How to ask questions

From HelpDeskWiki

This may seem a bit silly, but it's not. On the contrary, the information provided here is the key to getting good help in computer matters. Due to the way that many people ask questions, it may take quite a while before they get a good answer. They often either do not provide full information or are vague about things that they could give definitive information about.

In most cases, helpers need to know only two things, but even this info is often not provided. Tell them at least:

1. In what program you are experiencing a problem
2. What version of Windows (or other operating system) you are using, including what Service Pack version

If it's a more serious problem, you may also need to provide info about your hardware (see below). The name of the program is usually in the top blue bar (title bar), and more detail is usually found by clicking the About button in the program's Help menu. The Windows version is easily found by holding down the Windows key (between the Ctrl and Alt keys) and pressing Pause/Break. Even if you know what version of Windows you have, please look to see what service pack you have. For example, most users of Windows XP have Service Pack 2, which is very different from earlier service packs.

So if you're getting a popup with an error message, it's not Windows telling you something if the name of your firewall or your antivirus program, for example, is in the blue title bar. And if, for example, you're having trouble with your Gmail email account, the program that you're using to access your email is either a browser or an email program, not Gmail itself, which is the name of the email provider (and its servers), not a program on your computer.

DO provide details about your computer if you want to make your helpers happy and save them and you time. The following is a good example of an excellently worded question that provides almost all of the information and level of detail that a helper could hope for, but please don't get intimidated by this amount of technical detail. In most cases, helpers would be happy if they were at least told the name of the Windows version and/or the name of the program in which you are experiencing the problem:

"I have an HP Pavilion 9790C with a 1Ghz AMD CPU, 60GB hard drive, 128MB of memory, and Windows XP Home Edition SP2 (upgraded from Windows ME). I recently installed Microsoft Office XP Professional, and now the computer, which was already slow after upgrading to Windows XP, is even slower, taking nearly 15 minutes for the desktop to stabilize after starting up, and about 10 minutes to open Word. What's wrong?

This description is sufficiently detailed that a tech can immediately identify 3 or 4 simultaneous causes, and explain exactly how to fix them, without having to ask any further questions.

Here are examples of poorly written questions:

"When i try to get something from the Internet, it doesn't work."

"I installed Office, and now the computer keeps giving me an error message. How to fix?"

There are a number of problems with these questions:

• Internet access is very complex. Is there no Internet access at all? Is the problem that of a browser not working? Which browser is being used? Is the problem that of not receiving a specific email or any email and in an email program or in a browser? Did this problem suddenly appear? Did it appear after installing a firewall, antivirus, antispyware, other security program, or hardware? Did it appear after you changed a setting? If you don't remember what you did, at least mention that you did something and don't try to hide your embarrassment by not mentioning that you did change something. Nearly everyone, especially including most techs, make changes that they don't recall.
• There's no indication of what operating system is being used. An answer suitable for Linux would be vastly different from an answer for Microsoft Windows. The version is important also, since a solution for Windows XP Home may not be the same as a solution for Windows XP Pro. The difference between Windows XP Service Pack 2 and either Gold (original release) or Service Pack 1 is quite large.
• There are different Office programs, such as OpenOffice, StarOffice, Microsoft Office, 602PC Suite, etc., all quite different.
• What's the error message? An "out of memory" error message is very different from "out of disk space".
• Under what conditions does the error occur? If it only happens on Mondays, then mention that.

Here is a list of the information that you should find and keep available when asking for help on a computer-related problem:

• Brand name and model. Some people look at the CD/DVD drive and see a name and think that it's the name of the computer; it's not. If the computer was built for you and/or is from a computer store, chances are that it's a so-called white box computer (http://www.techny.com/articles.cfm?getarticle=309&go=0.59234839). This info is important because certain brands or models may have specific problems or specific solutions.
• What speed is your CPU?
• How much memory does it have? Usually this is a figure like this: 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB.
• How big is the hard drive? Usually this is a figure like this: 20GB, 40GB, 80GB, 160GB, 250GB.
• What manufacturer, name, version, and service pack is your OS? For example, Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 98SE, Microsoft Windows ME, Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4, Microsoft Windows XP Home with no service pack, Microsoft Windows XP SP2, Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition 2004.
• If the computer is a so-called "white box", then it will often help to report the manufacturer and model of your motherboard, and the manufacturer, type, and model of your CPU.

Under Windows, there are a couple of ways to find out this information, if it is not provided in the paperwork.

