TROUBLESHOOTING

Common Problems and Possible Solutions

TROUBLESHOOTING

Save Your Work!!

ALWAYS!

Save your work,

and save it often!!

Why?Electricity goes out.

Cables are unplugged.

Computers “lock up”

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Keep it Simple…

Look for the simple cause/solution

first! Is the power turned on (computer,

monitor, printer, etc.?)

Is everything plugged in?

Is a caps-lock or number-lock

pressed (or does one need to be

pressed?)

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Passwords/Logins

Passwords:•Are you typing the upper and lower-case letters correctly?

•Is the “Caps-Lock” key turned on or off?

PINs (Personal Identification Numbers)•Check your Number-Lock key!

Confusing letters an numbers? •Letter: O (capital Oo) or Number:0 (zero)

•Letter: l (lower-case Ll) or Number: 1 (one)

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Printing

Your Document Won’t Print!•Are you answering all of the windows that

pop up?

•Is there paper in the printer?

•Is everything turned on and plugged in?

The printout doesn’t look like what you see on the screen.

• Are you using the correct print option? Some web sites have a

special print option that you should use instead of in the browser!

•If in doubt, look for a print-preview option.

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“Locked Up”

Your program isn’t responding. It’s “Locked up”.

•Hopefully, you have been saving your work!

•Try to close the program and re-open it.

•Use CONTROL-ALT-DELETE to close the program (See next

slide)

•Reboot (restart) the computer (See upcoming slide!)

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Locked Up: Control-Alt-Delete

Control-Alt-Delete

These are 3 keys on your keyboard.

1. When told to hold down a key, do not let go

until you’ve finished all 3 steps!

2. Press and hold the Control (CTRL) key.

3. Press and hold the Alternate (ALT) key.

4. Press the Delete (DEL) key.

5. (Now you can release all 3 keys.)

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Locked Up: Control-Alt-Delete

If you do not

immediately see a

window like this, you

might need to click a

button that says “Task

List”

Highlight your program

on the list, and then click

“end task”

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Locked Up

If you cannot close the program with Control-

Alt-Delete, try shutting down the computer and

restarting it.

This looks different on different computers, but

use the option on the screen for shutting down.

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Locked Up

To be very thorough, use the SHUTDOWN

option, to completely turn off the computer

(Don’t just use RESTART.)

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Entire Computer is Locked Up

What if…

The computer will NOT RESPOND AT ALL!!!

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Locked Up

Sometimes, you’re left with no choice,

and will need to turn off the computer at

the power switch.

Do this as a last resort.

You may need to hold the power button

for a few seconds before the computer

turns off.

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Save your work!!

Did we mention…

ALWAYS!

Save your work

often!!

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Meet the “Undo” Button!

Mistakes (or “D’OH!”)When using Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint…)

and similar programs.

Meet your new

friend…

The UNDO button!

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Undo

UNDO

If you’re working in a program such as Microsoft Word, and you do

something accidentally, such as…

•Delete text

•Change format (size, shape, etc) of your text

•Not sure what you did, but you don’t like it!

Click UNDO.

•Must be soon after you’ve made the mistake, though!

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Using “Help”

How do I….

Use the “Help” function to find answers for

yourself.In Microsoft programs, look

for a question mark at the

top, right corner of the

window.

(Also try pressing F1 key!)

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Using “Help”

Search for what you

would like to do with

the help window.

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Using “Help”

Click on the best

matching instructions.

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Using “Help”

Follow the instructions!

The biggest challenge

with “Help”, is often

knowing the name of

what you want to do!