Using Your Computer > Troubleshooting Computer Problems

Helping others to help you - effectively communicating your ICT problems

By Lasa Information Systems Team

A common issue for people who are responsible for supporting ICT is understanding the problems everyday users of ICT experience. Understanding is the key to solving such problems, but the way people describe their problems is often a barrier to understanding.

ICT support folk will be familiar with users complaining that “it doesn’t work”, without specifying details.  Failing to carefully describe a problem often means shifting responsibility to someone else, rather than starting to solve it.

Quite simply, when it comes to solving your ICT problems, saying only “it doesn’t work” doesn’t work!  Thinking calmly about your problem before asking for help can speed up finding the solution.

Understanding problems leads to solutions

Getting a better understanding of the problem you are experiencing is going to help solve that problem, even if you cannot solve it yourself.  To get help you must be able to explain the problem clearly.  Try to be as specific as possible about the following:

How did you recognise the problem?

You know you have a problem – but how do you know?  What are the “symptoms”?  If an error message popped up, write down what it said especially if you do not understand it.  Those messages often have codes in them which mean nothing to you, but can be used to search for information about the problem.

What is the context of the problem?

What were you trying to achieve when the problem happened?  What did you expect to happen?  What were the steps you took which led to the problem arising?

Answering these questions focuses on the outcome you are looking for.  It is possible that once this is understood, an alternative route to that outcome can be found – one that avoids the problem altogether.

What have you done to try and solve the problem?

If you share this information with the person helping you they will not need to try these steps again, and can focus on solutions you haven’t already ruled out.

What do you mean you haven’t tried to solve the problem yourself?  Try putting some of the answers to the above questions into a search engine and see if anyone else has had the same problem and written about solving it online.  In many cases, this is the first thing your support person will do, if they don’t immediately know the answer.  Save your poor beleaguered techie some of the hassle, especially if the solution is very simple and something you are confident doing yourself!  Tips on searching the internet.

Say what you think might have caused the problem – although ICT support folk may know a lot about ICT you are more familiar with the finer aspects of how you do your job, and the tools you use to do it.  Don’t undervalue your own knowledge – even if you are not confident with computers!

What would a solution look like?

Think about what you were expecting to happen.  Describing this gives the person helping you a target towards which they can work.

Spending a few calm moments considering the details of your problem is something any techie will appreciate when asked for help.

Other useful things to do

Keeping a log of problems that arise can be very helpful.  A series of problems may be related and share a single cause.  This might not be noticed as and when individual issues arise.  Regularly looking at which problems have arisen can also help prevent major technical incidents occurring.

Your log should include the date of any incident, the computer on which it happened, a brief description including the name of any programmes you were using, and what was done about it.

Also keep a log of solutions to problems that you deal with regularly – you may be able to help others in future.  Make sure to put solutions you find for yourself on here – you might be able to teach your techie a thing or two!