstartMyPC.com was created and why we post these articles.  No one else it going to educate the average user but I guarantee they will take their money when the opportunity comes up.  Our goal, as we have stated time and time again, is to help PC users get the most out of their computer.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 10:46 am and is filed under PC Support, Technical Issues, Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.