Troubleshooting Methodology

I don't know what to tell you to be honest with you I'm at a bit of a loss your employees can't get into their web server and I don't know why I mean I know your business is shut down I know your employees can't do what they need to do until they can get back into that web server but I just don't understand what's going on I've never seen anything like this before I have a few things that I'm going to try I'll get back to you in about an hour to tell you whether or not they worked how I thought they were going to work realistically I'm either gonna be able to fix this thing in about two hours or this may take a couple of days so you may want to start talking to people about a plan B I'm gonna get back there and try to fix the problem what's that ah I don't know how much it's gonna cost exactly how much time I I can't tell you exactly how much time it's going to take listen I'm trying to get the trying to get it all back up and running I mean we can either sit here and we can talk or I can work and get this thing up and running it's your choice troubleshooting is probably the least appreciated a skill that technicians have everybody tries to run out and get Microsoft certifications and Cisco certifications and college degrees and not enough technicians sit down and try to really understand troubleshooting methodology and how to to really grasp how you find the problem that you need to fix everybody wants to learn how to fix a Windows Server nobody wants to learn how you figure out that it's the Windows Server that's the problem what I found in the real world is this skill is better for my career and been much more profitable than the certifications I've had because when you can figure out where the problem is coming from then you know what what to learn you then you know what to target if you're just kind of running around willy-nilly trying to fix all kinds of different things it just takes a long time you waste a lot of energy and nobody's really happy at the end of the day this class is going to be on troubleshooting methodology we're not going to be talking about pings or not going to be talking about the intricacies of servers we're not going to be opening up computers we are just going to be talking about the thought process that goes into troubleshooting just the overall thought process the thing that goes I don't know what that is I don't really know what it does but I know that thing is broken so let's find somebody to fix it that thing that's what we're going to teach you today so I'm Eli the computer guy and this is an introduction to troubleshooting methodology well first thing we have to go over is the warnings warning um you know the normal stuff don't do anything stupid but you're going to do stuff stupid stuff so the main warning that I have to give you when you when you're troubleshooting when you're walking into new situations is to be very very very careful it is very easy to fix one minor minor problem and then create a massive major problem so you know you have a client whose computer can't get on the Internet you walk in you get that one little computer on the Internet but in the process you took down three of their servers it's actually not that hard to do as you go on in your IT career you'll see how fragile so many of these systems are but it's taking a server offline I mean can they can literally be if you if you just brush your arm against something that you're not supposed to so whenever you walk into these situations just be very careful and go slow before you take any action rethink it through your head two or three times anytime I am taking a server off of the network in a server room when I go to unplug the cable from the switch I will trace the cable from the server all the way at the Swift two or three times to make sure I know I'm pulling the right cable because if I'm pulling that I think I'm pulling the cable for the web server and I actually pointless the the cable for the active directory server that can have massive consequences so whatever you do be very very careful take your time and be slow it's better to be right than to be fast because fast will make you wrong the other thing is realize that you are going to break things in the troubleshooting process so keep this in mind troubleshooting many times part of fixing something is that you have to to break something else to make it work so you may have to take other things offline you may have to replace parts you may have to deal with systems or technologies that are out of your specialty so always keep that in your head it's kind of like playing chess is you go slow you be careful and then you try to think two or three steps ahead so you say I think this might be the problem if it is the problem who can I call or who do I need authorization from to work on this and then you keep going that way so if you're working on something and you realize that you may break it as you're trying to fix it then if it does break keep in the back of your mind even while it's still working go okay if this breaks how would how would I get this fixed and if you do that if you be slow be careful and you're always thinking three to five steps ahead you're going to be okay if you just run in like a bull in a china shop and you're just ripping stuff apart you need a new career now the first part of the troubleshooting process is sizing up the situation and communicating with everybody who needs to be communicated with so you get cold that there's a problem the first thing that you need to do is you need to talk to to the person that's telling you what the problem is you know that either it's either the employee that say my computer can't get on the network or it's the manager saying and all my people's computer