Platinum Edition Using® Microsoft® Windows® XP

Starting the Attack on a New Problem

When a new problem crops up, it helps to attack it in systematic way. The following steps should get you off in the right direction:

• When a new problem is reported, make an entry in your trouble log right away. For a home or small office, this could be a simple spiral-bound notebook kept by the computer; in a large corporation, it could be a database application shared by the entire company. In any case, it's good to get in the habit of starting the documentation process from the outset of the problem.
• When trying to solve a network problem, first find out what the specific symptoms are. Most users describe problems in terms of what they can't do or what isn't happening. But, “I can't get to the file server” ...