DON'T FREAK OUT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is probably the most important lesson that I try to teach anyone working on a PC. I've seen grown men cry and gentle ladies cuss like sailors all because their computer doesn't do exactly what they think it should exactly when they think it should.
Case #1. Keystone Cop
When I was 16 back in 1990, I got a call from our local police department to come help them take a look at their PC. When I got there the office sergent told me a sordid tale of an office and a camera and some scantily clad ladies and a wife that could shoot the wings off a fly at 100 yards. Instead of telling the Chief about the inappropriate pictures he took off on a delete-o-rama on the hard drive leaving many programs with missing drivers or files. We ended up wiping the whole system off and re-installing the operating system and the few programs they needed.
Case #2 Hot Headed Hotdog
My ex-father in law had a quick temper and a big mouth.
No that's not the whole story (just the story of his life). My ex-father in law ran a part time business of preparing taxes. He had a fairly nice laser printer, but he refused to fan out the paper when he loaded it and never checked the guides to make sure the paper fed straight. One night I woke up to the sounds of yelling and cursing and furniture crashing and I was sure someone had broke into the house. I ran downstairs to see his office in disarray and the printer broken in several pieces after the latest paper jam. He said "this D@/*@(*&!N printer isn't working", to which I replied "obviously"
Case #3 Diabolical Diskette
A local manager at the company I work for called all in a panic telling us his computer had crashed and would no longer boot up. The manager had already tried to reboot multiple times and it kept coming up with an error saying that his computer would not boot and he demanded that we come down and look at it immediately because there was no way he could work without his computer. So our PC specialist and I ran all the way across our warehouse to his office only to find that he forgot to take his floppy disk out of the drive and it wasn't a bootable floppy.
What do all these people have in common? They're freaks. They couldn't calm down long enough to think about their problem logically and decided the best course of action was to run around in circles screaming their heads off and crying like babies. Not only did their actions not help their situation, but in some cases it caused more problems than they started with.
Remember: Nothing gets broken that can't be fixed. Although you may not be able to fix your problem there probably is someone close by that can. If theres no one readily available then "that's life".
Also Remember: You don't have to have all the answers to fix your problem. There is usually someone out there that is smarter than you that has already solved your problem and wants to tell you about it. Use a quality search engine like google to search for your problem. How do you think I got to where I am today?
In future articles I'll share hints on how to keep your PC running faster, prevent bad stuff from getting to your PC and how to keep your printer in tip-top shape.
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