WELL. AS THE YEAR COMES TO AN END.

My time in this ITN class is now coming to an end and so are my blogs, for now. 

Thanks for anyone who stuck around and those who have learned anything!

This is my last blog and in this one I will be discussing troubleshooting something I have always loved and that is SOUND.

Yes, it may not seem like a big thing but without sound, how will you hear your favorite video or hear music when doing homework. Well on this final week I found a link on Microsoft.com about what to do with different scenarios on why your sound doesn't work. Here is the link and I will catch you guys another time. Enjoy and stay safe. 

Troubleshooting sound problems  (Just click the problems and you will get solutions)  

Something interesting this week? Maybe if you are into Wi-Fi

This week I will be posting some steps to troubleshoot a Wi-Fi connection. 

(For anyone new in the computer world, Wi-Fi, is very important to life, get it together)


Wi-Fi is what connects us to the internet via smartphone, tablet and laptops, some devices use a cell phone like signal, yes but mostly, people use Wi-Fi.

And sometimes a wireless connection can go on strike and not work like you want it to that is when you will need some troubleshooting techniques to fix this problem.

Here is a guide to help anyone with common problems that can be easy, this site uses windows, so if you are using iOS you can easily find another guide. But here you go and have a good week!

Troubleshooting a Wireless Connection

I have been away for a little while!!

Sorry for being so late, but for this week I will be bringing up something not so computer related, in a way, kinda.

ANYWAYS! 

I want to talk about troubleshooting a cars computer! Yes, cars do have computers and sometimes things can go haywire.

 A cars computer controls almost everything and when something such as a code reading comes across and it is not good, it needs to be fixed right way! Just like a computer when you receive an error message, you car can receive an error message and make something not work in your car. Luckily auto shops have tools such as a OBDII port scanner, which basically tells you the codes of what si wrong with your car and then you have the item fixed or looked at. So regularly have your computer checked out to make sure everything is in tip top shake and to insure extreme life of your car!

I do not have a step by step guide to this troubleshooting because every car is different and has its own different problems!

Have a good day and REMEMBER! Get your car looked at regularly.

First post in the Spring! Been a long winter!

This week in the troubleshooting world I will be discussing how to troubleshoot a computers hard drive.

A hard drive is one of the most important pieces in a computer, almost everything you have on your PC is saved or stored here so what do you do when something is going wrong and you don't want to lose anything valuable!

Well, like always, I stumbled across a VERY good approach on how to fix a hard drive.

Here is the website if you would like to visit it but I will post the steps here, the website is a very good site to few other things too! So explore, have fun and be careful! 

Troubleshooting a hard drive

Steps:

1. Physical connectivity—Is the drive receiving power? Is it plugged into the PC by a correctly connected ribbon cable? For IDE drives, are its jumpers set correctly? Or with SCSI drives, are its SCSI termination and ID set correctly?
2. BIOS setup—Does the BIOS see the drive?
3. Viruses—Does the drive contain any boot sector viruses I need to remove before continuing?
4. Partitioning—Does FDISK find a valid partition on the drive? Is it active?
5. Formatting—Is the drive formatted using a file system that the OS can recognize?
6. Drive errors—Is a physical or logical drive error causing read/write problems on the drive?
7. Operating system—Does your OS have a feature that checks the status of each drive on your system? If so, what is that status?

 

This week is all about something small, but VERY important to backing up data.

A Flash Drive or USB thumb drive.

• Very easy to store things on
• Can hold a lot of storage and media
• Does not cost much at all; anywhere from $5-$25 dollars depending on brand and how much storage is needed

Even though this devices are small and not costly they do need some maintenance and fixing here and there. It's not uncommon but when it happens flash drives are not too hard to fix at all. I will give you some basic steps to follow. 

 How to troubleshoot a flash drive:

Drive Recognition

1. Step 1

   Ensure Windows recognizes your drive. Click the Start button, then type "Device Manager" in the search box.

   Step 2

   Click the "Device Manager" option within the Control Panel.

   Step 3

   Click on the small arrow next to the "Disk Drives" option to expand the list.

   Step 4

   Double-click the down-facing arrow over your undetected flash drive. Click the "Enable Device" option. Click "Next" twice when prompted, then "Finish."
2. Here is a website with some VERY good solutions and common problems that anyone can do and will in most cases help with troubleshooting a flash drive: Troubleshooting a flash drive .

Not much this week, but stayed tuned.

Troubleshooting a LAN connection that is running slow

First off.. What is a LAN?