can't get on the network go to the person who is who is complaining and then talk to them and figure out what their their complaints are once you have done this the next thing you should do is go and talk to anybody else that may be affected by the problem so if it's a manager saying that his division nobody in his little area can get on the internet then when you get done talking with him go out to a few of the employees and talk to them and find out what they think of a situation has the problem in going on for a little while did this happen today you want to get as many viewpoints on what's going on as possible because remember people don't mean to lie but a lot of times they present you with incorrect information so if you only get your information from one source then you may be getting incorrect information and then working off of it so basically you know if a manager is complaining go to the manager talk to them then when you're done with the manager go out and talk to a few of employees make sure you actually understand what the problem is and that the manager actually understands the problem is during this process you're also going to need to find out who your point of contact is who is the person that actually makes decisions for what you're going to be doing so let's say the people in this office can't get on the internet you may need to take down the switch or you may need to take down a networking component to repair the internet problem so you need mean it may need to drop them off the entire network you need to find who you ask about when you can take everybody off network because you don't want to just go in and unplug something and nobody can get to any file share files anymore because if you do that you create a larger problem so go into the situation talk to the person who has a problem talk to people around them if they're having the same problem and then find out who your point of contact is during this process you're trying to refine down and figure out exactly what's going on and also see if there is a larger problem sometimes during me of these conversation processes you find out that there's a bigger problem say that manager says that nobody can get on the internet you talk to the employees and you find out not only can they not get on the internet but they also can't get to shared files so it's a bigger problem than what you first realize you find this out by communicating to people you also need to find out who and what is affected oh you know what systems are affected by by this this this whatever not being able to happen so if these people need to get out on the internet talk to people why is this important does this mean that people just can't get to Yahoo when they're bored during the day that's not a high priority and so you're not going to take that as seriously as if this is the payroll department and they have to get on the internet because payroll is due tomorrow or that payroll is due but payroll is due in three days so you figure out okay this needs to be done in three days this doesn't have to be done in one day these types of questions and figuring this type of stuff out will will will allow you to figure out what priority the problem is and then as you go forward with the troubleshooting process determine what steps you take let's say if payroll has to go out tomorrow over in twelve hours you will do different things that if payroll has to go out in four days so if payroll has to go out in four days you may trouble shoot the problem down to the router well you've got a couple of days routers are expensive so I might try troubleshooting that router and see if I can fix the because I might be able to fix the router it'll be less expensive than buying a new one everybody's happy so you know it took it takes longer but it's still under the timeframe that you have well if it's 12 hours of 24 hours so that payroll goes out screw it the router is bad I'm buying a new router I'm throwing a brand new router in there and then a roll will go out tomorrow people are less you know people are not happy because they had to buy a new router but payroll went out which was what is more important than the cost of that routers and so they're ok so that's a thing talking with people figuring out your time frames this will show you is the problem larger or smaller then you first realized you know what what time constraints are you on and then when you do figure out the problem how are you going to deal with it are you gonna spend three days troubleshooting it or you just gonna you know get something FedEx to you in four hours once you figure out all this information then you're going to go back to your point of contact and to the person who first logs the problem when you go back to them you're going to tell them what you think is going on so you you know they give you the problem and you say um this sounds like a networking issue I'm thinking this is a networking issue these are probably the problems and so this is how I'm going to proceed from here so give them a brief idea of what you're thinking and then tell them you know what what's going to happen from this point when you do this do not lie I always tell everybody one of the most important things in communication and technology is under-promise over-deliver under-promise over-deliver what many technicians can't get through their head is nobody's got to be happy something is broken so people are mad people no matter what comes out of your mouth unless it's gold they're gonna be mad so nothing that you say is going to make them happy it's going to be more or less mad but it's not they're not going to be happy so the issue is when you're first talking with them they're going to be mad so accept that except that they're going to be bad