A few things happened recently that reminded me how electronic devices can be both extremely sensitive and extremely annoying. As readers of this column know, we recently “cut the cable TV cord”, relying on internet streaming service for our television viewing. On Super Bowl Sunday we had just settled down to watch the game, when there was a momentary power outage. After about a minute, the lights came back on but not the television. Our modem showed power, but DSL and internet lights were out. My immediate thought was that the Centurylink, the service provider, experienced an outage. My husband suggested something more obvious, that the power spike had damaged our modem. I disagreed, insisting that the router could not be the problem since it was powered on. Sure that the problem was with the provider, I contacted Centurylink customer service and spent a very frustrating twenty minutes with an agent who, after asking innumerable questions for security purposes, finally told me there were no reported outages in our area.
Whenever something goes wrong with one of our electronic devices, I try to troubleshoot the cause. The problem with my usual way of thinking is that I rarely follow the sage, philosophical advice of Occam’s razor – the simplest solution is most often the best one. In this case, my husband was right, the problem was with the modem.
We had replaced our Centurylink modem just after Christmas, because the internet was very slow, even for a DSL connection. The new Netgear modem provided a much faster connection — until Super Bowl Sunday. After the frustrating phone call to Centurylink, I heeded my husband’s suggestion and disconnected the Netgear modem and replaced it with our original modem. Sure enough, we were back online and able watched the rest of the game. Before giving up on our Netgear modem, I tried a hard reset, which returns a device to its original factory settings, and surprisingly that resolved the issue. The modem was not broken, but the power outage must have cause something inside the modem to disconnect.
The answer to another recent problem proved an easier fix. The email software on my computer stopped receiving new mail, even though I could receive email on my iPad. I tried reopening the mail program, and when that didn’t work, I restarted the computer, and once again I was receiving email. I don’t know what caused the problem, but a restart was the fix.
The third problem we encountered was the most unsettling. My husband’s PC is protected from computer viruses and malware by BitDefender, a program that has been very effective. The other morning the program quit and a message flashed on his screen saying that BitDefender Security Services encountered a critical error. After restarting the computer the message reappeared, and we were concerned about leaving sensitive data unprotected. We visited the BitDefender website, which was not working correctly. I clicked on the HELP link, but it did not go anywhere, Chat was “unavailable,” and the listed phone numbers went unanswered. BitDefender itself appeared to be experiencing a major problem, and we were unsure what to do. The next morning, while my husband worked on activating Microsoft’s built-in firewall and virus protection, I decided to try contacting BitDefender one more time. Sure enough the website displayed a message that an update to the program had gone wrong, affecting users all over the world — followed by directions on how to fix the problem. A few minutes later my husbands computer was once again protected.
The moral of this tale is when a problem exists, try the simplest solutions first. If a piece of software stops working, close it and then open it again. If that doesn’t work, try restarting the device or computer, and as a last resort reset the device to factory settings. It doesn’t matter if you are working on a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, technology is great when it works, but so frustrating when it doesn’t. For insurance, you always back-up your computer and assorted devices, a topic I will revisit in next week’s column.
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