• A LAN is a Local Area Network, which stretches over a short distance such as office to office within the same building. Sometimes that connection can become slow and crowded within that building and you need to do some troubleshooting

Here is a GREAT website I came across thats explains some simple/common ways to help fiure out whats going on with your connection! 

Troulbeshooting LANS

Have a good weekend eveyone!!

*sorry for the late post if anyone looks at these*

Back again with some informative troubleshooting stuff!

Ever had a problem with your printer? Something people overlook is you may have to troubleshoot a printer at sometime.

Troubleshooting a printer could consist of anything for example:

• replacing the paper(because it will not print without paper)
• removing jammed paper(Jammed up paper will not allow the printer to do its job
• replacing the ink(without ink you will have nothing on your paper)

 But some things are not that easy to do like the above tasks, here is a link that will take you to 10 of the most common or known problems with printers and it will also show you how to resolve the problem. 

10 Most common printer problems

Happy Troubleshooting!! 

THIS WEEK! 

iHave something very interesting to talk about in the troubleshooting world.

• Its all about the Bus Topology. What is this you may ask? WELL, a Bus topology consists of a single cable called the Bus, that connects all nodes of a network without intervening connectivity devices.   Here is a diagram of how a basic Bus is set up : 
  

   

A problem with the bus topology is that it is very difficult to troubleshoot.

They are difficult to fix because it is a very big challenge to identify a fault location. Finding the error can prove to be very difficult. Once the cable is broken somewhere or a cable is loose it will bring the whole network down and it is hard to track this down.

That's all this week. 

All my information came from Pg. 199 and 200 in the Network+ Guide to Networks book (6th edition) by Tamara Dean.

In this week's blog I will be talking about what COULD happen if your devices are not fixed ASAP

So what could happen?

Actually a lot could happen. Anything from the device going slow or as bad as a virus attack your information such a photo, music, and anything personal on your computer!

Theses guys are BAD and they are something you never want.

If you click on this link  http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/virus-whatis.aspx it will tell you what a computer virus is and what it does.

Purchase anti-virus and watch what you click on. 

Next week is looking good, tune it.

So why would someone need to troubleshoot a device??

Troubleshooting is the best way to keep your devices running smoothly and operating at the optimized performance. Weather your device is having a problem or simply running slow, a form of troubleshooting will be used to fix the problem. Troubleshooting also will help narrow the problem to something specific rather than having to deal with 1,2,3, or even more problem at one time. If you are ever experiencing a problem with your device you can either get it fixed or fix it yourself! Here is a link a recent blog by, me, and it provides a link to some simple troubleshooting techniques, very helpful. 

http://troubleshootingtech.blogspot.com/

Happy Troubleshooting!!

More to come next week.

As in my other blog last week I mentioned you could pay someone to fix your device or ix it yourself.

Here is the link to last week's link : http://andwhydothis.blogspot.com/

Paying someone to do something so simple can be very expensive.

Some places such as Best Buy, who have people from Geek Squad will charge by the hour to have your device looked at and if it is able to be fixed it costs $200-$250+ and then you might have to take it to someone else and pay more. 

But luckily a problem might be so simple that just a simple online check could tell you what to do and how to do it which in turns saves you money and gets your computer back tor running better.

Tune back in next week.

This is my first blog for my ITN 155 class. My name is Seth and I am an IT student learning how to network and troubleshoot. 

Not really sure what else to write in here but stay tuned for more troubleshooting and networking technologies.

What is troubleshooting?

            Troubleshooting is taking some various steps to finding out what is wrong with a computer. By troubleshooting it helps solve why a computer is not connecting to a network, not turning on, or a device is not working properly.



Below, is a list of common problems with computers. This pictures states the problem, why is might have happened and the solution on how to fix it..

       

There are many, many different products to troubleshoot.

There are computers, which is the most common, smartphones can be troubleshot, ipads, Android tablets, and other smart devices.

• In this Blog, I want to show you how to troubleshoot an smart phone, typically, Android. 

As there are very many ways to troubleshoot a smartphone, I will be including a link from Yahoo.com that shows some simple, easy to do techniques to fix your smartphone or find out what is going on so you can take it to a professional to have it fixed. 

Here is the link : http://voices.yahoo.com/how-troubleshoot-smartphone-10411589.html

Here is also another link to a Android smartphone troubleshooting site which gives the symptoms and solutions on common problems

http://www.huaweidevice.com/resource/mini/201208077698/Android_FAQ_en/

Stay tuned for more troubleshooting techniques and how to's on other devices.

If you want a specific technique or how to let me know and I will either write one or find on for you.