right now well what people try to do is they try to placate or make the the person with the problem happy and so they over promise you know they they know that the problem will take probably take four hours to fix but they don't want the person to be mad so they tell them to well what they're not taking into account is when two hours goes by these people are going to expect the system to be working and since you said it would be two hours then not only they mad because it's not working but then they think you're a complete idiot because you said it was going to take two hours so always under-promise over-deliver if you think it's going to take four hours tell them eight because they're mad anyway they're angry they don't like you they don't like computers they don't like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or any of this crap right now when they're complaining but if you tell them it'll be eight hours and it ends up being for two or one then they're happy then they're satisfied if you think it's gonna be four hours you tell them it's eight hours and then it takes six well it's still shorter than they realized you may be a little more stressed but they're not going to think you're an idiot if you tell them it'll be four hours and then it takes you eight then not only are they mad right now not only do they hate Bill Gates but they hate you so under-promise over-deliver when you figure out what's going on when you go you know initially when you've talked to everybody explain this to the person who who can plank to the point of contact explain to them what your next steps will be and then you know tell them how long and approximately what you think the cost is to these people you know I think this will take four hours and you probably need another router so this will probably cost you $2,000 if it takes two hours only cost $500 they're happy just keep that in mind and then these first steps and it'll save you a lot of pain later so the next step in this process is a little bit of research so you have an overview you have an idea of what's going on you have a little bit of a thought in your head about what the problem probably is the next step is to do research to figure out who to call and when what to do so if there is a web server problem see if there is a maintenance contract on that web server whether it's a hardware problem is there maintenance contract on the hardware problem or is this a software vendor solution where somebody is responsible for maintaining the software at this point you're thinking but I don't know it's a web server I don't know if it's the Internet I don't know if it's all these things well while you're going through the troubleshooting process you should be continuously researching and continuously trying to understand what's going on so you want to make sure that if it turns out to be the web server that by the time you've troubleshot down there then you already know what to do next so as you're going along as you're looking at the cables as you're as you're trying to figure out all these other things you know you say I see there's the web server on the network is there a maintenance contract with that yes okay and then if it turns out to be the web server and you get there then when you go back to the point of contact you can tell them okay if troubleshot it down to the web server but I'm not authorized to touch it it's under a maintenance contract so now you need to call these people why this process needs to happen during the rest of the troubleshooting process is troubleshooting takes time talking to people takes time tracking down paperwork takes time getting people to call you back takes time so as soon as I figured out I have an idea of what the problem is I have an idea what I think the solution is if right then and there like I say with this web server if I think the problem I'd be the web server as soon as I think it's a web server to the point of contact I can say okay it may be this web server is there a maintenance yes do you know what the terms of it are no do you have another point of contact you have a point contact for the web server yes I do here's this person's phone number well here's the thing when they give you the phone number do not think do not think you just call this person and all of a sudden you're on the phone with them and here we're having a conversation you're going to call them and it's going to take them two hours to get back to you if you're lucky so as soon as you get that phone number you call the person you say hey I understand you the point of contact with this web server I'm with this company I'm trying to fix this network problem I don't know if it's the web server yet but if it is what do I need to do to get you out here so you know this process is happening while you're doing all the other troubleshooting processes and so you do this with the web server you do this with a network you do this with other servers with the internet providers with whatever you think may be part of this problem so if you do this with the web server and you walk into a company where their networking systems are contracted out to another company and maybe they're there their server hardware is contracted out to another company if you've called all three of those companies while you're doing the troubleshooting process then when you narrow it down - oh it's a router the networking people already have a heads up and so when you call them back you can look at the whole process you know done quickly so this is the research with it you try to figure out who's responsible for what is it internal like if you're an employee maybe it's an apartment or division other than you it may be a maintenance contract so it might be something outside of your company entirely