How to Diagnose Pc Hardware Problems Fast and Easy?

Welcome to this new article where we are going to explain the steps you should follow in order to diagnose pc hardware problems fast and easily.

A very common problem with Pc users is that their pc shows signs of malfunctioning, but they can’t identify what exactly is wrong with it. If you’re one of them don’t worry.

This text aims at providing you with efficient ways to quickly solve your computer issues. You just need patience and read through this guide step by step until the end. Don’t skip any section since every single detail will play an important role in diagnosing your PC!

In fact, these passive methods will help us understand better as a whole the different components that make up our computers as well as how they work together in order to provide us with a quality result.

Before we start, it’s important for you to read and remember the following: when you’re finished diagnosing your pc hardware problems, don’t forget to apply the changes identified in order to properly solve them. Also, keep in mind that these diagnosis steps are going to be general so they will be helpful regardless of whether your problem is a slow pc or a computer won’t boot at all one.

From this point on, I’m going to refer to any type of issue as a “problem“. So just imagine that every time I say “problem” I actually mean “issue“, “incident“, etc. By using this terminology it becomes easier for me to explain the different processes without confusing you.

So, let’s start! Keep in mind that it will be a little bit harder to solve problems on your own if you don’t know the basics about computers so I recommend reading this article before going through all of these steps:

Step 1 – Isolate the Problem

In order to diagnose pc hardware problems successfully, we have first to identify them separately from other kinds of issues since they could be component-specific and/or common. The best way to do this is by booting up your pc and seeing what actually happens every time (which components are affected).

If nothing works or there is no display then we can be sure that one of those two components was damaged, but if only one particular component is malfunctioning we can’t be so sure about it and we have to keep in mind that the problem is actually more complicated.

Luckily, most problems are easy to isolate because they affect only one part of our computer leaving the rest unaffected. But in some cases, this process won’t be so simple so you have to put a little bit of effort in order to identify precisely what’s wrong with your pc.

Step 2 – Collect all the Information

Once you’ve identified what kind of problem affects your computer you have to collect all the information available on your pc which will help you solve it faster. So, let’s start by opening up “My Computer” by clicking on its icon on your desktop or accessing it through “Start Menu” depending on your OS.

As you can see, I don’t have any external hardware attached to my pc so this section of “My Computer” will be empty. But if you were to connect something like USB flash drives or external hard disks it would appear on this window.

Now let’s go ahead and open the Device Manager by double-clicking on the ” ” icon (which is located next to the sound volume icon). A new window will show up. This one shows us all of our computer components and their status (working correctly or not) as well as provides us with additional information about them that we can use for troubleshooting purposes.

Step 3 – Isolating the Problem via Google

Once you’ve gathered all the information available about your computer components the next step is to search for solutions online so you can see what other users think about your problem, thus giving us a broader view of it.

You have to type in keywords that describe your issue in order to get more accurate results when using Google-like: “Computer won’t turn on“, “My pc doesn’t display anything” or something similar (you can also use our site’s search at the top right part of every page if you prefer).

Since there are thousands upon thousands of possible problems and issues that could affect your pc it’s almost impossible to know what they are all called, even I don’t remember them!

So, in order to solve them faster, we use Google to find out what they’re called and access online forums where other users who had the same issue help us solve them. Here are some examples of very common pc hardware problems so you can get an idea of how Google works…

Possible Problem 1: I have a slow pc.

“Slow computer”

Possible Solution 1: You can figure out what’s slowing down your pc by opening the Task Manager ( CTRL + SHIFT+ESC ) and checking which process is taking up most of your computer’s memory. If it seems like you don’t know how to use the Task Manager, start here. Once you identify which process is using all of your computer resources, you should check online forums for comments from other users who had the same problem as yours and try to fix it.

Possible Problem 2: My pc doesn’t boot up properly.

