I’m sure there are things in your life that drive you mad! Especially in the technology department 😉 So I’m going to start this post with a couple of things that I run into often and the way to solve them. This is Windows PC centric- I very rarely use Apple products. I’ll keep this updated as I run into more thing.
NOTE: more than likely you will need Administrator privileges on your PC. If you do not have these privileges, or do not know the Administrator username and password, you might be out of luck. If you do not understand what this sentence (or any of the language I use in this post means, you might need to ask someone you trust for help- assuming they understand the computer lingo that is 😉
For some of the issues I run into, they are very easy to solve if you know where to look. Let me introduce you first to the Services app on a Windows PC. If you are on a newer version of Windows, you can use Search found on the task bar and just type in “Services” and then click on the Services App to use it. Or you might need to choose the option to Run As Administrator. Here are the sequences on a newer Windows PC:
On an older machine you might need to get to the Services panel through the Control Panel. Click the Start or Windows button that you normally use to bring up and start a program. Look for Control Panel and click that to start it. There is a search bar on the Control Panel where you can enter “Services”. Click on the link that says “View Local Services“.
Now you are ready for fixing some of the vexing problems listed below!
- No sound in Movie Maker I use this program quite frequently and on my computer there are often times where there is no sound other than maybe a click. Open the Services App (see above for directions on how to do this). Scroll down to find the service called “Windows Audio” and click on that. Then click the “Restart this service” link in the upper left area of the middle section of that Services panel:
and hopefully your sound will once again work on your computer!
- Prints not printing This used to happen occasionally for me more so on older computers, but I still see this on the computers of family members. You click the print button and nothing comes out of the printer. You have already checked that the printer is on, that there is enough ink, and that there are no error messages on the computer or printer that indicates a problem. You can look at the Print queue and see the print jobs sitting there. So one thing to know is that by default, there is a service called the print spooler. After you click the Print button, the print job lines up in the printer queue, and then actually gets fed to the print spooler before going to the printer. This makes things run faster supposedly. But sometimes that print spooler gets out of whack- especially if you keep hitting the print button a thousand times because nothing is printing! First thing- check your Print Queue and if there are lots of printing jobs sitting there, then you might want to cancel them all before you fix the spooling issue. Otherwise all those prints you queued up while frantically hitting the print button will come pouring out once you fix the print spooling problem!
— On a Windows 10 computer type “printers” into Search on the Task bar. Click on the Printers and Scanners App that shows up in the search results. On an older computer click the Start or Windows Button and choose Devices and Printers. You can also find it by typing “Printers” into the search bar on Control Panel.
— Next find the printer you are using in the list of printers, right mouse button click and choose “See what’s printing“. This will bring up the Print Queue. Click Printer -> “Cancel All Documents” from the dropdown. You might have to wait a while if you have a lot of documents sitting in the queue.
— Finally, open the Services App (see above for directions on how to do this). Scroll down to find the service called “Windows Audio” and click on that. Then click the “Restart this service” link in the upper left area of the middle section of that Services panel:
Then you can attempt to print again.
Note: there is a setting on printers where you can change the print process to skip the spooler service altogether if you run into this issue a lot. I personally have never done this, but if you right mouse button click on the printer and choose “Printer Properties” and then click on the “Advanced” tab you will find the option there:
- Did you know that Windows has a Snipping tool to quickly get a snapshot/screenshot of just the piece of the screen that you want? No more PrintScreen and then editing it down or remembering the combination to Screenshot just the window/app you are using or editing to get just a portion of the screen capture. The Snipping tool is fairly worthless on older versions of Windows, but Windows 10 gets it right. Set up your screen or window or app the way that you want to capture. Then hit the Windows+Shift key+S buttons altogether. This will put a veil over the whole screen. If you click and drag over the portion that you want, a screenshot of that section will be copied to the clipboard. From there you can paste it wherever you like.
I’ll keep updating this with fixes to annoying Windows problems. Hope this helps!!
