If you’re reading this story, odds are pretty good that you’re tech support for your friends and family. And you might even have a few well-worn habits when it comes to trying to figure out what’s ailing a Windows machine. But you might want to re-examine them, on the advice of Mike Danseglio, a guy who knows what he’s talking about. He joined Will Smith in the latest PCWorld YouTube video.
Mike was doing technical support at Microsoft itself way back in the 90s and he’s got more certifications than most people have had hot meals. (Not really. But not, not really.) And he wants you to stop using some of the go-to fixes like System File Checker (SFC), Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM).
“There is no one set of steps to fixing a computer,” says Mike. He argues that you should look for the specific problem instead of trying to apply fix-all cures, the slightly more technical alternative to “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Use the symptoms and a bit of research to find the root of the issue before applying tools that might create more problems.
“Don’t even [BLEEP]ing get me started on people misusing gpupdate /force,” he says, in an entertaining rant. “There is no one-size-fits-all. There’s identifying the cause, and then fixing that cause.” Mike says DISM is especially bad at troubleshooting, because it’s meant for prepping a Windows image for deployment, and registry cleaning programs are unlikely to fix the specific problem you’re trying to address unless you know where to look.
If you’re having trouble finding out where to start with a problem, maybe because you can’t find a relevant log or error message, try narrowing it down to the specific set of circumstances that caused the crash. The Windows Event Viewer is useful in this context, but only if you really know how to find the relevant crash and see what caused it. For periodic problems, you might need to take a look at hardware, swapping out parts if possible.
For more tips on how to keep your PC healthy (and how to fix it if it isn’t), subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube, and watch our weekly podcast, The Full Nerd.