THE Best Way to Fix Your Computer That Everyone Forgets
Have You Tried Turning It OFF and ON Again?
Have You Tried Turning It OFF and ON Again?
“Oh yea, I probably should have tried that first.” – All of us, circa the digital age
It’s true, even IT professionals like myself have forgotten about this simple yet surprisingly effective way to fix those annoying problems that come up with one’s computer or digital device.
Whenever you find yourself having a weird issue with your laptop, iPhone, printer, modem, router, etc., the first thing you should do is turn it off, wait about 15 seconds once it powers off completely, and then power it back on again. I GUARENTEE you, it is the first question on almost every support center customer service representative script, so you might as well get it out of the way and make yourself look smart in the process.
At best, it could save you from having to call for help at all! OR you save yourself the embarrassment of having to tell the person on the other end of the phone that “yup, that did it.” (Then asking yourself “How many minutes did I waste getting ‘connected to our next available service agent’ just now?”) At worst, you don’t have to waste your time on the phone waiting for your laptop to restart in awkward silence or pretending to care about the weather in Climax, Michigan where the customer service rep is from. (Yes, it’s a real place.)
How to Fix Your Device
Computer Issues
When your computer is “doing that thing” again and not working how you want it to, a restart can fix most problems.
Why? Computers are complex machines that run numerous applications at the same time. Sometimes those applications can conflict with each other. Think of it like two sentences colliding with each other, BOOM!, letters being sprayed everywhere. Now you can’t read those sentences anymore. Computer issue.
Turning it off and on makes those applications, as well as all other running on your computer, start over.
How? Computers don’t take much to restart them these days luckily. If you still have control to access your computer:
1. Make sure that you save all open documents you need and close all open applications.
2. Once that is completed, you can restart the computer.
On a PC, go to the Start Menu, click the power icon at the bottom of the menu, and then click Restart.
On a Mac, click the Apple icon in the upper left, and then click Restart.
If you have lost the ability to move your mouse/cursor and your computer appears to be frozen, then there isn’t much you can do. Your best option is to hold the physical power button on your computer until the computer completely turns off. Once it has powered down completely you can push the power button again to restart the computer. Make sure it didn’t go to sleep instead and the power indicator light is blinking, which means you didn’t hold the power button long enough.
If you REALLY don’t want to lose something you were working on, sometimes it’s worth giving your computer an extra minute or two and see if it becomes un-frozen. Sadly, that works only a small percentage of the time.
iPhone Issues
iPhones do a really good job at being able to be powered on constantly and rarely needing to be restarted. I know people who gone more than 6 months without having to restart their iPhone without having an issue. (I’m surprised I couldn’t find a Guinness World Record for this.)
Why? An iPhone is basically a minicomputer in your pocket. It’s subject to similar issues compared to a regular computer, and so eventually over time some application or code will cause an issue with another and POOF, nothing works.
How? “Back in my day…” we used to only need to press and hold the “Sleep/Wake” button at the top of the iPhone, which produced a slider to swipe and shut off your iPhone. This is true for the iPhone SE (1st Gen), iPhone 5, or earlier. If your iPhone was frozen, you need to press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button until the screen shuts off. Then press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo pops up on screen.
iPhone 6 through 8 and the iPhone SE (2nd Gen) had the side button, which works the same and the top button did in previous models.
THEN the iPhone X and newer, after they removed the Home button, required you to press and hold both the side button and either volume button to produce the shut off slider.
The forced restart of the later models when they became frozen has gotten a little more complicated.
The iPhone 7 requires the need to push and hold the side button (Sleep/Wake) and the Volume Down button.
The iPhone 8 later requires a quick press and release of the volume UP button and then a press and quick release of the volume DOWN button, and THEN a press and hold of the side button until the Apple logo appears.
For details regarding the Restart or Forced Restart, check out these Apple websites. If you need help identifying your iPhone, try this page.
Printers, Modem, Routers, etc. Issues
Although being very different from each other, the common thing about devices like printers, modems, routers, etc. is that they are pretty simple to shut off and restart. A vast majority of them have a power button that you need to either press and hold to shut it down, or a mechanical click button that shuts it off by depressing and letting go of the button causing it to pop back out. Many modems don’t even have a button like this, and your only option is to unplug it from the power outlet and plug it back in.
PRO TIP:
If you are having an issue, let’s say with your internet acting up, sometimes it’s a better idea to restart ALL the devices related to the problem. Example:
Your laptop keeps getting disconnected and reconnected to the internet. Restarting the laptop doesn’t fix the issue and also restarting the modem doesn’t fix the issue. Yes, there is a chance that the Internet Service Provider (ISP) is the source of the problem, but you need to eliminate the other possibilities before calling them. Here are the steps I would take:
1. SHUT DOWN the laptop
Yes, that’s right, shut down and not restart. We want it completely off while we are doing the next steps.
2. Shut down your router (if you have a separate one)
If you have a router and a modem in your setup as two separate devices, then you will want to shut down your router FIRST.
3. Shut down your modem/gateway
Many people lease a device from their ISP that provides both the connection to the ISP (what a modem does) and produces the Wi-Fi signal to allow their devices to connect to the internet (what a Wi-Fi router does). These are commonly referred to as gateways by the ISP. If you have one of these, then you only have one device to power down.
I’ll try to cover why I recommend that anyone who wants to take more control over their home/home office network should NOT use these types of devices (beyond the money savings you will get from owning your own) in a future post and link it back here.
If you have two separate devices for your modem and router, now you will shut down your modem as your router was shut down in the last step.
4. Wait about 15-30 seconds.
5. Power on your modem/gateway
Wait until you see that your connection is complete based on the indicator lights. Each device is different, so please refer to your owner’s manual if you’re not sure what lights should be on or a specific color.
6. Power on your router (if you have a separate one)
Again, wait until you see that the router is back up and working before moving on.
7. Power on your laptop
I know it’s a lot of steps and button pushing, but walk through it slow and you’ll get it. Technology is meant to help you, not get you angry and frustrated. Don’t start the button mashing if you can avoid it…
Let Work From Home Pro Help
Please contact us at Work From Home Pro if this is all way over our head, or you need more help than I’ve provided here. We can setup a session to get you going in the right direction.