How can you help patrons troubleshoot common computer issues?

We've all heard the saying and the joke of asking "have you tried turning it off and on?". Whilst this is humourous to many working an IT helpdesk job, it is still a very useful software or OS troubleshooting step to take and where possible, should be tried on the 1st line. (except for on servers!). A simple restart of the computer will re-initalise a lot of areas of the operating system which may be causing a domino effect on performance, network issues, drivers and much more. This is especially the case with machines that have a high up-time. Other basic troubleshooting is checking the system clock. Ensuring the operating system has the correct data and time. This can help a lot of issues relating to network issues.

And even if you already rebooted before you called the help desk, we will have you do it again. Prepare accordingly. Signed, Every help desk tech ever.

If basic troubleshooting steps didn't work. Now you should be looking into the cause. Asking when the issue started and who is affected. A great tool is to check the Windows Event Viewer to see if the operating system reports any issues around the time of it occuring. This can help you identify whether the OS is tripping up on something a piece of software is doing or something along those lines. If the issue is relating to a piece of software the user is using, check for incompatibilities, updates or even try a re-install. If the issue is happening to other patrons with-in the same organisation, maybe you look into their infrastrucutre and look for any recent changes.

Troubleshoot the issues is always the best solution to know the root cause and prevent it in the future, for example if one user have an issue with slow performance on his PC we need to check software issues such as remove unnecessary startup & installed apps, delete temp files, etc, check for updates. Second thing check the hardware Ram, the CPU temperature, hard disk health, also ask the user when this issue accured and check event logs might an application installed causing this issue.

Sometimes an issue can affect people around the world, maybe after a specific update or patch a feature stops working. Checking online forums and official statements from the vendor, will help you understand if the issue is isolated or wide-spread to other regions. Checking the comments of these articles can usually help you find temporary fixes to get your users back up and running, whilst the vendor issues an official fix. YouTube is also a great resource as creators can show you the exact issue and how to fix it.

This is important. Once you have identified an issue and fixed it, you should document it as soon as possible and publish it to your team or online to help the community. This can help speed up helpdesk tickets for when an issue happens for multiple users/orgs and gives both the engineer and the patron peace of mind that they are not the only ones facing this issue.