Upgrading and Fixing Computers: Do-it-Yourself For Dummies®

Chapter 21. Ten Ways to Find Help Online

Some problems can't be fixed by reading a book, unfortunately. The most troublesome problems pop up only when a certain version of software tries to run on a specific model of computer containing a specific combination of hardware. Only a small handful of people will ever experience that particular problem in their lifetime.

That little fact doesn't make it any less frustrating when the problem occurs on your computer, though. So, in this chapter, I show how to find that small cluster of other people who have experienced your same problem, stumbled upon a solution, or posted the solution on the Internet.

This chapter explains how to arm yourself with the tools you need to extract those solutions from the gazillions of informational tidbits living throughout the Internet.

Finding Help through Search Engines

Without a doubt, the first stop when you're searching for solutions to computing problems should be Google, the best search engine on the Internet. As I write this, Google's search robots are scouring billions of pages across the Internet, indexing them word by word, and enabling you to search the results for free.

Google lets you locate information several different ways, and I describe the most effective methods in the following sections.

Searching Google for specific information

When I'm troubleshooting a computer problem, I always begin my search on Google (www.google.com), as shown in Figure 21-1. Google provides a quick and easy way to find ...