3 Helpful Tips On Fixing Common Computer Conundrums

It will happen to all of us. Your computer is working as it is supposed to, and all of a sudden, it’s not.

If you are having an issue with your computer, try the following three things before you go the route of picking up the phone, and your credit card.

 

1. Hard refresh
Today’s computers are made for speed. In fact, if you have frequently visited websites, your computer stores a loaded version of it in your “cache”. This allows you to visit the site and have the pictures and some of the other elements from the site to skip “loading” and go straight to the stored site. The problem with this is that, often time, if changes are made, they will not be reflected right away as your machine will revert to that stored version of the website. To fix this, simply push and hold the shift button and use the mouse to click the refresh button on your browser bar. This will clear that cache of previously loaded sites and allow your computer to load the most recent version of the site that you are on.

 

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2. Shutdown and restart
Shutting down and restarting a machine that is acting goofy is a great way to give your machine a chance to reset itself, and often times, especially with Internet connectivity issues, will solve your problem. You want to make sure and do it the correct way by going through the appropriate button sequence within your start menu. Do not push the power off button unless you have absolutely no other way to shut your machine off due to the screen freezing. After it shuts down, give it 30 seconds and restart your machine. This allows the computer to go through its “wake up routine” and boot up. Any issues that were causing problems will usually be taken care of during this process.

3. Switch from Internet Explorer to a different browser such as Firefox or Chrome.
I am not saying to never use Internet Explorer. IE has been around a long time and many people use it without issue. However, IE is also known for being particularly “buggy”, and if an issue does arise, before I would panic or call anyone, I would try to do the same thing in FireFox and Chrome and see what your results are there. Not everyone knows that IE has many versions out there, and is updated with newer versions periodically that allow it to keep up with changing technology. If you have an older version of IE (8 or below) a good chunk of the new technology in website development may not show up accurately on your computer. Think about it this way…what if you tried to run a PlayStation 3 game on a PlayStation 2? The PlayStation 2 doesn’t have the same technology as the 3 and it wouldn’t understand what the game was saying and thus would fail to load. IE is similar in the fact that it needs to have these periodic updates to help it stay up with new, faster, and more efficient programming and design tools.