There always seems to be a day where you are awake, alert and ready to work but your technology has other plans.
This has happened to the best of us. It even infamously happened to Microsoft co-founder and then-CEO when his demonstration of Windows 98 led to the infamous blue screen of death.
Computers can be intimidating at times, and in those cases IT support services are on hand to provide advice, guidance and more advanced technical solutions as they are required.
However, the most common computer problems are often caused by simple issues that can be easily rectified as long as you can identify the situation at hand.
Here are the most common problems you are likely to find with your device and what may be causing them.
The Computer Will Not Turn On
As anyone who has assembled a computer themselves will know, the most frustrating issues to troubleshoot are the ones where you have no feedback or response to work with.
There are a few reasons why a computer will not start up at all or will turn on and quickly turn off. The most common of these is the most obvious; an issue with the power supply.
Power supplies are the part of a desktop computer most likely to break but are also thankfully the easiest to fix. Simply shut off the power, unplug the power supply wires from the motherboard, graphics card, hard drives and other components and slot in another one.
Windows Will Not Boot
Whilst the days of constant blue screens and reinstallations are thankfully behind us, there are times when Windows simply will not start up or the system is slow, unreliable and effectively unusable.
Windows 10 itself has a wide range of options to get your system running again, from a dedicated startup menu to a recovery disk to even resetting the computer whilst using it.
Sometimes this in itself can help make your computer more reliable, particularly if it has been a long time since you have given your computer a deep clean.
As slow and unreliable computers can be caused by either a lack of ram, corrupt files, conflicts in Windows’ registry system or a build-up of running applications often the result of spyware or viruses, reinstalling can be a quick fix, although it is important to figure out the underlying problem too.
Odd Knocking Noises
Whilst computers with no moving parts are possible to build now, the vast majority of systems feature several spinning fans as well a hard disk drive that is a magnetic spinning disk housed in a thick metal case.
Moving parts can wear out and break over time, and if you start to hear loud knocking noises that you did not hear before, it could be a sign of imminent hardware failure.
Make sure your files are backed up because if your hard disk breaks, it can sometimes be difficult to get data back.
Sudden Shutdowns
Most of the time, if your computer stops working you will get a warning, whether that be a blue screen of death, another error message, or simply the computer restarting without notice.
One exception to this is when computers will suddenly turn off without warning, sometimes with a lot of heat or in some cases even a concerning smell.
The reason for this is thermal shutdown, a system on many computer parts that will detect when a computer is running at a dangerously hot temperature and automatically turn off.
On laptops, this is most commonly caused by using the computer on your knees or on a carpet where the bottom fans cannot get enough air to keep the laptop’s components from overheating.
If it keeps happening, and circulation does not seem to be an issue, there may be a faulty fan or too much dust in the computer, which you can remove with a quick spray of compressed air.