Many people believe that network troubleshooting is not a creative process. It's just wires and resistors, ones and zeros, right? Computers are digital! Creativity is analog!

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Your friendly neighborhood computer geek may not spring to mind when you think of the word "creative," but this does not do justice to the amount of imagination it takes to figure out a really difficult computer problem.

Yes, a computer may be just a series of circuits and logic-gates, but when you put them all together, the entire system is so vast and complex, that no one can understand everything that is going on within that system at any given time.

So how do the network technicians do it? And more importantly, how can this help you, if you must support your computer system yourself?

Do you remember last week, when we discussed how computers are designed to work?

This means that someone has already put a lot of thought into how those circuits and logic gates are supposed to cooperate. So instead of worrying about each and every one, a computer technician (or you, if your technician is out for pizza...) can instead think about the system at a very high level.

What is the system supposed to be doing? Well--it may be giving you access to the Internet, or processing your documents, or printing your reports. Whatever it is doing, a lot of parts and pieces are working together to make that one thing happen.

And what if that thing isn't happening? Well, something, somewhere isn't doing it's job--and that's where your creativity come in.

If something is breaking one part of your system, that same something may be breaking other parts, as well.

Forget about the minutia, and think about the big picture. If your computer isn't printing, are there other network functions that might also be affected? How about your neighbor's ability to print? What about printing directly from the server?

As you collect clues about what is working and what is not, you will start to isolate large parts of the system--not the circuit boards and resistors, but the bigger functions which those components cooperate to produce.

If it seems like you are chasing multiple problems, persist. Dig deeper, and use your imagination to consider how the problems might be related. If you can't print, and you can't surf the Internet, check to see if you can access a file share on the server. If you can't, what do all three of those functions have in common? Your network card? Your network cable? The hub or switch to which everything is connected?

Are you beginning to see that network troubleshooting--even simple network troubleshooting--is a kind of game? And to win this game, it helps to be creative and to use your imagination. Ask yourself, what might be causing this problem, and how could it be related to that problem? And if the problems are related, what is the one solution that might fix both of them?

Once you learn to use your imagination, you may find that computer troubleshooting not only becomes easier. It might even become fun!

But we'll settle for easier.

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