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Troubleshooting a network probem.

I was digging through a couple of sealed tubs in my office (yes slowly trying to clean). The first one I opened had a bunch of connectors and cables. The person at GoodWill looked at the box and almost waved me away, but then he realized there were 80 USB cables of various types. He accepted all of the adapters, cables, and other stuff. One less container in my office is a well begun, but well less than half did reality. The second box had a set of notebooks that were my poetry from years ago. I shared one today and will share one a week all poems written between my 15th year on earth and my 25th year on earth. I stopped writing poetry for a few years until my wonderful wife encouraged me to write again.

I do have to admit; I probably would have gotten a lot cleaner if I hadn’t found that tub of poetry.

I’ve been troubleshooting a connection problem with the Bloomsky system. I would share what I’ve done so that others can follow along, with troubleshooting their home network.

  1. The first thing I did was check my Fing Box. Fing is a network security device, but it also lists all the devices on your network. The first thing I noticed was that the Bloomsky Storm unit was not visible.
  2. That meant it wasn’t on the network.
  3. I reset the device. (no change)
  4. Pulled the device inside and directly connected it
  5. (It worked)
  6. Went back put it outside
  7. (it disconnected)
  8. I realized my mistake (it was too far from the base station)
  9. Moved the unit

Troubleshooting can be painful and frustrating. It is, however, a really easy thing to do as long as you are consistent!

Many years ago I used to work on a helpdesk. There was a company that used our helpdesk as their tier 3 (tier 1 is the person that answers the call, tier 2 is either people that can go to the desk of the person having issues or people that can solve the problem. If tier 2 can’t solve the problem they escalate to Tier 3). Tier 0, by the way, is the newest helpdesk tool and is normally an only repository of solutions to basic problems.

Anyway, this particular company picked as their overall their 3. The same person called our helpdesk for their escalations. I wanted that person through troubleshooting steps. The next they called, they told me the results of the troubleshooting steps first.

Consistent is important when using technology!

My most important rule for troubleshooting, know your limit! If you know that after an hour of chasing a problem you are frustrated and annoyed, call the helpdesk at 46 minutes before you are annoyed!

  • Do technology issues frustrate you sometimes?

    • Yes
    • No

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What do you think?

Written by DocAndersen

One fan, One team and a long time dream Go Cubs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

32 Comments

  1. So happened that your article is the best answer to my current situation – for inexplicable reasons, the speed of the Internet has dropped dramatically. Tried a lot of variants of troubleshooting with no results, will call the helpdesk tomorrow. Happily, decided to do so before feeling deep annoyance.

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  2. Through the years in technical engineering, I’ve learned that the most common mistake that people make in troubleshooting is to try to troubleshoot the entire issue all at once, rather than breaking it down into small things that they can eliminate from the equation. The biggest problem usually still has a simple solution.

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    • You are so right! I remember taking calls from people over the years (as I know you have as well) starting with simply breathing.

      First thing, remove the local variables.
      Second thing remove the connection variables.

      I remember when the release of Windows 2000 was nearly here. There was a huge study done of Windows 98 and Windows NT 4 crashes. 95% of all crashes came from something attached to the computer. Funny thing is that is still more than 90% of problems today!

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      • Even with peripherals, it is often the simplest, easiest to check things that turn out to be the problem. “Your scanner isn’t working? Okay, I want you to unplug all cables that go into the scanner, then plug them in. Then unplug those cables where they connect to the computer and plug them in.”

        It is amazing how many people didn’t check this and the whole issue was an unplugged cable. We were careful to phrase it in such a way that they didn’t have to actually admit that the thing wasn’t plugged in.

        Of course, we also had our share of ID ten T errors, too. I didn’t count simple things that just weren’t checked as one of the ID ten T errors. An example of this latter kind of error was a scanner user who decided that the scanner was dirty, so they ran it through the dishwasher and couldn’t figure out why it ‘suddenly’ wasn’t working anymore.

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        • You have nailed this Rex. It is why we spend so much time on Tier 0 when i suspect we could have 10 years ago as well, but now it is self-help first.

          A user cleaning a scanner is a great story!

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          • Thank you, and I did post about the man who was in the dark, but the funny part really wasn’t me. I’m just relating what actually happened. As Will Rogers said, “I don’t try to be funny. I just report the news.”

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        • I remember that post – it was hilarious!

          I was trying with this post to do more of a Tier 0 approach. The more data we get out there, the better off everyone will be!

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  3. Well I am not the techy type so, yes, tech problems are considered the bane of my existence ?. My boss’s son (so technically he was also my boss except that because we are of the same age, I don’t treat him like a boss) before would usually turn off my desktop monitor just to torture me. He was the first I would call when I cannot figure out the trouble so I dunno what he did that for. ?

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    • sometimes, IT people enjoy strange hobbies. Annoying other users is at times, one of those! Annoying Pixies? A huge bonus. In the IT backroom, you get double points for annoying Pixies!

      • Lol! Maybe you are right. But most of my computer know-how was because he diligently and persistently forced me to learn. If I refuse a lesson, he would pull my chair back and forth or turn it round and round so I cannot work and eventually listen. (When he joined the company I was already there and the only app I knew was MSWord and WordPerfect. Lol!)

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  4. Good for your wife for the encouragement to continue writing poetry.
    I walk away from problems often when they frustrate me for too long.

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