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Troubleshooting Your PC for Dummies »

Book cover image of Troubleshooting Your PC for Dummies by Dan Gookin

Authors: Dan Gookin
ISBN-13: 9780470230770, ISBN-10: 0470230770
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Date Published: March 2008
Edition: (Non-applicable)

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Author Biography: Dan Gookin

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for way, way too long. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written over 110 books on personal computers, many of them accurate.
Dan combines his love of writing with his gizmo fascination to create books that are informative, entertaining, and not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into over 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes seems to work.
Perhaps his most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times #1 bestseller (though, as a reference, it could not be listed on the NYT bestseller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most popular titles include Word 2007 For Dummies, Laptops For Dummies, and PCs For Dummies (all published by Wiley). He also maintains the vast and helpful Web page www.wambooli.com.
Dan holds a degree in communications/visual arts from the University of California, San Diego. Presently, he lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he enjoys spending time with his sons in the gentle woods of Idaho.

Book Synopsis

Troubleshooting your PC isn’t as hard as you think. In fact, with a little help from Troubleshooting Your PC for Dummies, 3rd Edition, you can save yourself lots of time, money, and headaches by diagnosing and fixing those snags, glitches, and predicaments that would otherwise drive you crazy. Bringing a touch of humor and a strong dose of sanity into play PC expert Dan Gookin makes it easy!

This fully updated edition features new and expanded coverage of laptop woes as well as Internet and e-mail issues, broadband connections, spam blocking, and security concerns. You’ll find answers to all of your questions about getting out of PC pickles, recognizing when you’re headed for trouble, keeping Vista on the straight and narrow, creating a safe and secure PC environment, and even preventing problems down the road. Discover how to:

  • Remove documents from the file menu
  • Recognize warning signs of hard drive failure
  • Stop a program that’s misbehaving
  • Reclaim missing Internet passwords
  • Distinguish hardware problems from software problems
  • Mediate conflicts between Windows and your applications
  • Solve startup problems
  • Diagnose email calamities
  • Troubleshoot Internet connection malfunctions
  • Understand puzzling error messages

Complete with lists of essential rules of tech support and things you should never or always do, Troubleshooting PCs For Dummies, 3rd Edition, gives you the tips, tricks, and solid knowledge you need to keep your PC healthy and strong for years to come.

Table of Contents

Introduction1
Pt. 1What the @#$%&*!?7
Ch. 1It's Not Your Fault! Well, It Might Be Your Fault (How to Tell Whether It's Your Fault)9
Ch. 2Stuff to Try First17
Ch. 3Telling a Hardware Problem from a Software Problem27
Ch. 4The "R" Chapter (Reinstall, Restore, Recycle, Recovery)37
Ch. 5Your Last Resort: Tech Support51
Pt. IITroubleshooting Minor Irks and Quirks65
Ch. 6"This Just Bugs Me!"67
Ch. 7"Gosh! This Is Embarrassing!"87
Ch. 8Start-Up Problems101
Ch. 9Finding Lost Files and Things121
Ch. 10Sounds Like Trouble135
Ch. 11The Mystery of System Resources (And Memory Leaks)147
Ch. 12The Slow PC157
Ch. 13Keyboard, Mouse, and Monitor Dilemmas163
Ch. 14Printer Problems173
Ch. 15Dealing with Disk Disaster189
Ch. 16Internet Connection Mayhem201
Ch. 17Web Weirdness with Internet Explorer219
Ch. 18E-Mail Calamities with Outlook Express233
Ch. 19General Windows Disruption (Or, "Is This PC Possessed?")247
Ch. 20Shutdown Constipation265
Pt. IIIPreventive Maintenance275
Ch. 21Maintaining Your Disk Drives277
Ch. 22The Benefits of Backup287
Pt. IVThe Part of Tens295
Ch. 23The Ten Rules of Tech Support297
Ch. 24Ten Dumb Error Messages301
Ch. 25Ten Things You Should Never or Always Do307
App. A: Useful Tools311
App. B: Working in Safe Mode319
App. CCreating and Using an Emergency Boot Disk323
App. D: Some Q & A329
Index339

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