and if it isn't maintenance contract then who is the internal person to call for that maintenance contract because all we know you have an account number many times they don't let any average tech call the via or IBM or Oracle they don't want anybody just calling them up because it costs of five hundred dollars an hour so if you do have a maintenance contract figure out who needs to be the one to make the call for it and then figure out how all the systems kind of work together so you know you've got this web server talk to people and figure out that connects to what network who is responsible for the network what is on that network how many web servers do you have in this process do research and figure out what's going on like I say research is an ongoing process during troubleshooting so the better you get at researching and talking to people as you're doing the troubleshooting process the quicker you will end up being able to get the problem resolved because like I saved if you wait all the way till you figured out exactly what the problem is before you call anybody else then you're going to have to wait another two hours for them to call you back whereas if you give them a heads up two hours ago you figure out what the problem is it gets fixed quicker so make sure to do your research and talk to people now that you've done your research and you've talked with everybody and you have an overall idea of what's going on you've put out the calls and people that you may need during this process then you need to get a large eagle eye view of what's going on so that you can narrow down where the problem may come from if you've been in technology any length of time you know that you're never going to understand everything and once you've done a few certifications you stop wanting understand everything somebody else gets paid to know different things you're paid for one thing other people are paid for other things and that's fine so when you're troubleshooting you have to realize that when you find out device or the software that's causing the problem that may not be something that you had any business fixing so you narrow it down like I say it's that black box right there okay let me call the person to fix that black box so you want to look at an overall an eagle eye view of the situation so that you can narrow narrow down where the problem may be coming from so in this example what we're going to talk about is we are going to have a company who has a web server so an internet server a website that people go to to put in their their payroll so you have a a main headquarters office somewhere and then a remote office gets on the internet and accesses the web server at that main office now for some reason the people at the remote office can access that server so we need to figure out what's going on so if we're looking at this the first thing that we know is that these people have to go through the internet to get to the home office so the remote the people in the remote office have to go through the internet to get to the home office so we have our fancy little this is the internet clap so okay so we could be having a problem in the internet cloud if you're new these words don't worry about these words but you may have a problem with DNS you may have a problem with a security certificate you may have problems that reside in configurations that are well within the internet so you could be having an internet problem now on either side of this you could also be having an internal network problem so the remote office uses the internal network to connect to the internet the headquarters of course uses an internal network to get to the Internet - so you know this has routers and switches and wireless access points and firewalls and all that so we're not getting down to whether it's a router or firewall it's just it could be the internal networks okay it could either be the Internet now it could be the remote sites internal network or the headquarters sites internal network we don't know what then once we get past that then we have the actual workstation on this side so the computer that goes through the internal network to get to the Internet to go to the other internal network that could be the problem maybe it has a virus or maybe Internet Explorer is bunkie that could be an issue or on the other side the server that hosts the websites of WWE problem so we now see that there's one two three four five large areas that may be the problem it may either be the desktop computer or computers so that that's one it could be the internal network at the remote site that's - maybe there is something screwing that it could be the internet maybe something in the in the Internet is messed up oh not like it's crashing or anything but like I say DNS maybe incorrectly configured the IP addresses might be pointed at the wrong place it could be the headquarters offices internal network that's a problem or it could be the web server itself that's the problem so there's five large areas that you can try to try to troubleshoot that and figure out where the problem is so I could figure out that yes it is the Internet so I need to call the internet people and you know rejigger our dns or whatever or but I know there's some problem with the client computer or I know there's a problem with the server again I may not be authorized to touch the server but I can say I troubleshot every other major component so I know now that the server is the problem now now who do I hand this off to so this is this is how you divide your problem into an eagle eye view and you try to find the major points of failure where the problem could be like I say with this could be the device's internal map first internal network internet second internal network or the