Troubleshooting with the Help and Support tool

In yesterday’s article, Windows’ built-in Help Desk, I reminded folks of the largely over-looked troubleshooting and How To tool built into Windows — Help and Support — and told you that today I would show you how to troubleshoot hardware and software issue using it. So here goes.

Let’s assume (for example purposes) that for some mysterious reason your computer no longer makes any sounds. If you double-click on a music file, Media Player looks like it’s playing, but you hear nada, zero, ziltch. Yesterday, it played Chopin’s Concerto #56 perfectly, but today you get a big fat cup full o’ nothing. You have, my friend, what we in the Biz call “a sound problem”.

To help resolve this problem, and get your MP3’s “bumpin” again, launch the Help and Support tool by clicking Start >Help and Support.

You could follow yesterday’s advice and enter “no sound” in the Search Help textbox, but today we’re going to leave that method as our “fallback position” and instead click directly on the “? Troubleshooting” icon/link… because, we got trouble, and we need to shoot it.

Scroll down until you see the category that applies to your particular issue, in our example that is the “hardware and drivers” category. Device issues are often driver issues, and so it is good to make note of the first option (you may need to come back to it), but the second option most closely resembles our hypothetical issue.. so we’ll click on it; “Troubleshoot sound problems”.

The Help and Support tool will ask you a series of questions to help narrow down the different possibilities: answer them as closely to the actual symptoms as you can. In this case, Help and Support wants to know do we hear anything at all; so it asks, silence? or, garbled static noise hissing?

Let’s continue to play along as if I hear nothing at all, so I select the top choice — “I can’t hear sound from my computer”.

Here’s the results.

And guess what, folks? This is (basically) the same series of steps I would take if you contacted me for my help at my online support business. My only argument with the bullet-points listed here is that the first one — going into Device Manager — should be listed last. There’s no sense messing with device drivers if it turns out that your kitten has playfully pulled the speaker wire out of the back of your machine!
(I have described Basic Troubleshooting Procedure here before: Question 1: Does it have power/is it turned on? Question 2: Is it plugged in/connected?..)

Other than that small critique, following the steps listed here will resolve the vast majority of “sound problems”, and doing it yourself will not only make you feel smart but save you money as well.
And remember, this was only one sample example. Help and Support covers an amazing range of questions. Just yesterday, I used the Help feature of Word to remind myself of the keyboard shortcuts for using those funny-looking foreign alphabet letters… You know the ones.. those letters with the little circle, or Tilda, over them (Ctrl+Shift+@, letter)?
Sure, there will be times when Help and Support’s troubleshooting steps do not resolve your issue (such as if our hypothetical sound card had up and died on us) and you can then “expand your search”.. rephrase your search keywords..or, contact a live Support person.
When you do call, your using H&S and trying the steps there, will also have saved you money; because you can tell the Tech, “I have checked the wires and the power.. and the Mute button and Volume control. Device Manager is not showing any yellow exclamation points or question marks. Help!” Saves time.

Today’s free link: If you work with digital movies on your PC, and find yourself frustrated with formats and High Def, Dr. DivX is the best free tool around.. or, so I’ve heard from sources I trust. I haven’t tried video editing yet, and I’m not eager to start. (People who know how to edit home movies, and make them look ‘professional’, suddenly become quite popular.)

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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Windows’ built-in Help Desk

Did you know that you have your very own Tech Support/Answer Man (..ahem, pardon me. Answer Person) living inside your Windows PC? 

One of the most useful Windows tools and services is also the most over-looked, ignored, and misunderstood. This tool can help you solve technical issues and/or show you how to do things.. and it’s free. (We here at Tech–for Everyone [me, myself, and I] are big fans of anyone who combines the concepts “useful” and “no charge”.) I am referring, generally, to the “Help” finder (the little search window) in Microsoft programs (such as Word and Excel); and specifically to the machine (operating system), the troubleshooting tool called “Help and Support“.
This red-headed stepchild of Windows tools should be the first place you go when your speakers stop working.. or you cannot remember how to set your “homepage” to the Wall Street Journal. You access it from the Start button–

(in XP…)

And in most programs (“applications”) the Help can be found in the upper-right, as in this example using Internet Explorer..

Vista’s Help and Support welcome window looks different than the “Pick a task”-oriented welcome page in XP and older versions, and I think the changes are to our advantage.

When looking for answers and solutions, the Search tool is often your best bet. Remember that searches use keywords to try to produce relevant results (machines cannot, yet, understand what you’re trying to say, but they can make matches to words and letters and symbols) so don’t type in too complex a sentence.

Let me demonstrate with a simple example: let’s say that I want to add Word to the icons down by my Start button (the “Quick Launch” area). I don’t type in “how do I put Word down by my Start button?” That will produce results using the keywords “Word” plus “start”. What I want to do is “add (a) program” to my “Quick Launch” (or, “Taskbar”). Right? So I use those keywords.

This produced 30 ‘matches’, and by looking down the list I find that the third one down is the most likely to have my answer. So I click on that link and see what I get.

The pictures show me I’m on the right track, and sure enough, the first link is almost an exact match to what I am trying to do.. with the “how do I” understood. I click on “To add a program to the Quick Launch toolbar” and expand the answer.

And there you go. I have run long for today– but tomorrow I will return to this topic and demonstrate how to use Help and Support to troubleshoot hardware and software problems.. such as if your sound stops working.

Today’s free link: The Microsoft WindowsHelp website is all about help and How To. Find tutorials, guides, and answers.. direct from the folks who wrote the software.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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