Hardware & Peripheral Troubleshooting Guides

Hardware problems range from a PC that will not power on to a printer that sits offline. Many of them are not hardware failures at all: a missing or corrupted driver, a device disabled in Device Manager, a privacy setting that blocks the camera or microphone, or a stuck print queue produce the same symptoms as a broken part. The first steps are always about telling those cases apart.

Guides in this section are grouped by device: displays and monitors, storage drives, USB devices, keyboards, mice and touchpads, laptop batteries and charging, audio, cameras and printers. Each one starts with checks that need no tools, moves on to driver and Windows settings fixes, and explains which signs mean the part itself is failing and needs replacing rather than more troubleshooting.

If you are not sure whether the problem is a driver or the hardware, a technician can run the diagnostics remotely and tell you before you spend money on parts.