When a computer won't start.
We can tell the issue by knowing exactly exactly where it stopped.

Tuesday. Your computer will not turn on. Start here. Three completely different problems. Three questions sort out which one you have and it takes two minutes. Where you stop answering yes is where your problem is.

Wednesday. Preparing Automatic Repair. Eight hours later. The dots are an animation, not a progress bar. Windows already failed and waiting longer won't fix it. This one has the most important instruction of the week in it, which is to stop trying to fix it yourself.

Thursday. The lights are on. Where is the picture? Last week I told you printer error codes mean almost nothing. Motherboard lights are the opposite. They are a real message, sent on purpose, because a blinking light is the only way the machine has left to speak before it can reach a screen.

Friday. It starts fine. It just starts wrong. The machine that boots perfectly and arrives with warnings attached. Where startup junk actually comes from, why none of it is your fault, and how to tell sales copy from an alarm.

One thing to take away from the whole week.

If your machine is doing any of this right now, the single most useful thing you can do is stop. Power it off and leave it off. Your files are usually still there, and they stay that way. What costs people money is the hour of pressing things after the trouble starts.

If your computer is doing something and you have not called yet, reply to this and tell me what it is doing. Write down any light, any beep, any message. That one line is worth more than you would think.

Mike
PCRescue | Portland, ME
Thirty-five years fixing computers, twenty-four of them running this shop.

Members get the PCRescue Kit at no extra cost. If you have a membership and have not installed it yet, it is at pcrescue.me/kit.