web server now that you have the eagle eye view of how the system works and where the problems might be then you need to start going in and trying to either say that large chunks of those systems are good or that they they might be suspect so what does this name is once you've narrowed down to a particular computer or to the server you can get very specific on your troubleshooting techniques but when you've just got this problem you know this computer here can't get to this web server here there could be a lot of issues going on so you don't want to be doing very very very specific and precise a troubleshooting at this point because it's just going to be a waste of time you want to try to eliminate large large chunks of this whole system and to say that they were probably good so what I try to do is I try to work on the outsides and work in and then as I do that I try to to eliminate as much as possible so I would go to these people on their computers and say ok you cannot get to the website at the headquarters office yes we can't get there ok can you get to any website at all oh well let's see ww cnn.com now simply by seeing if they can get to any website at all we see if their internal network and it part of the Internet is working if they can get to cnn.com then it means that they can get out to the Internet and probably there at least their internal network is good so let's say that they can get out to the Internet and there's no probably go cnn.com they can go to their local local bank online banking and all that they can get to all of that and there's no problem at all so this their little internal network is checked it's probably good probably there maybe prompt that's probably good now we go to the web server and we say is the web server working working so depending on your web server if it has graphical capabilities in it like it's a a bunt to a web server or if it's a Windows web server it'll have it web browser built into it so I would say go to the server and on the server itself can I get into that website so you know local hope you just you you open up the browser and you go to something called localhost and that opens up the website that's on the server now if I go there and nothing happens it goes 404 error you know not found or 500 error not found then it says that the server is not giving a website to anybody so the web server is definitely the problem we you know it says you know you just can't get the website at all even all the server in this situation let's say you go there and you find out that hey the web server is okay so you know you you go on the web server you open up the browser you go to something called localhost and the website pops up fine so you know that the server itself is okay well in this troubleshooting process you go okay so we know their internal network should be okay we know that the web server should be okay so from here you can go to somebody that's in the headquarters building you say hey can you do me a favor can you try to pull up this website internally so inside the headquarters building somebody at a computer then tries to go to the website they go to it and and they get there just fine so we go ah okay so that means it's not the web server and your internal network is probably doing doing fine there's probably not any problems so you think okay so the web server is good the headquarters internal network is good the remote site internal network is good so the question is left is it the is it the computer at the remote site or or is it theater maybe there's a configuration problem in the internet well how many remote offices you have hopefully you have a couple what you could ask is if there's another remote office can they on their computers get to the website so you call up another remote office you say hey can you just do me a favor ki can you try to get to the the billing website right now they go in and hey they get to the website so then the Internet is most likely fine you most likely don't have any problems the last thing you know you're left with is the local computer so from here you can then ask other people in the office are you having any problems with your computer no I'm not okay so other people on computers are working okay so it must be this specific computer here maybe there's a problem if you go further you go in and you find out that some security setting in there and their web browser is all messed up so they can't get to the website but look this is a very quick and easy way to determine what's going on and you could have figured out that it was a web server you could have figured out that it was a network and with me when I'm troubleshooting all these stuffs right here can be done in 30 minutes so even on a large network even an enterprise network you can run through all this calling people up trying things out and you can get down to the main problem in 30 minutes or less like I say you know if this turned out to be a server or if this turn out to be a firewall or something you may not be able to fix it at this point but at least you know exactly what the issue is so when I do troubleshooting I say to work from the outside in so either sides you know the web server on one side the client computer on the other and then try to take out as many large chunks as possible obviously if you're watching this class you realize that it probably could have done other things to make this this even shorter like I could have called this other remote office even first if I asked them the first thing to get to this web server I could have eliminated a few of these troubleshooting steps but but that's what you try to do just work from the outside in and then then jump off as large trunk is possible and then figure that they're going to be okay so you've