When Bad Things Happen to Good Computers

The following basic troubleshooting steps specify what you should examine at the first sign of network trouble. In many (if not most) of the cases, one of the following steps can get your network back up and running:

Make sure that your computer and all devices attached to it are plugged in.

Computer geeks love it when a user calls for help and they get to tell that person that the computer isn't plugged in or that the power strip it's plugged into is turned off. They write it down in their geek logs so that they can tell their geek friends about it later. They may even want to take your picture so that they can show it to their geek friends. (Most "accidents" involving computer geeks are a direct result of this kind of behavior. Try to be tactful when you ask a user whether he's sure that the computer is turned on.)
Make sure that your computer is properly connected to the network.
Note any error messages that appear on the screen.
Check the free disk space on your computer and on the server.

When a computer runs out of disk space or comes close to it, strange things can happen. Sometimes you get a clear error message indicating such a situation, but not always. Sometimes the computer just grinds to a halt; operations that used to take a few seconds now take a few minutes.
Do a little experimenting to find out whether the problem is indeed a network problem or just a problem with the computer itself.

See the section, "Time to Experiment," later in this chapter, for some simple things that you can do to isolate a network problem.
Try restarting the computer.

An amazing number of computer problems are cleared up by simply restarting the computer. Of course, in many cases the problem recurs, so you have to eventually isolate the cause and fix the problem. Some problems are only intermittent, and a simple reboot is all that's needed.
Try restarting the network server.

See the section, "How to Restart a Network Server," later in this chapter.