Home Tech 101: How To Solve Frustrating Home Tech Problems
Whether you are heading up a household full of kids or apartment-sharing with some college friends, it is likely that you will be appointed the tech guru of the house at some stage. This may be because you possess some expertise in the area. However, it may be that you have been appointed tech guru simply because everyone else is hopeless at it! This leaves you in a difficult position. When anything goes wrong with the internet, TV or central heating, everyone turns to you! If you are in that position, here are a few quick fixes for the most common home tech problems that cause such frustration.
Poor Wi-Fi in certain areas of the house or apartment
Every home has a Wi-Fi ‘black hole’. It is that area of the house where your devices struggle to connect to the Wi-Fi or may lose signal altogether. If it happens to be your bedroom or the room where you need to use a laptop to get some work done, this is more than frustrating! People who work from home, such as bloggers, find this especially annoying.
The first thing to check is the speed of the signal entering the home and you can do this on a computer that is directly connected (via a wire) to the modem. An ethernet cable is usually used to do this. If your speed test shows that there is no problem, the issue is with the wireless signal. Wi-Fi struggles to travel through thick walls and will have major problems trying to travel through more than two walls. Is there any way you could reposition the router so that it serves all parts of the home or apartment.
If that is not possible, you can get plug-in boosters for you Wi-Fi. They take the Wi-Fi signal via electrical cables and send it back out into the required the room. They are relatively inexpensive and look just like a large plug.
Failure to access Netflix movies
Watching movies at home is part of our culture now, We are accustomed to accessing the entertainment that we want, when we want it. When something goes wrong it is very frustrating and your housemates or your children turn to you for answers! Luckily, many Netflix issues can be resolved by turning your equipment off and back on again and checking your internet connection. If you are getting an on-screen message saying Netflix VPN not working you can follow the simple on-line instructions to sort it out and get up to date guidance and information on the issue.
Wireless mouse has stopped working
There is nothing more frustrating than seeing the cursor leaping around the screen and being unable to type where you need to! A wireless mouse can be working perfectly well one day and then let you down the next. The obvious thing to do is check that there is nothing stuck to the bottom of it. Then check the batteries. Finally, try reinstalling the driver.
