Strip

Strip

When analyzing a hardware problem, run no software except the operating system and diagnostics. For example, if you’re experiencing a problem while using a word-processing program, spreadsheet, database, game, or some other software, exit from whatever software you’re in.

Turn off your printer, computer, and all your other equipment, so the RAM chips inside each device get erased and forget that software.

Then turn the computer back on.

If writing appears on your screen, and you can read it, your screen is working fine.
If you can make the hard disk show you what’s on it (by by double-clicking “My Computer” then “C:” in modern Windows, or by typing “dir” in DOS), your hard disk is working fine.

If you can print something simple on paper (by typing “I love you” in WordPad and then printing that 3-word document, or by typing “ “dir>prn” in DOS), your printer is working fine. (On some laser printers, such as the Hewlett-Packard Laserjet 2, you need to manually eject the paper: press the printer’s ON LINE button, then the FORM FEED button, then the ON LINE button again.)

If your computer, monitor, hard drive, and printer pass all those tests, your hardware is basically fine; and so the problem you were having was probably caused by software rather than hardware. For example, maybe you forgot to tell your software what kind of printer and monitor you bought.