At the worst possible moment, the printer doesn’t work, or the connection fails five minutes before an important video meeting. Who hasn’t experienced this? In this article, we’ll provide simple solutions that will surely help you regain your cool and get on with your task.
Right now?
It seems that technology, the same technology that has been making our work and tasks easier for years, turns against us when you have to rush out, connect to a meeting, or deliver an urgent report, right?
We have probably all experienced one of these tricks. At that moment, you may think the best solution would be to call a technician to deal with the problem immediately. However, you can solve many of these problems yourself even if you have a maintenance service because we assure you that it will be faster and easier than you think.
Proactively tackle
We encourage you to deal with this minor technical problem because, truthfully, you don’t need a lot of computer knowledge to resolve the common problems we detail here. This way, you will also save time and avoid anxious waiting.
– Printer jam
This problem has haunted us since the first dot matrix printers were invented in the Pleistocene. The solution is quite simple, although it depends greatly on the printer model. Most of them have a button—either physical or in the printer software—that will directly eject the jammed paper.
In cases where the paper has become trapped between one of the internal rollers, it will be necessary to open the printer. In most models, applying a little (a little!) force between the output tray and the top will be enough to open it, while in others, it may be necessary to press a safety trigger. Once the “guts” are exposed, we can proceed to slowly pull the jammed paper until it is free.
– Programs that stop working
Suddenly, that program you use daily gives an error when you try to open it. Or it may also happen that it opens correctly but then closes unexpectedly. What should you do in these cases? In most cases, you must close other programs you are not using. In many cases, if it worked until recently and now it doesn’t —and we haven’t done anything significant in between— the problem is usually a lack of RAM. This is especially noticeable with Internet browsers.
It can quickly happen when we have dozens of tabs open. You can close the programs that consume the most memory, such as design or video applications. By closing them, we will have more RAM to run the needed programs. Also, if you usually leave your computer on constantly, we recommend restarting it occasionally to free up all the cached memory.
Ultimately, if the program in question still does not work, it may be necessary to uninstall and reinstall it. In this case, perhaps a sector of the hard drive where the program is located has “crashed,” and it is necessary to relocate it.
– Problems in the operating system
This sounds like a big deal. Resolving technical issues of this kind usually requires a call to the technician, but first, we’re going to try to fix it.
If you have been noticing that Windows has been behaving strangely for days, it may be because a malicious program has been installed. We may not have realized that we are infected. We can find out by searching by date in the programs we have installed. To do this, just type “add or remove programs” in the search bar, and they will all appear. In the list, we can see if there is one that does not sound familiar to us. After searching the Internet to confirm that it is an unwanted program, since there may be some legitimate ones that do not sound familiar to us either, we can try to uninstall it. Attention: they are usually programs specially designed to make their removal difficult. In this case, we have two alternatives :
- If the program was installed a few days ago, we can recover a restore point. Windows makes “copies” of the environment to that date every few days. If we restore the system to a point prior to the installation date of the dubious program, we will have solved the problem.
- If, on the other hand, the program was installed a long time ago, we will have to resort to malware removal programs. Don’t worry about your wallet; there are numerous free solutions available at the click of a mouse.
Is it a question of slowness?
If the problem is simply that everything is running too slow, you will need to remove programs. Select those you no longer use and then you will have to defragment the hard drive (unless it is an SSD, in which case it will not be necessary), and remove unnecessary “junk”. These last two points can be easily found by right-clicking on the hard drive and selecting “Properties.”
If all else fails, it may be time to format the hard drive. Be careful! This will erase all data on the hard drive, so back up everything you need to a removable disk. If you want to go this route but are hesitant, many modern computers—especially laptops—have a “ factory reset ” feature that will return the computer to the state it left the store. Each computer has a different way of accessing this soft reset, so you’ll need to search the Internet for how to do it. Usually, you need to press a key while the computer is powered on to access the installation menu.
– No Internet at a critical moment
Is your Wi-Fi suddenly not working, or is your computer unable to find a network? This could be due to many factors, from a misconfigured network card driver to a power surge caused by a storm that has fried a router.
If this has happened to you at the worst possible time, we can always create a mobile Wi-Fi network with the same and use it to get out of trouble while the Internet returns or the problem is solved. In most mobile models, it will be enough to go to Settings and select “networks” or “connections.” There will be a section called “portable hotspot” from where we can configure our Wi-Fi. Be very careful! Even though we are creating a Wi-Fi network, you will use your data plan. So, in this circumstance, if you do not have unlimited data, you will have to pay attention to your consumption.
– The printer prints poorly
Nothing could be easier to fix. If it is an ink cartridge printer, there will be an option called ” head cleaning “in the printing software. If, after doing a couple of cleanings, the problem persists, it may be that it has been so long since the printer was last used that there is a lot of dried ink on the heads. Then, you need to do a deeper cleaning by hand with a liquid specially designed for this purpose. And if the printer is a laser, you can extend the life of a half-used toner by taking it out and giving it a few small knocks. But be very careful, as you can end up covered in the magnetic dust contained in the cartridges of these printers. Also, we warn you that this does not clean very well on clothes.
– The PC is making noise
This is one of the most common technical problems and the easiest to fix. In almost 100% of cases, the noise is generated by dust accumulating on the fans. This can be dangerous because, over time and with accumulation, the efficiency of the fans can decrease. And if this happens to an advanced point, it can cause so much overheating that a component “melts.”
To do a good cleaning, you need the following:
- Disconnect the computer from the electrical power.
- Touching a metal object with your hands will discharge static electricity. Always do this before messing around with the PC!
- Armed with a dry chamois and a spray of compressed air, remove all this insidious dust.
That’s it! There will be no more noises coming from your computer. Other than the usual ones, of course…