Student-Contributed Wiki
An awesome team of students from our education program made this wiki.
The computer will not reboot after pressing the power button or plugging into power source.
Turn off the computer, unplug the AC adapter, remove the battery, and hold the power button for 20 seconds. Next, reconnect the battery and reconnect the AC adapter. If the AC power glow light does not turn on, then AC adapter may be defective.
Your computer turns off unexpectedly.
Before inspecting the battery, shutdown the computer and unplug the AC adaptor. Then, remove the battery from the laptop and inspect the contact ends for defects. Once you have removed the battery, plug in the AC adaptor and turn on the computer. Once the computer has turned on, shutdown the computer without allowing windows to restart. Reconnect the battery and allow it to fully charge. After allowing the battery to charge, unplug the AC adapter and attempt to turn on the laptop. If the laptop does not turn on, then the battery may be defective.
You may not have enough RAM, or your RAM may have become corrupted. Visit the Memtest86 website in order to test if your RAM is functioning properly. This guide shows how to remove and replace the RAM in your computer.
Blue screen appears when restarting computer.
The computer may be infected with a virus. Consider downloading free anti-virus software such as Microsoft Security Essentials, Malwarebytes, or avast! Free antivirus.
Web browser and applications tend to take a significant amount of time when opening or loading.
Computer performance can be improved by closing any unnecessary applications that are running. Open the Task Manager by pressing Control+Alt+Delete (on Windows XP) or Control+Shift+Escape (on Windows Vista and above). From the Task Manager’s “Applications” tab, highlight any unnecessary programs and click “End Task” near the bottom of the window.
A message alerts you of “low memory” when running or downloading certain programs, files, etc.
Computer performance can be improved by ending any unnecessary applications that are running. Open the Task Manager by pressing Control+Alt+Delete (on Windows XP) or Control+Shift+Escape (on Windows Vista and above). From the Task Manager’s “Applications” tab, highlight any unnecessary programs and click “End Task” near the bottom of the window.
If you get this popup while trying to run a program, it may be out of date. Check with the program developer’s website to ensure that you have the latest version of the program. Any developer’s website can usually be found easily with a Google search.
If you are attempting to save a file, check the location it is being saved in. Ensure that location being saved to contains enough space for the file. If not, save in a location with sufficient space. You can check to see how much space you have on your disk drive by clicking “Start”, and then clicking “Computer”. Under the “Hard Disk Drives” category, right click on your disk drive and select “Properties” from the dropdown menu. A window should pop up that displays your current amounts of used and unused disk space. Keep this information in mind when determining what disk drive to save a file to. When saving or downloading a file, right click the file, select “Save As”, and then save to a disk drive with sufficient space.
You can check to see how much space you have on your disk drive(s) by clicking “Start”, and then clicking “Computer”. Under the “Hard Disk Drives” category, right click on your disk drive and select “Properties” from the dropdown menu. A window should pop up that displays your current used and unused disk space. If you need more space, add a larger disk drive or acquire more hard disk drive space by using a compression utility tool.
