Sams Teach Yourself Network Troubleshooting in 24 Hours, Second Edition

Summary

Knowing how to troubleshoot basic hardware problems can save you a lot of time. PCs as a whole are reasonably simple machines, consisting of pluggable electronic components, some of which can be reseated. Poorly designed cases or motherboards can cause problems, so you can avoid problems by avoiding these.

Keeping clean is just as important as your mother told you; all hardware components react badly to dirt. Use a vacuum or canned air on visibly dusty components; use a pencil eraser on board contacts that seem to have dirt or oxidation on them.

Swapping components is an integral part of troubleshooting, and that goes double for hardware troubleshooting. As with the fuel pump on your car, you don’t need to know how it works, just that ...