gone from from eagle eye view down to to figuring out where the problem resides you know is that the computer is it the web server you know you've gone oh it's it's that thing so now that you figured out that it's it's that thing there's this box now you have to start asking a couple of questions most problems come about because things have kink so whoever your point of contact is or whoever is responsible for this this computer whether it's the secretary whether it's another technician whether it's an outside firm you need to figure out if something happened to them to this device um between when it was working and what it was not working so you can think about um unintended things say a power of a power outage maybe the the only got hit with an electrical storm they say oh yes we had a power outage three days ago and that's when the internet started acting a little weird well you may have had a spike of electricity shoot through that network and maybe only the router got fried maybe nothing else on the network got fried so you know there may be a hardware issue with this so so what happened is there anything significant that that has happened that's been unattended the next question is is there has anything happened that is intended did somebody do something to MIT to make them of the problem come about so let's say with that one person trying to get to the web site you want ask them okay this what this was working on Monday right yeah and now it's Wednesday and it's not working yeah did you do anything Monday or Tuesday to make this not work well I mean I was just a little worried about about my security so I put on a you know Norton a security suite ah so simply by asking that little question you go well so you installed a security suite piece of software now you can't get to a secure website maybe that's the problem so you can narrow down you know did it people maybe it was an operating system up update love if you're dealing with Cisco or networking equipment and it was called an iOS update maybe they updated though the latest iOS and it was faulty so they updated it they didn't realize there was a problem and there is so you can you can say okay then most likely the problem is this so we need to fix and we know we understand what to do you know uninstall Norton Internet Security Suite or reinstall and old iOS or such the next thing that you need to think about and ask though nobody may may have the answers for you but but you need to think about is has anything automatically happened that could cause this problem so Windows is notorious for this with their automatic updates well some of their automatic updates break stuff so like with dotnet somebody may have created a piece of software for dotnet 1.0 this is a programming language well Microsoft automatically updated to dotnet 2.0 and that broke the piece of software I actually saw this happen I had some people using backup software that used dotnet 1.0 they're written in that they used that and then with Microsoft updated to to.net 2.0 it broke the software would no longer function whatsoever so we we had to uninstall that dotnet 2.0 so is there anything that could have automatically happened the next thing that you need to go into then is if nobody's messed with anything so nobody's done anything that they're telling you telling you nothing's automatically happen and nothing unintentional you know power surge is the like then you need to go in and do the basic self Diagnostics on the system so if this let's say this is a web server and I have problems connecting to this web server I can go in and I can see is the CPU working appropriately is it under let's say 50% usage if I go in and I find out that the web server has a hundred percent CPU usage all the time so that means a processor is just it's just working working your work at work at work with working a hundred percent of the time then I can find out that that's a problem again I'm not if the web server isn't something I'm supposed to repair then I may not go any further I may find out that the CPU is pegged out is that a hundred percent so I may call the person that's responsible for the web server and say hey your web server is a hundred percent do you want me to do something or do you want to try to fix this so by doing these little self Diagnostics even if you're not the one who's responsible for fixing the problem you can find out information so when the person that that does come in who's responsible you know they have a step ahead so you don't just go oh it's it's the web server fix it you can say I've already looked at it the CPU is pegging out a hundred percent these are the things that I've seen and go from there once you've once you've done that so you figured out if anything's change you've gone and you've done the belt basic self Diagnostics that's when you go in and you do the really itty gritty fine-tuned troubleshooting so that's where you ping stuff you see if device drivers are working properly you see all you know is zero virus so once you you've seen has anything change because that's most likely gonna be the problem then you've gone and you've done done the self-test so you see what the the big issues maybe there's a CPU overloaded then you go in and you go and down to the to the fine-grained stuff of you know like I say looking for viruses or maybe a configuration error or something like that so that's that's what you do once you get down to the computer itself or the device itself now at this point we've come into a problem situation we've asked around and we figure it out the overall of all the parts that might be part of the problem we then troubleshot large areas and diagnosed a specific device on the network that's causing the problem at this point we've gone in a