• RIGHT-click on My Computer and select Properties. The dialog box that appears will show the type, version and service pack of Windows, and show how much memory you have. If you have Windows 2000 or Windows XP, then it will probably also show you the CPU info and speed.
• Click Start and Run, type DXDIAG and select Ok'. The dialog that appears shows the operating system info, processor info, and memory info, and may also show the manufacturer and model of your system. The Display and Sound tabs (in the Device) section) shows the names and manufacturers of your video and sound cards, which you should post if the problem seems to be related to that.
• Another program that will provide plenty of info, if you don't seem to have DXDIAG, is MSINFO32, which you can run the same way, by clicking Start and Run, typing MSINFO32 and selecting Ok. Again, the first screen provides most of the important information; the top 8 items plus the Total Physical Memory will help.
• To find out how big your hard drive is and how much space is free, open My Computer, and click View, Details. You should then see the hard drive(s) listed with total and free space.

Once you find out this info, you should make a note of it for future reference. Note that the amount of free space on the hard drive is likely to change, so should be re-checked when you need it.

If the problem is in a program, mention the name, manufacturer, and version of the program. This is usually found by clicking the Help menu's About button in the program. If it's a program that you downloaded, it may help to mention what site (page) you got it from, so that whoever is trying to help you can, if necessary, download it and look at it, or at least review the features.

Be sure to mention what changes were made to the system or any other events that occurred around the time the problem appeared (including the day before). This includes information about any programs and toolbars you installed or which installed themselves without your permission.

Some other things to watch out for:

• DO be specific. DON'T say something like "I added a hard drive" if you know more detail than that. For example, if you installed a hard drive yourself, you can probably give almost as much detail as a tech would be able to give: "I added a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB hard drive on the unused secondary SATA cable and used Windows XP Disk Management (which I found under under Computer Management) to allocate the entire space as a Basic partition, and formatted that partition as NTFS with the default settings". If a hard drive was installed for you by a store, then, of course, you will not be expected to know any of the details.

• DON'T create new abbreviations if you don't know or aren't certain what the standard abbreviation is. Note that the letter "b" in an abbreviation often means either "bit" or "byte". In careful use, it means "byte" when capitalized and "bit" when lowercased. Thus "kb" means "kilobit" whereas "kB" (often erroneously spelled "KB") means "kilobyte". (Actually, the prefixes kilo and mega are being replaced (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte) in computer use by the new international standards kibi and mebi, abbreviated as KiB and MiB.) Since 1 byte is USUALLY the equivalent of 8 bits, the difference between kb and kB is approximately an order of magnitude. DON'T convert bits to bytes or vice versa, since the number of bits per byte can vary. When used in telecommunications (e.g. talking about Internet connection speeds), "bits" is normally used, and the size of a byte is often 10 bits. When talking about file sizes, kB and MB (or KiB and MiB) are used. (In Windows Explorer, the abbreviation is erroneously KB instead of the correct kB; c.f. kg, km, etc.!)

• DON'T paraphrase. If you get an error message, quote it exactly, and check for typos. For example, an "Error 08" is quite different from an "Error 0B". Sometimes a difference that may seem almost unnoticeable to a normal user is very significant to a tech. The four different spellings bloodhound, bloodhounds, blood hound, and blood hounds are four completely different things. Sloppiness here can waste a lot of your helpers' time because then the helpers either don't find any information on the error message or malware despite long searches, or they find information on the wrong issue. Note that different anti-virus and anti-malware vendors and programs often use different names for the same malware, so don't worry too much about that.

• DO note anything in the top blue bar (title bar) of any message. For example, many times people have trouble getting rid of malware with their antivirus program, and when they run an antitrojan program, the antivirus program blocks the antitrojan's access to the malware. Up pops a window saying "Please run your antivirus program XYZ", but the user doesn't tell the helper that it's the antivirus program itself that is producing the error message. (Usually, in fact, most users erroneously think and claim that in all dialog, error, and information boxes -- even "real" advertisement popups -- "Windows said that...")

• DO check for malware before asking for help, even if you think your system is clean. Malware (viruses, worms, spyware, etc.) on a system has become the number-one cause of computer problems nowadays, and it's not unusual for a brand new system to get infected on the very first day that you use it.

• DO try all suggestions asked. If you don't want to try a suggestion, say why; often a suggestion made originally is ignored, and the same suggestion (much) later is tried and works. Don't shortcut a procedure without asking first; it may very well be the opposite of a shortcut.

• DO report what worked, and anything else that you may have discovered that might be relevant. A thank-you note is incomplete without this. If several suggestions were offered and one worked, then people will want to know which specific suggestion(s) helped.

Remember that people who help are doing it as a favor, so act accordingly. If you are uninformative, or ignore good advice, then people may decide that you're not worth the effort.