Appologies for the delay on this one, it's been three months since I published my last post and I've had a busy few months lots going on.

I have been cooking this blog topic idea for a long time. I did a lot of searching, reading and trying while working on different projects. Even today after publishing it I don’t think I’m 100% satisfied with the blog post, more can be done to elaborate on troubleshooting and how it is a sort of magic that you learn from repetition of tasks.

Here's the latest installment in Zero to Technical Hero. The pipeline plan is for a few chapters more, aim is for ten before pushing to an ebook.

Introduction

A skillset that many people look at when you work in IT or have some form of interest in technology is the ability to 'fix' things. You might be wondering how your friend/son/daughter/family knew how to get the Internet working again or your laptop wasn't working right or some other issue with tech and they just knew what to do?

Well one simple word here; troubleshooting, using a process of elimination to determine what an issue might or might not be. Then using this information to find the best solution to the problem. In a nut shell, troubleshooting is problem solving and it is very popular with those who are interested in technology.

It's not a skill that is natural to all but it is one that can be learned and trained. An example of this is my skills in laptop repair that I learned many moons ago by repeatedly dismantling various laptops and learning about their innards and where different bits come apart. This involved a degree of problem solving as no two laptop makes are the same with screws, design and taking things apart!

The Basics

Troubleshooting is the process of solving a problem or determining a problem to an issue. Troubleshooting often involves the process of elimination, where you follow a set of steps to determine the problem or resolve the problem.

How Do You Learn?

Simply put learning to troubleshoot is finding a problem and searching questions surrounding it then trying to solve that problem, be it the internet isn't working on my laptop or the USB port isn't charging on my phone help please?

In today's state of affairs if you find an issue you can probably bet you are not going to be the first one to encounter it and probably not the last so a quick search on the Internet using your favorite search engine(Google and Bing are the most common) will soon return a set of steps to find a solution.

Things to Try

So when it actually comes to debugging, troubleshooting or trying to find a solution what should you try first? Well the biggest one when it comes to tech is turning it off and on again, it might sound laughable but it fixes 99% of issues in IT!

The other 1% is a case of searching your issue on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo or another search engine then following the steps to fix the issue. It is as simple as that!

Troubleshooting Security

Most of the issues encountered when learning security will surround either an unfamiliar technology type or a new issue with something or another. The easiest way to find solutions would be to read the documentation for said technology as 9 out of 10 times these will hold at least a starting point to find out how to do something.

If they don't they might allow you to better formulate a question on how to sort it. If the worst comes to the worst and you can't find an answer from asking questions try turning to folks who already work in the industry or work on a particular area often there are lots of ways to fix one thing and by asking others you'll be better prepared on how to find your solution.

So onward you go into the world of unknowns and new problems, you might be better prepared to try and solve them now with the help of asking questions and searching for answers.

If you missed part 1 or want to read part 2 they can be found here:

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