little bit we've done some self Diagnostics on the on the other piece of equipment we've asked if anything has changed and then either we have fixed the problem we're gods we fix the problem or we are not allowed to fix the problem so we handed it off to somebody else so at this point again what many technicians don't think about and as part of the troubleshooting process is then the reporting process now that you've done all this now that it's out of your hands either the problem is fixed or you've handed the problem off to somebody you need to then report to the appropriate people so you need to report to the person that the phone in or told you about the problem so you say you the problem is fixed the problems fixed right yeah okay we're good or the problem is not fixed but this is the person who's now responsible for it here's their contact information and this is as far as I understand what's going to happen next so the person that you handed everything off to should then talk to these people he should or she should do this communication but at very least you need to do the communication you need to tell them that everything's been handed off so I troubleshot all these things this is where I found the problem to be I'm not allowed to fix this problem and tell them why it's out of my responsibility or I simply don't don't know how to I'm not trained in that and so you know bob has now taken this on he says it should be you know X Y or Z but you'll have to talk to him so you tell that to the person that told you about the problem then you tell that to the point of contact so the person that makes the decisions are right check if you're going into a small business that's maybe the business owner well if you're in an enterprise and maybe the department manager so let's say the secretary was having a problem you fix her problem and then you just knock on the door to the department manager and said I was fixing this issue for you for your secretary it's out of my ability to fix but we did narrow it down to a specific piece of hardware bob is now fixing it so he should be along and he'll tell you what's going on next and then of course also tell your boss if you have a boss just tell them that this is this is what happened this is what I did this is why I handed it off to so everybody is in the loop of communication nobody says well you know I was working on it and then he just heard a deal I go I'm still not fixed damn Eli well maybe Bob's problem I mean you may have handed it off to Bob and then bob was just a complete idiot well if you don't tell people you handed it to Bob then when Bob does dumb stuff you're gonna get blamed for the dumb stuff and you know computers a lot of a lot of a lot of this is don't blame you type of thing so once you report it to anybody then whether you're an employee or a consultant the contractor it's most important if you're a contractor then ask them if there is anything else just just be very polite to say okay I fixed your problem or I did as much as I could and I hand it off somebody else is there anything else I can help you with with contractors this is where the real money is because if you only go in and you fix the specific problem that's in front of them well you'll get a couple of billable hours if you didn't fix that you prove that you're pretty good then you can say if you have any other problems and then maybe they do have other issues and then you you know a two-hour job turned into an eight-hour job or a 16-hour job so when you get done with this whole process then just just ask them okay this is what's happened is there anything else before before I go now the final part the final part in the troubleshooting process again nobody likes to do for some reason is within a reasonable amount of time callback the point of contact and the person who have the problem and asked if the issue has been resolved or if there are any further problems so let's say if they need to replace a computer you know call them back in five days and did you get your the new computer in is it working okay for you did they need it if I needed a new internet connection it might take two weeks to get that in so in two weeks call them back and say okay you're now on a new internet connection has has that fixed the problem by doing this you show that you don't just forget about the people and you may find out that your diagnosis was incorrect people don't mind if you're wrong and people don't mind paying a little money even if you're wrong what they do mind is if you're wrong they paid some money and and then you just disappear often to the to the nether regions so when if you fix the problem so you've gone in and you fix the problem call them back in two or three days and you just verify that the problem is still fixed that you didn't put a bandaid on it sometimes people accidentally put band-aids on problems where they think the problem was fixed overall realistically you just slightly you just slap a bandaid on it and after three days the person and broke it again so that's not a real fix that's only a band-aid to sell make sure to call them back that was a class on on troubleshooting methodology so at this point you should have an idea of when you walk into a problem situation Oh what to do you first talk to to talk to people to try to understand what their problem is you then research what's going on but what systems may be involved in the problem and then who is responsible for those systems once you understand that you then look at take an evil eye view of all of the systems and then try to to turn those systems into blocks so you don't try to focus on every single computer in a network you just say okay the internal network all the networking devices the internet the other internal network