troubleshooting

Andy has updated his mom's computer with Windows 10 Home. He's got her Defender AntiVirus all updated. But now, her start menu won't come up and the Windows key doesn't work. Should he look at the registry? Leo says NO!  Trust the solutions at Microsoft.com. Leo says that any user who isn't sure what they are doing can mess things up in the course of learning to use their system. The reality is, Windows is too powerful for your mother or someone who isn't a sophisticated user. Leo recommends replacing that Windows 10 system with a Chromebook.

Bob recently bought an eero mesh router. It worked fine for two weeks and then he started experiencing dropouts, and he can't get support. Leo says that support is terrible these days because of limitations due to CoVid. Another thing to look at is your ISP and cable modem. Security software could also be an issue and can inhibit your internet access. 

Ken is on a limited budget and he installed a new OS on his old laptop, but he can't get online now. Leo says that it can be several things. It can be the ISP. It could be the wires coming into your home. It could be a configuration issue. One easy test is to see if your internet is working elsewhere. If your phone has WiFi, then you're in good shape. That would point to an issue with Ken's laptop. Try connecting the computer to your router with an ethernet cable. If that works, then the issue points to the WiFi radio itself.

Jan is shaving issues with Apple Mail, where the body of his email message disappears. Leo says that there are a few things to try and clear it. Try viewing the source of the mail to see if the actual text is still there as raw text before rendering. One thing you can also try is to right-click the email box and select "rebuild." See if that clears any corruption. It could also be a security setting that is blocking HTML mail from being done. Leo doesn't recommend using HTML rendering anyway. There may be images and javascript in the email you are receiving, and that is a security risk.

Dan built a computer using an AMD Ryzen processor. He's been watching YouTube videos a lot on doing it and is ready to give it a go. Leo says there's a lot of great information on YouTube, but sometimes they can get it wrong, so keep that in mind. It worked for five days and then just stopped working. Leo says that building a computer is a great project, but if something like that goes wrong, you are your own support. There's no one really to call, as everyone will blame the other guy for the problem. So you end up having to go one by one to determine what goes wrong.

Ron has a new iMac which he updated to macOS Catalina. But now he can't get it to print to his HP OfficeJet. He downloaded the latest drivers, but that hasn't helped. Leo says that those drivers may not be for macOS Catalina. Go into the System Preference page and see if it sees the printer. If it does, then select add and let macOS download the drivers itself. You may also need to remove the printer and then add it again.

Scott is having issues with his Synology NAS. He can't access it remotely. Leo says it sounds like a settings issue and he recommends going into the router settings and see if the router can see it. Then reserve the DNS number that's listed for that Synology. If it doesn't, there could be a problem with your router or with a power surge that fried your board. But that's unlikely. 

Joey has a basic phone connected to his Obihai and he's having issues hearing people on the other end. Leo says to try swapping out the phone to see if it eliminates the issue. If it persists, it could be the device itself. Another issue could be his upstream. If upload speed is really slow, there could be some severe latency that's dropping the packets in real-time. Also, put the Obihai to the internet connection first, and then add the router. That's how it should be installed.

John's friend is trying to log into mail.yahoo.com and he can't sign in, but his wife can. Leo says that Yahoo wants to do two-factor authentication now, so it may be that he has to change his password and update his settings. There may be issues with his Verizon.net email, which is preventing him from accessing his Yahoo account. Verizon also owns AOL. What Leo recommends is getting the hell away from Yahoo and going to Gmail. What Leo suspects is that Yahoo deactivated his account due to suspicious activity. 

Charles has upgraded to macOS Catalina 15.1, and now he's getting crashing due to an error with an iOS device. Leo suspects it may be a wifi sync issue between Charles' iPad and the Mac. So into the music settings and turn off sync library and see if that solves the issue. It sounds like a bug that Apple has to fix. Also, try opening the Activity Monitor. It'll show what processes are running and when you shut down, kill the sync process. That's not a great solution long term, but it could work until the fix comes in a future update.  A complete clean install may also fix it.