Computing and networking

Connectivity, printing, storage and backup, system faults, and the physical care of a device.

Scope

Connectivity, printing, storage and backup, system faults, and the physical care of a device. Most of this is software work, where the worst realistic outcome is lost time. The device care pages are the exception: a phone dried the wrong way and a phone erased the wrong way are both permanent.

Common failure modes

• A driver or a firmware update that changed behaviour
• A device that reports offline because of a network change
• A disk that is full and stops updates from installing
• A backup that was configured once and never verified
• A device sold or handed on with an account lock still set

Sections

• Home networks, routers and WiFi

  Home networks, routers, WiFi coverage and connectivity faults.

  6 published

• Printers and scanners

  Printers and scanners: connectivity, queues, drivers and consumables.

  6 published

• Disks, storage cleanup, backup and recovery media

  Disk space, backup configuration, restore verification and recovery media. Everything here exists so that the data and the machine can be brought back.

  4 published

• Startup failures, crashes, updates and drivers

  A computer that does not start, stops responding, or began to misbehave after an update: stop codes and crash logs, safe mode, driver rollback, and the built-in repair tools you run to find out what changed.

  5 published

• Phones, tablets, batteries, ports and secure handover

  The device as a physical object: battery condition and cycle counts, charging ports, liquid exposure, cleaning, and the erase that has to happen before a phone, a tablet or a laptop is sold, traded or given away.

  6 published

All procedures in this category

• How to get lint out of a phone charging port safely when it won't charge or the cable keeps falling outA charging port that has stopped holding the cable is usually not broken. It is usually full of pocket lint, compressed
• Is my phone charger safe to use? How to tell if a charging cable or wall charger is damaged, counterfeit or has been recalledA charger or a charging cable does not announce that it has failed. This page walks through the physical signs you can c
• How to work out why my home wifi is so slow or keeps dropping outSlow wifi is four different faults wearing the same costume. The problem can be in one device, in the radio link between
• What to do when you drop your phone in water, and why rice is the wrong answerThe rice thing is wrong, and it is not this page saying so — it is Apple, in its own support documentation, in a list he
• How to erase or factory reset a Mac or a Windows computer before you sell it, give it away or donate itSelling, donating or recycling a computer is two separate jobs, not one: taking your account off the machine, and making
• How to wipe a phone before selling it or trading it in, without leaving it locked to your accountAlmost everyone does this in the wrong order. You wipe the phone first, feel organised about it, and hand over a device
• How to fix a paper jam on an HP DeskJet 2700 printerPaper jams on a DeskJet 2700 happen in four different places, and HP is specific about the order you should search them
• How to fix streaky, faded or lined printing on an HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 series printerWhen an HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 series printer starts laying down streaks, white lines or the wrong colours, there is a fi
• Identify an Ethernet cable's category and decide whether it is limiting the connectionEvery Ethernet patch cable has its category printed along the length of the jacket, usually as CAT5E, CAT6 or CAT6A. Thi
• How to find out why a laptop runs hot and the fan is loudA laptop that runs hot and has a loud fan is usually one of three different problems wearing the same disguise. Fan nois
• Why does my laser printer print faded, streaky, or smudge when I touch it?A laser or LED-page printer builds an image with three parts working together: a toner cartridge, an imaging or drum uni
• How to check MacBook battery health and cycle count, and what the numbers meanThere are two things macOS will tell you about your MacBook's battery, and almost everyone merges them into one. They ar
• How to run First Aid in Disk Utility to fix disk errors on a MacFirst Aid is the disk repair tool built into every Mac. It looks for errors in the formatting and directory structure of
• How to boot a Mac in safe mode when it won't start up properlySafe mode is the first honest test you can run on a Mac that has started behaving badly. It starts macOS with most of th
• How do I test my internet speed properly so my provider believes me when I say it is slowA speed test run once, over wifi, from whatever device was closest, answers a different question than the one your provi
• Place a mesh node or a range extender and prove that it improved coverageBuying a range extender or a mesh node is the usual fix for a room the wifi does not reach, and it is also the step peop
• Where should I put my wifi router to get the best signal in the houseMost home routers end up wherever the cable comes into the house, which is almost always a corner, and almost always the
• How do I replace the toner cartridge and the drum unit in a laser printer?A laser or LED-page printer gives two different low-supply messages, and they point at two different parts with two diff
• How to run a nozzle check on an inkjet printer and decide whether to clean the print headAn inkjet printer builds its ink pattern with hundreds of tiny nozzles, and a nozzle check pattern is the fastest way to
• How to set up Time Machine on a Mac to back up to an external hard driveTime Machine is the backup built into every Mac, and it is one of the few pieces of software that is genuinely finished:
• How to set up automatic backups on Windows 11 to an external hard drive with File HistoryFile History is the backup that comes with Windows and copies your own files — documents, pictures, videos, music — to a
• How to change the WiFi password and network name on a TP-Link Archer AX23 routerThe Wi-Fi name and password your Archer AX23 arrived with are printed on a sticker on the underside of the router, so an
• How to make a Windows recovery USB drive, and how it differs from a Windows installation USBA recovery drive is a USB stick that can start your PC when Windows itself will not start, and hand you the repair tools
• How to fix a printer that says offline in Windows 11 and Windows 10Your printer is switched on, there is paper in the tray, and Windows still says it is offline. That word is a state of t
• How to find the stop code after a blue screen in Windows, and what the code actually meansA blue screen shows you a stop code for a few seconds and then the PC restarts and takes it away. Without that code you
• How to go back to the previous driver in Windows when a driver update breaks a deviceSomething worked yesterday, a driver updated, and now it does not. Windows keeps one previous driver for each device pre
• How to free up space on the C drive in Windows 11 and Windows 10 when it says low disk spaceA full drive on Windows is not just a nuisance. It slows the machine down and it can stop Windows updates installing, wh