the server etc see you you try to to lump as as much of the the pieces and the problem together as possible once you've done that you've narrowed down to what you think the specific devices your specific problem is you then ask has anything changed unintentionally intentionally or automatically because I swear to you 95% of all problems come from people changing crap and most of the time they weren't even supposed to change it or it was supposed to touch the stupid thing and for some reason they got it in their head to go and mess with it and so the network got shut down so has anything changed 95 percent of the time that will tell you what the problem is oh you're an idiot and I'm gonna fix your problem once you've done that you then do self Diagnostics on the on the device and by doing those self-diagnostics if you're not responsible for the device you can give that information to the person who is and then basically you can give them a leg up on what's going on so when they come in they're not just coming in blind saying oh maybe you know maybe Eli's wrong maybe maybe it isn't you know my device maybe it's actually one of his devices if you narrow down to this particular device and then you say I see within the self Diagnostics that there is problems your CPU is running hundred percent all the time then they go oh yeah it's my problem if you don't hand it off then you get into the nitty-gritty of the troubleshooting the particular device and this is where certifications and training comes in so you troubleshoot Cisco routers a specific way when you know it's a Cisco router you troubleshoot Linux web servers a specific way when you know that it's a Linux webserver once everything is done once you would either fixed the problem or you've headed off to somebody else make sure and go back and do your reporting - to the people who need to know this information talk to the point of contact talk to the person who had the problem who called it in talk to anybody that may need this information um one you just need a talk I mean I know this is a computer world but the more you talk to people the more comfortable they're going to feel around you and the better they are going to think that you're doing your job so just just talk to everybody that you can but and tell them what's going on so you tell them these are the steps that I've done this is how long it's taken and and/or how much its cost I have either fixed the problem or I've handed it off to this person this person should be contacting you shortly to fill you in on what they're doing I can't speak to that because I have handed it off to them so that tells everybody your responsibility is done you have walked in it you have been very professional you've communicated with people you seem to have done your job very professionally and if there's any problems passed here they will now blame it on Bob they will not blame it on you and you know in this business a lot of businesses passing the buck hopefully the person that deserves it and then once that's done that again the final thing this is the final step you're not done yet the final step is then to call back the person with problem or the point of contact any reasonable amount of time after you've handed the problem off or after you've you fixed it and say has the problem been resolved you know I fixed the issue three days ago is everything still working right did I accidentally put a bandaid on this without realizing and I didn't do a real fix or is it solid you know if the Internet's not working you wait three days you call them back if it's still working then then you've done a solid job if it's broken again and then you've got problems also feel free to call whoever you handed to work off too so again to make yourself looking for professional before you call back that point of contact or the person that complained called person you handed the work off to and say hey how did that go no-go oh I'm still working on it or oh I fixed it so when you call back the point of contact the person to complain you go I talked with Bob and he says it's been fixed so on so you tell them I'm calling you just to make sure everything's okay I just talked to Bob he said everything's fixed on I just want to make sure it really is fixed again even if it's broken we then make Bob look like the idiot and not you especially if he has a call back if everything's okay then it just looks like you've done your job very well that is troubleshooting methodology if you learn how to do troubleshooting correctly if you learn how to communicate you learn how to research and learn how to very quickly narrow down to where problems are you're going to find this field ah if you can't get this through your head I don't care how many certifications you have I don't care if your is the greatest CCIE to to I don't know kiss Bill Gates feat it won't matter if you can't do troubleshooting so when you go into your next situation that requires troubleshooting what I want you to do is I want you to start thinking about the process we all develop our own ways of doing this we develop our own ways of talking and researching and communicating so coming out with exact bullet points it's a waste of all of our time but I want you to start thinking about the process start thinking how you should do the process and what worked for you if you do that you'll be very successful in this field like I say if you don't get cook or something so I rely the computer guy this was a troubleshooting methodology and I'll see you at the next class

Channel: Eli the Computer Guy

Views: 224,550

Rating: 4.9233589 out of 5

Keywords: Troubleshooting, Methodology, 720, Full

Id: PeOC16IxKwg

Length: 51min 1sec (3061 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 15 2011