Problem-Solving Without Knowing the Problem

Tech issues can be tricky. Sometimes, when something goes wrong, your computer is kind enough to tell you exactly what the issue is:

• “You’re out of memory.”
• “This file is corrupted / can’t be read / can’t be found.”
• “You need to update your drivers.”

But a lot of the time… you get nothing helpful at all. Programs freeze. Screens go blank. Your mouse stops working. (Although for that last one: yes, check the batteries first!)

Here’s the good news: you don’t always have to know why something is happening in order to fix it.

There’s an old tech joke that goes: “Have you turned it off and on again?”

The funny part is that it works way more often than it should.

And it isn’t magic. Shutting down interrupts all the programs and background processes running in the moment. When you restart, only the essential system items and whatever you’ve chosen to launch at start-up come back immediately. So if the glitch is being caused by some temporary weirdness in a program that isn’t a start-up item, restarting can knock it out of the system and get you back to normal.

I was thinking about this today because I recently fixed another problem where I knew the symptom, but not the cause.

The Case of the Disappearing Screens

I usually work on my laptop in one of two places:

• at the desk in my office, or
• in my comfy overstuffed chair in the front room (which sometimes turns into the “baseball season couch” in front of the TV).

When I’m not at my desk, everything works fine.

At my desk, I use a large external monitor. There’s also an older laptop plugged into that monitor. The old laptop is mostly just a file storage machine—because yes, backups matter, and sometimes “temporary” storage lasts longer than we planned.

When I sit down at my desk, my routine is simple:

1. Close the old laptop
2. Put my current laptop on top of it
3. Swap the HDMI cable from the old laptop to the new one

But about 50% of the time, both my current laptop screen and the external monitor would go blank… and stay blank.

I tried all the reasonable troubleshooting steps:

• I replaced the HDMI cable (nope).
• I plugged my laptop into my husband’s monitor (worked fine).
• I plugged my husband’s computer into my desk monitor (also worked fine).
• Sometimes unplugging and replugging the HDMI cable would fix it, which made me suspect the HDMI port.

The most frustrating part? It didn’t happen every time—just often enough to be annoying… or truly inconvenient when I was trying to join a Zoom call.

Then one day, while unplugging and replugging the HDMI cable for the umpteenth time, I accidentally pushed my laptop a few inches away from me.

Both screens popped on instantly.

So I pulled the laptop back toward me.

Both screens went off.

Toward me: off.
Away from me: on.
Over and over.

That’s when I realized the issue wasn’t the cable, the monitor, or the port. It was the positioning—something about the way my current laptop sat on top of the old one, “just so,” was triggering the problem.

Do I know why? Not really.
Do I care? Also not really.
Because now I know how to fix it: don’t stack the laptops in that exact position.

And honestly? That’s enough.

A Mouse Mystery 

I had a similar situation with a mouse on a different computer. When I’m sitting on the couch, I often use the lower-right corner of my laptop keyboard as a mouse surface. I’ve done this for decades with no problem.

Then I bought a new mouse—and suddenly my cursor would disappear every time I used it on that corner of the keyboard.

If I used the mouse on a desk or even a book? Perfect.
On the keyboard corner? Cursor vanished. Every time.

Again: no idea why. But I noticed the pattern and stopped doing the thing that caused it.

The Takeaway: Look for Patterns

If you’re dealing with a computer issue that seems random, start by tracking a few basics:

• What’s happening? (freezing, lagging, blank screens, disconnects, etc.)
• When is it happening? (after you click something specific, only in one location, during video calls, at certain times of day)
• What else is happening at the same time?
  For example: if OneDrive runs a big cloud backup every day at 3 PM, your computer might slow down for a few minutes like clockwork.

In other words: become a pattern detective.

It may be something silly (like having to position a laptop very precisely).  Or maybe something that you didn’t expect.  You may never figure out the exact technical cause—and that’s okay. If you can identify what triggers the problem, you can often avoid it, work around it, or fix it quickly.

Because in the real world, “I don’t know why, but I know what works” is sometimes the most practical troubleshooting method there is.