“Computer not starting up”

Possible Solution 1: If you don’t have any display or you see some kind of error message, most probably your video card failed. You should check online forums for comments from other users who had the same problem as yours and try to fix it.

Even though most people would read the error message depending on their OS, these are some examples that might help you out if you can’t boot up your pc properly…

If Windows is giving you an “NTLDR is missing” blue screen of death then chances are high that either your hard disk was damaged or there’s a loose connection somewhere between your motherboard and your hard disk. If Windows can’t find Bootmgr.exe, well, this is easy to fix. All you have to do is copy the “Bootmgr.exe” file from another computer with Windows installed on it, paste it on your own pc and then restart it. If that doesn’t solve the issue, then I suggest doing a fresh install of Windows.

Possible Problem 3: I have a virus on my pc.

In this case, Google search will be more complicated because there are so many viruses out there and almost as much anti-virus software available which makes this a little bit harder to solve unless you know what exact name the virus has so we’ll have to use other sites like https://www.virustotal.com  which uses different anti-virus software to scan any kind of file so you can see if it’s safe or not.

Possible Solution 2: If you have a virus that prevents your pc from booting up then the only way to fix this is by deleting all data on your hard drive and doing a fresh install of Windows which means you’ll lose all personal files, pictures, videos, etc.

Possible Problem 4: My pc can’t detect my external hard drive.

Here we know that there could be an issue with the external device itself (hard drive) or whenever Windows can’t detect it so we have to narrow down our search by adding additional information like “my external hard drive is not detected” or something similar.

Possible Problem 5: My pc monitor only displays a blue screen.

This is one of the most searched for pc monitor problems so you’ll get thousands of results when searching for this but if you try to be more specific about it by adding additional info like “my monitor shows a blue screen with no signal”, etc… then you’ll have an easier time narrowing your problem just by reading a few posts about it online.

Now that I’ve given you some ideas on how to use Google, let’s find out what kinds of solutions there are available when dealing with these issues. This will give us an idea of what you should do next.

Solutions for Slow PC’s (or any other problem)

The first thing you could try is to uninstall, check and/or update all the software you have installed on your pc. This will help us determine whether it’s a pc hardware or software issue so, if after doing this your computer still runs slow then there could be an issue with one of your hardware components so I would look into them more closely.

For example, if reinstalling all the applications didn’t help then it could either mean that something is wrong with Windows itself or with one of the critical hardware elements found inside our pc like the CPU, ram memory, motherboard, or graphics card.

So go ahead and read into each component within your pc until you find the culprit which will help you solve your problem much faster.

Solutions for a pc that won’t turn on

This is a very common problem so there are thousands of possible solutions out there but if your motherboard shows no sign of powering up when pressing the power button then it’s either because the battery powering your motherboard is dead or when they integrated the bios in the motherboard itself they forgot to add a jumper or something similar!

Newer pcs use an internal “battery” which isn’t removable and only lasts around 5 years maximum… But, if this doesn’t work after replacing it, check whether the issue only occurs when trying to boot up Windows itself (while booting) or even during POST self-check by checking your motherboard’s manual for this sort of info.

Solutions for a pc monitor that shows a blue screen

Well, if you’re having this issue then it could be one of the following reasons:

– No signal from graphics card/ motherboard.

– PC’s graphic card is faulty or damaged.

– Graphics card drivers are corrupt or not installed properly.

– Your ram memory sticks are faulty and need to be replaced! 🙂

You could also try using an old monitor to determine whether the problem only occurs with your current one or not by borrowing one from someone else (if possible) then testing it out on your computer before determining whether the problem is with the pc, the monitor itself or both.

I hope you guys enjoyed my guide on how to investigate problems within our pc by reading online posts about them.

I hope this guide helps you guys out there who are looking into ways of diagnosing pc problems by reading other people’s posts about them! Let me know below what other guides you’d like me to make in the future… Thanks again for reading guys and see ya soon! 🙂