General Fault Finding Hints and Tips
- Divide and conquer.     If you are having trouble locating a problem,
remove all non-essential components one at a time until the problem
disappears. Then, the last component you removed before the problem
disappeared must be the one which is causing the problem.
- Use known-good parts. If you have any spares to hand, try
replacing any components you can with ones that you know to be
working. This applies especially to common culprits such as video
cards, interface cards, and peripherals.
- Check the surroundings and environment of the computer. Many
troublesome faults have been traced to magnetic interference from
other electrical devices, or insufficient power. Other problems can
be caused by excessive heat, cold, static electricity, or moisture.
These kinds of problems are next to impossible to diagnose simply by
looking at the unit itself.
- Backups, backups, backups! Never make any serious changes to any
computer hardware or important software without first taking a
backup of any important data you have on that computer. Of course,
if your computer will not even boot up, this may be impossible. If
you think your data is at risk, remove the hard drives until the
problem has been fixed.