Whether it’s a computer, your car, a household appliance or anything else, troubleshooting is a matter of narrowing a lot of possible problems down to the most likely one.
Basically:
- Check to see if it’s the equipment or device by testing it on some other piece of hardware.
- If applicable, check to see if it’s specific software (for example, if it’s a website and you usually use IE, try it on Chrome or Firefox).
- If it’s something that’s accessible elsewhere, try it from a different location or have a friend try it out (this would weed out location-based or provider-based issues).
- Reboot/restart/clear cache/run updates (it’s recommended that you run a backup before you do any updates).
- When reasonable, wait a few minutes or an hour to see if it was a temporary glitch.
After narrowing it down if you still need help, or you were’t able to narrow it down, contact a pro and give them these pieces of information.
- What you did.
- What was supposed to happen.
- What actually happened.
- Your troubleshooting steps and results.