A simple Way to Fix lots of techie problems

By | December 21, 2015
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this will be a fairly short email – as you can imagine, I’m currently getting everything ready for Christmas.  The boys are excited and counting down the days.

Anyway first of all, I’d like to say Merry Christmas for Friday.  I hope you have a great day.  There’ll be another email from me next Monday, before New year, so I won’t say Happy New Year just yet…  but Yuletide greetings to you!

One of the last things you want at Christmas is to be frustrated with any kind of electronic device – whether it’s a computer, a mobile phone or a tablet.

And, gadgets being gadgets, they always seem to play up when you’re in a rush, or really want to get something done.

Well, there are lots of different problems you can have and I can’t tell you exactly how to solve them here.  But I wanted to mention that a lot of problems can be solved simply by turning the thing off, waiting a minute, and turning it on again.  (Which techies will call restarting it.)

Waiting a minute really can make a difference for some devices – it lets the memory clear itself, so it turns on fresh, rather than remembering what state it was in before (not so relevant on PCs, but very relevant for some printers or things like that that you plug into another device).

But there’s one more tip about this that I don’t think I’ve mentioned before. If you’re having problems with two devices working together – for example a PC and a printer or a PC connecting to a scanner – then it can make it work better if you turn them off at once.

I don’t mean restart one, then restart the other – you want both turned off at once.  Then turn one on, then the other.

And this is particularly useful for problems you’re having with wireless connections.  So if you have a problem with some kind of device connecting to your wifi, for example, by all means try just restarting that device.  But if that doesn’t work, try turning the device and the wireless router, that transits your wifi signal, off at the same time.  (You might want to tell anyone else in the house who’s using it first so they don’t get all grumpy when they lose the signal!)

Then turn them on and they should both start afresh – and often, that’ll get it sorted.

Worth knowing – it can save an awful lot of frustration.

Lastly…
Oh, and lastly, over the last few weeks I know quite a few people have had trouble getting this email newsletter – particularly if you use TalkTalk or Tiscali for your emails.

Just to try to make sure it gets through all right, could you add the email address I send them from to your email address book?  Usually you just right click on this email in your inbox and select “add to address book” or “add to contacts” – that should help make sure that the email companies know this is a genuine email and I’m not trying to sell you dodgy unmentionables or nick your card details…  It might even gradually help them let the newsletter through to other people, even if they haven’t added me to their address book.

(Of course, if you’ve already done that, then thanks – you’re helping make sure the emails get through!)

And really lastly this time, Merry Christmas and thank you for reading my newsletters this year!

4 thoughts on “A simple Way to Fix lots of techie problems

  1. Brian Malins

    Thanks for this email but you sent us this on Monday, I know you are just testing us to see if we are reading them.
    You and everyone else at helpful books have a lovely Christmas and thanks for everything.
    Mind how you go.
    Brian.

    Reply
  2. Brian O'Brien

    No I do have a problem getting my Kindle Fire to print using awireless printer and it is still all gobbledygook to me
    Thanks a lot for trylng and Happy Christmas to all there
    Brian O’Brien

    Reply
  3. Hilary Bell

    Please could you write a letter explaining why history has been taken off Apple iPad. I have not had any indication as to why this has happened.

    Reply

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