The art of solving unexpected tech fails

IT support asking you to restart your misbehaving digital devices again? Here's why it's their top advice.

The short answer: The sheer complexity of technology could trigger completely unexpected problems.

And the best way to fix it is often to do a "reset" by restarting - even when it doesn't make sense.

Random tech fails

A report on Ars Technica last week best exemplified this. In the story, a user had a host of downright bizarre problems with her PC.

• Task manager would hang.
• Taskbars started disappearing.
• Settings panel refused to launch.

After years of this, the problem came to a head. Back against the wall, she searched online and chanced upon the answer.

Turns out the problem was caused by her TV.

• Smart TV was generating spurious "add me" traffic.
• Caused Windows to add non-existent devices.
• Choked with 100's of devices, started failing.

And everything worked again once the TV was disconnected and the Windows registry cleaned up.

I don't think any tech expert would be able to figure this out without a good dose of luck.

IT experts not immune

Some years ago, I chatted with a network engineer friend who helmed technology for a web hosting firm. One of the nightly backup jobs kept failing, and he was getting frustrated troubleshooting it.

After listening to what he's already tried, I agreed that it's unlikely to be an issue with Linux.

Have you swapped out the network cable to troubleshoot I suggested. "No. But how could it be the cable!" he exclaimed.

Turns out it wasn't the network cable. But my unorthodox suggestion prompted him to check the network equipment as a last resort.

Turns out his mid-tier network switch had a bug that caused it to crash after a certain volume of data transfers. He used another network switch and the backups completed normally again.

Thinking outside the box

I've never heard of a Layer 2 switch crashing before then. But that's technology for you. And sometimes you need to try nonobvious strategies.

Have you been hit by random tech fails recently? How did you resolve it?