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.

  0 published

• Printers and scanners

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

  2 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.

  3 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.

  0 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.

  0 published

All procedures in this category

• 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
• 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 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 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