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.