Hal's Guide to Network Troubleshooting

[prillalar]

I've seen so many posts about networking problems on my flist in the last few days. I administer the networks both at work and at home, so I thought I would share my never-fail troubleshooting process.

1. Make sure everything is plugged in.

2. Turn everything off and on again, in varying orders.

3. Human sacrifice.

And that's all you need to know!

Comments

[zortified.livejournal.com]

You should specify that it helps if you sacrifice the idiot who made the computer not work in the first place.

;-)

[prillalar]

Actually, I don't think it does. It's better if it's an un-involved third party.

[marksykins.livejournal.com]

Can animals sacrifice be substituted in a pinch?

[prillalar]

I'm allergic to most animals so I haven't tried. I should think it *might* work if it were a particularly cute or desirable animal. But that's really at your own risk.

[marksykins.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Just as I suspected.

[florahart]

eh, you have a spare human at your disposal (so to speak), don't you?

[marksykins.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but he's good with computers. Don't want to be too hasty.

[florahart]

details.

[insaneneko.livejournal.com]

Ah, crap, no wonder I have such a hard time fixing things. I do 1 and 2, but never 3. Doh.

[prillalar]

I don't use 3 that often, because it really is a bother, but sometimes there's just no other way.

[insaneneko.livejournal.com]

The problem is that I'm getting hung up over the blood on the carpet concept. I wish we had wood flooring. *sighs*

[wickedcherub.livejournal.com]

Blood can really stain wood flooring. What you need are non-ceramic tiles or linoleum.

[lapislaz.livejournal.com]

Dangit! I knew I was leaving something out!

::goes off to start turning things on and off::

[prillalar]

When I was in the tech support biz, we called that "shut up and reboot".

[storyteller.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the help! :D :D :D

[prillalar]

Make sure you clip-n-save the instructions!

[annotated_em]

Huh. First good reason I've heard yet for keeping roommates around.

[prillalar]

That and psychological experiments. Though it's probably better to use your children for the latter.

[annotated_em]

Children? Pfft. That's what my future students are for.

[noshootingstars.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I'm so impatient I skip straight to number three only to later discover I could have fixed the problem with 1 & 2. Boy, is that embarrassing.

[prillalar]

Yeah, because #3 won't work if your ethernet cable is unplugged.

[mousapelli.livejournal.com]

*cries and cries*

[penknife.livejournal.com]

Clearly I need to move on to #3. I was going to try fiddling with my firewall settings, but I think at this point #3 would be more satisfying.

[prillalar]

The only thing is not to spill blood on your keyboard.

[qem_chibati]

Sadly the candidates for number 3, are prooving to difficult to actually complete the sacrifice...

[prillalar]

It's best if they're unsuspecting.

[qem_chibati]

Thats the problem.

Paranoid bastards, that they are.

[leviosa8.livejournal.com]

Human sacrifice...
My father knows a lot about that.
He learned how to install a PC, a net, and a network all by himself and wasting many a weekend for over a decade now.

[prillalar]

It takes a few times before you get really good at it.

[mitethe.livejournal.com]

My choice of victims must be unsatisfactory because 3 still doesn't do the trick. Maybe if it's en masse...?

[prillalar]

You probably need to reboot one more time.